StupidiNews!

• House Democrats have scheduled impeachment hearings next week for eight more witnesses, including EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and NSC Ukraine expert Alexander Vindland.
• Indicted former Trump adviser Roger Stone has rested his defense without calling witnesses, the trial could go to jury by the end of the week.
• The Department of Health and Human Services is looking into possible massive HIPAA violations by Google in its medical record sharing deal with hospital chain Ascension.
• The Trump regime is threatening "substantial" new China tariffs unless Beijing reaches a trade deal with the US soon.
• A federal judge has ruled ICE and Customs random search and seizure of international travelers' electronic devices is unconstitutional, the Trump regime plans to appeal the ruling.

Last Call For Race To The Bottom, Con't

And here we have Trump regime immigration adviser Stephen Miller's own words, proving beyond a doubt that he is a white supremacist who wants to remove all non-white people from America, period, and is willing to use the power of the federal government in order to accomplish turning America into a white nation through any means necessary.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.

The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency. These policies include reportedly setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said is causing “intense trauma” in children.

In this, the first of what will be a series about those emails, Hatewatch exposes the racist source material that has influenced Miller’s visions of policy. That source material, as laid out in his emails to Breitbart, includes white nationalist websites, a “white genocide”-themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in “Mein Kampf.”

Hatewatch reviewed more than 900 previously private emails Miller sent to Breitbart editors from March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016. Miller does not converse along a wide range of topics in the emails. His focus is strikingly narrow – more than 80 percent of the emails Hatewatch reviewed relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration. Hatewatch made multiple attempts to reach the White House for a comment from Miller about the content of his emails but did not receive any reply.

Miller’s perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States. Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.

Miller has gained a reputation for attempting to keep his communications secret: The Washington Post reported in August that Miller “rarely puts anything in writing, eschewing email in favor of phone calls.” The Daily Beast noted in July that Miller has recently “cut off regular contact with most of his allies” outside the Trump administration to limit leaks.

Miller used his government email address as an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions in the emails Hatewatch reviewed. He sent the majority of the emails Hatewatch examined before he joined Trump’s campaign in January 2016 and while he was still working for Sessions. Miller also used a personal Hotmail.com address in the emails and did so both before and after he started working for Trump. Hatewatch confirmed the authenticity of Miller’s Hotmail.com address through an email sent from his government address in which he lists it as his future point of contact:

“I am excited to announce that I am beginning a new job as Senior Policy Advisor to presidential candidate Donald J. Trump,” Miller wrote from his government email on Jan. 26, 2016, to an undisclosed group of recipients. “Should you need to reach me, my personal email address is [redacted].”

Katie McHugh, who was an editor for Breitbart from April 2014 to June 2017, leaked the emails to Hatewatch in June to review, analyze and disseminate to the public. McHugh was 23 when she started at Breitbart and also became active in the anti-immigrant movement, frequently rubbing shoulders with white nationalists. McHugh was fired from Breitbart in 2017 after posting anti-Muslim tweets. She has since renounced the far right.

McHugh told Hatewatch that Breitbart editors introduced her to Miller in 2015 with an understanding he would influence the direction of her reporting. For that reason, and because Miller would have regarded her as a fellow traveler of the anti-immigrant movement, McHugh sometimes starts conversations with Miller in the emails, seeking his opinion on news stories. Other times, Miller directly suggests story ideas to McHugh, or tells her how to shape Breitbart’s coverage. Periodically, Miller asks McHugh if he can speak to her by phone, taking conversations offline.

“What Stephen Miller sent to me in those emails has become policy at the Trump administration,” McHugh told Hatewatch.

Your friends and neighbors and even some family are planning to vote for Trump. Show them this.  Show them this is what's going to happen to America in a second Trump term.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The latest Republican "defense" of Donald Trump is now "He can't be impeached because bribery and extortion require intent" and I'm too busy laughing to care.

Confronted with a mountain of damaging facts heading into tomorrow's opening of the public phase of impeachment, House Republicans plan to argue that "the President's state of mind" was exculpatory.

The state of play: "To appropriately understand the events in question — and most importantly, assess the President's state of mind during his interaction with [Ukrainian] President Zelensky — context is necessary," says the 18-page staff memo, circulated to committee members last night.

"The evidence gathered does not establish an impeachable offense," the memo concludes.

Why it matters: By focusing their defense on intangibles like impeachability and President Trump's mindset, House Republicans don't depend on undercutting a narrative that has been bolstered by witness after witness. 

Republican senators, who would vote on whether to remove President Trump if the House impeached him, are also thinking this way. 

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told the WashPost 10 days ago: "To me, it all turns on intent, motive. ... Did the president have a culpable state of mind?"
The memo points to "four key pieces of evidence" to try to undermine Democrats' arguments for why the president should be impeached: 

"The July 25 call summary — the best evidence of the conversation — shows no conditionality or evidence of pressure." 

"President Zelensky and President Trump have both said there was no pressure on the call." 

"The Ukrainian government was not aware of a hold on U.S. security assistance at the time of the July 25 call." 

"President Trump met with President Zelensky and U.S. security assistance flowed to Ukraine in September 2019 — both of which occurred without Ukraine investigating President Trump's political rivals."

Between the lines: The memo fails to consider counterarguments that Democratic members have been making for weeks.

And that's the idea.  Republicans are simply going to gaslight this and pretend that Trump's already been exonerated by the evidence, and that Democrats are wasting America's time with a partisan witch hunt.

Sadly, it's the 52 Republican senators who can simply cite that and acquit Trump or even dismiss the charges outright, regardless of evidence.  They only need 34 to acquit, and any Republican senator who does cross Trump will certainly be removed from committees, face credible death threats from crazed Trump voters, be brutally attacked by Trump for months on Twitter, risk their career via immediate primary challenger, or all of the above.

No Republican will do it.  Not a one.  They're all cowards.

Another Hat In The Ring Against Mitch

Amy McGrath isn't the only name running against Mitch McConnell.  Louisville state Representative Charles Booker is considering entering the race and says he'll make a decision by the end of the month.

Booker, 35, a first-term state legislator, told The Courier Journal he filed the paperwork for his committee Monday and plans to launch a statewide listening tour by the end of November before he makes a final decision on whether to run.

"It's clear that Kentuckians are ready for a change and they're ready for a movement," Booker said. "My goal with this process is to make sure that we can build the infrastructure needed to catalyze that."

He said he's tired of McConnell using Kentucky as a "poker chip" to gain power while the Bluegrass State suffers.

"The fact of the matter is: (McConnell) knows how to do something about it. He has the power to and chooses not to," said Booker, who was born a few weeks before McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984. "And that's the part that pisses me off, because while he jokes about calling himself the Grim Reaper, we're literally dying."

Booker, who has Type 1 diabetes, said he's had to ration insulin before and "nearly died myself" doing so. McConnell is blocking a bill that House Democrats say would lower drug prices.

"(McConnell) has the tools, he has the ability to help Kentucky. He chooses not to and mocks us while he doesn't," Booker added.

Booker's decision to form an exploratory committee marks a significant step toward potentially running for U.S. Senate. But the state representative previously said that he had an eye on Washington, D.C.

Here's Booker's announcement ad, and it's a good one.



Booker has a real future. We'll see if it goes through McConnell's seat.

StupidiNews!

• Former Bolivian President Evo Morales has accepted political asylum in Mexico, Morales was ousted over the weekend as a military coup rose against his socialist government.
• Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, chair of Maryland's Democratic Party and widow of the late Rep. Elijah Cummings will run for her husband's House seat in 2020.
• Hong Kong police fired tear gas at protesters Tuesday as commuters dealt with disrupted subway lines and roads for a second day after two demonstrators were killed over the weekend.
• Former President Jimmy Carter has been hospitalized for surgery to deal with fluid on the brain after a series of falls in the last several weeks.
• Google may already have access to the medical records of tens of millions of Americans as part of a partnership with the nation's largest Catholic medical network, Ascension.

Last Call For Ama-zoning Laws

As I told you last year, Seattle's city council didn't back down from Amazon's threats to take its HQ and tens of thousands of employees elsewhere if the city didn't kill it new tax on big business.  The Mayor folded, and Amazon responded by spending a massive $1.5 million on ousting Seattle's city council members ahead of elections last week.

The company failed completely, and most were re-elected.

On election night, Amazon’s key political nemesis, Kshama Sawant, originally trailed by 8 percentage points — but over the weekend, she declared victory after ballot counts put her ahead of her Amazon-backed rival by more than 3 percentage points. Election tallies indicate that only two of the seven candidates Amazon backed will win, meaning the company’s efforts will fail to tilt the council in a pro-big-business way that would benefit Amazon.

The win by Sawant, a socialist and former software engineer, is the latest salvo in what has become an increasingly contentious battle between Amazon and its hometown city council. Amazon’s rapid growth in Seattle has helped transform the city into a tech powerhouse, but local politicians blame that growth and the accompanying real estate boom for much of the city’s ills, with a homelessness crisis near the top of the list.

Last year, the city council voted to levy a new tax on large businesses of about $275 per employee — called the “head tax” — to help fund homelessness services and low-income housing. Amazon fiercely opposed the bill, arguing that the city’s problem was not a lack of money to spend but rather ineffective spending of the money it had.

After the tax passed, Amazon and other Seattle businesses continued to fight and eventually succeeded in pushing local leaders to repeal the tax.

But a new, similar tax might now be in play after Amazon-backed candidates’ showing in last week’s election. Amazon supported seven city council candidates via a $1.45 million contribution to a political action committee backed by Seattle’s chamber of commerce in the hope of electing a more business-friendly slate of officials. But it appeared as of Monday that only two of the seven would win election.

The council has nine members in total, but two seats were not up for election this year. Local unions spent about $1 million on the race, according to Reuters.

Since being elected for the first time in 2013, Sawant has been a frequent critic of Amazon, hosting several rallies at the company’s headquarters to protest Amazon’s perceived negative impacts on Seattle.

It’s possible that Amazon’s cash donation aimed at defeating her rallied more voters to her side, with presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders both tweeting about Amazon’s opposition to her.

In fact, her opponent, Egan Orion, sounded on election night as though he would have been happier without the Amazon association.

“We didn’t need any more money in this race. I think it was a big distraction that played right into Kshama’s hands,” he said.

Local elections matter, folks.

The Red Retirement Rush Resumes

The latest GOP Congressman to head for the hills, fleeing the disaster of Donald Trump's 2020 run is 28-year veteran Rep. Peter King of New York although there's a twist: he wants his daughter to fill the seat.

King, 75, said he was retiring so he can live full-time in New York and spend more time with his family. 

"This was not an easy decision. But there is a season for everything and Rosemary and I decided that, especially since we are both in good health, it is time to have the flexibility to spend more time with our children and grandchildren," he said, adding that his "daughter's recent move to North Carolina certainly accelerated my thinking." 

A source familiar with King's thinking told CNN on Monday that King "was really holding on" until his daughter, Erin King Sweeney, a former councilwoman in Hempstead, New York, "could run for his seat and win it." 

"Pete is really wonderfully into his kids and grandkids, and hated the idea of seeing them even less if he had to split his time between" DC, New York and North Carolina, the source said. 

King's retirement comes as his party inches closer to an election in which they could lose a number of vulnerable seats in the House, including his own. Earlier this year, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a strategy memo that the New Yorker is "at the top of the retirement watch list" and included his district on a list of "targeted districts." 

Republicans have struggled in suburban districts during President Donald Trump's time in office, a trend recently on display last week in Virginia, where Democrats seized control of the state legislature. 

So far, 16 House Republicans and five Democrats have announced they won't seek reelection next year.

Thing is, Erin King Sweeney moved to NC six weeks ago, but if she's out of state, I guess King has decided he's moving on himself.  King's NY-2 Long Island district is definitely in play though for Democrats, with a Cook PVI of R+3. Without King's gravitational pull keeping this in the GOP column, this one's gonna fall to Team Blue in 2020.

Stay tuned.

Ukraine In The Membrane

Needless to say, given Donald Trump's penchant for retaliation and crucifixion of anyone who dares to challenge him (only while Trump's in a position of power over said person mind you, Putin for instance owns Trump and can challenge him anytime he wants), it's no wonder then that Alexander Vindman, the NSC's top Ukraine expert and key impeachment witness, is being fired from the White House.

On Sunday, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien said Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who gave a bombshell testimony in the House impeachment investigation last month on President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scheme, will be removed from his post at the White House National Security Council.

“Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who has testified under oath, is serving on the National Security Council currently,” CBS News’s “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan said during her interview with O’Brien. “Will he continue to work for you despite testifying against the President?”

“Well look, one of the things that I’ve talked about is that we’re streamlining the National Security Council,” O’Brien replied. “It got bloated to like 236 people up from 100 in the Bush administration under President Obama.”

The national security adviser said Vindman, who currently serves as the council’s Director for European Affairs, will be removed as a part of the White House’s “streamlining” efforts.

“My understanding is he’s–that Colonel Vindman is detailed from the Department of Defense,” O’Brien said. “So everyone who’s detailed at the NSC, people are going to start going back to their own departments and we’ll bring in new folks.”
When Brennan asked O’Brien to confirm that the decision is not retaliation against Vindman, whom Trump has baselessly accused of being a “Never Trumper,” the national security adviser’s response was that he personally had never retaliated against anyone.

“I never retaliated against anyone,” he said. “There- there will be a point for everybody who’s detailed there—that their time, that their detail will come to an end.”

Sure, we getting rid of the Ukraine expert and it's not retaliation, we're just starting with him because Ukraine is at the top of the list.  Did I mention Trump is a coward on top of being a bully and is making O'Brien do this as well as justifying the reason, the laughable excuse that the Trump regime has too many qualified foreign policy experts?

Sure.  And I'm Ivan the Great.

StupidiNews!

• Two people are dead after a speeding Porsche lost control in a New Jersey suburb and crashed into the second-story of a real estate office, killing the driver and passenger. 
• Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has reportedly told his caucus that everyone must come up with their own excuse to defend Donald Trump from impeachment charges.
• Bolivian President Evo Morales has resigned after the military has forced him to leave over a disputed election, protesters have been calling for his resignation for weeks.
• Two Hong Kong protesters were shot by police as demonstrations near the six-month mark, tensions remain high and China is calling for protesters to stand down immediately.
• Sesame Street turns 50 this week, and the show has taught math and science to generations of American schoolchildren.

Last Call For It's A Dam Shame

Two related stories to send off your Sunday, first a new Bloomberg News report finds America's wealth inequality is reaching record levels...

The U.S.’s historic economic expansion has so enriched one-percenters they now hold almost as much wealth as the middle- and upper-middle classes combined.

The top 1% of American households have enjoyed huge returns in the stock market in the past decade, to the point that they now control more than half of the equity in U.S. public and private companies, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Those fat portfolios have America’s elite gobbling up an ever-bigger piece of the pie.

The very richest had assets of about $35.4 trillion in the second quarter, or just shy of the $36.9 trillion held by the tens of millions of people who make up the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile of Americans -- much of the middle and upper-middle classes.

Americans Now Need at Least $500,000 a Year to Enter Top 1%

Chalk up at least part of their good fortune to interest rates, said Stephen Colavito, chief market strategist at Lakeview Capital Partners, an Atlanta-based investment firm for high-net-worth investors. People can’t get much of a return on certificates of deposits and other passive investments, so they’ve pumped money into stocks and propped up the market overall, he said.

In turn, those investments make the wealthy eligible to put money into exclusive hedge funds and private equity funds. Many such funds require $5 million of investments to qualify.

“The wealthier that the wealthy get, the more opportunity they have,” Colavito said.

It may not be long before one-percenters actually surpass the middle and upper-middle classes. Household wealth in the upper-most bracket grew by $650 billion in the second quarter of 2019, while Americans in the 50th to 90th percentiles saw a $210 billion gain.

And it won't be long until the top 1% outclass the bottom 90% in wealth too.  We're at that point.  Meanwhile by making billionaires richer,  we're still in danger of infrastructure collapse, even "fair" dams.

A more than two-year investigation by The Associated Press has found scores of dams nationwide in even worse condition, and in equally dangerous locations. They loom over homes, businesses, highways or entire communities that could face life-threatening floods if the dams don’t hold.

A review of federal data and reports obtained under state open records laws identified 1,688 high-hazard dams rated in poor or unsatisfactory condition as of last year in 44 states and Puerto Rico. The actual number is almost certainly higher: Some states declined to provide condition ratings for their dams, claiming exemptions to public record requests. Others simply haven’t rated all their dams due to lack of funding, staffing or authority to do so.
Deaths from dam failures have declined since a series of catastrophic collapses in the 1970s prompted the federal and state governments to step up their safety efforts. Yet about 1,000 dams have failed over the past four decades, killing 34 people, according to Stanford University’s National Performance of Dams Program.

Built for flood control, irrigation, water supply, hydropower, recreation or industrial waste storage, the nation’s dams are over a half-century old on average. Some are no longer adequate to handle the intense rainfall and floods of a changing climate. Yet they are being relied upon to protect more and more people as housing developments spring up nearby.

“There are thousands of people in this country that are living downstream from dams that are probably considered deficient given current safety standards,” said Mark Ogden, a former Ohio dam safety official who is now a technical specialist with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

The association estimates it would take more than $70 billion to repair and modernize the nation’s more than 90,000 dams. But unlike much other infrastructure, most U.S. dams are privately owned. That makes it difficult for regulators to require improvements from operators who are unable or unwilling to pay the steep costs.

So $70 billion to fix the dams in the country, and instead we gave ten times that to billionaires for more pocket change.

As I said, related stories.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier gives the correct answer today on the GOP defense of Trump being that Trump's Ukraine scandal doesn't rise to the level of impeachable: "This is a very strong case of bribery", an offense written directly into the Constitution as impeachable.

A Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee defended the Democrats' strategy in the impeachment inquiry and responded on Sunday to the Republican witness requests in an interview on ABC's "This Week."

"This is a very simple, straightforward act. The president broke the law," said Rep. Jackie Speier of California. "He went on a telephone call with the President of Ukraine and said 'I have a favor though' and then proceeded to ask for an investigation of his rival. This is a very strong case of bribery."

The constitution is very clear, treason, bribery or acts of omission," she added. "And in this case it’s clearly one of those."

Republicans are now falling back on "It's all one-sided so it's illegitimate!"

Ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, criticized the inquiry for being partisan, in response to Speier during a separate interview on "This Week."

"I think whatever happens now, there will be a taint to this one-sided partisan approach to impeachment, that is different that has been used before, and so I think there will be intense skepticism about whatever they come up with," he said.

When "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz pressed Thornberry on the substance of the allegations at the center of the impeachment inquiry versus the process, Thornberry said, "I believe that it is inappropriate for a president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival."

He added, however, "I do not believe it was impeachable."

This is where the country will be headed into hearings later this week.  Everyone agrees he did it, but is it impeachable?

If the answer is no, if bribery isn't impeachable, then we're done as a nation.

Sunday Long Read: The Lee In Washington And Lee

Yes, the Lee in Washington and Lee University is Robert E. Lee, not the most popular guy in American history right now, given the whole "traitor to the country for slavery's sake" turn of events. Our Sunday Long Read this week has Author Abigail Covington details the university's reaction to the Trump era, Charlottesville, and being in charge of the place where Lee is interred.

The president of Washington and Lee University, Will Dudley, understood the depth of his problem the moment he turned on the television and saw hoards of white men in collared shirts and khakis carrying tiki torches as they marched through Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

For nearly 150 years, the school over which he presided managed to avoid any controversies related to its namesake and former president. But with the August 2017 white supremicist rallies and riots in Charlottesville, Virginia and the reaction of President Donald Trump — “You also had some very fine people on both sides” — had come new and, in some quarters, unwelcome scrutiny over the enduring presence in the south of memorials to the Lost Cause. And nowhere was that presence more deeply ingrained than in Lexington, Virginia on the campus of Washington and Lee, at whose spiritual core sat the memorial chapel in which lay in eternal repose the remains of one Robert E. Lee. Unlike any of his predecessors, Dudley understood that this time he’d have to deal with the school’s Robert E. Lee problem. He believed he had a path toward a solution, and that it began with Ted DeLaney.

“No one has a more penetrating sense of W&L’s history and character than Professor DeLaney,” wrote the school’s provost Marc Conner in W&L’s official magazine The Columns. Now 75 years old and semi-retired, DeLaney grew up in the black neighborhood of a then heavily-segregated Lexington and has a relationship to W&L unlike any other. He started as a custodian in the early 1960s and spent twenty years as a lab technician in the school’s biology department. He then enrolled as an undergraduate, graduating cum laude in 1985 at the age of 40; he later returned as a professor in the history department where he taught courses on such subjects as Comparative Slavery in the Western Hemisphere, African American history, Civil Rights and Gay and Lesbian history.

President Dudley’s post-Charlottesville plan was to form a commission whose unenviable task would necessitate separating the myths of Robert E. Lee from the facts of his life. It would gather opinions on Lee and his legacy from the W&L community, whose constituents often contradicted each other. “W&L is a fortress of white privilege,” one alumnus would seethe during an open conference call for the school’s graduates hosted by the commission. Another would lay out the stakes in clear and troubling terms: “If the president and the board don’t heed the final recommendations of the Commission, the university will attract tourists like Dylan Roof.”

The commission would have twelve members, drawn from W&L professors, faculty, current students, and alumni. More than examining the connection between Lee and the school, Dudley wanted recommendations on ways of restructuring the Lee narrative in the wake of the nation’s renewed attention to race, history and justice. He asked Ted DeLaney to join it, and DeLaney quickly agreed.

In many ways, DeLaney’s life had been preparing him for this moment. For over thirty years, he’d wandered in the shadows cast by Confederate monuments and statues in his hometown. He’d attended convocations and welcome addresses at Lee Chapel and sat in pews built atop Robert E. Lee’s family crypt. His tolerance had been tested and fortified by each indignity he’d silently suffered and every display of hagiographic admiration he’d witnessed his friends, colleagues and students display toward Robert E. Lee. He was both fired up and exhausted; reluctant and motivated to finally take on the legacy of a Confederate god who’d haunted him all his life.

In a way, W&L was Lee's legacy, the way to ensure his name would be enshrined and that for better or for worse, he would be remembered.

Maybe he shouldn't be, and I'm glad the university that bears his name and frankly its shame is coming to terms with it 150 years later.
 

Trump's Constant Is Represented By The Poop Emote

Donald Trump continues to be awful in every possible way given any possible opportunity to be repugnant, like some sort of amoral version of Planck's constant or Avagadro's number.

While meeting with President Donald Trump, the parents of a British teenager who was killed in a traffic collision with the wife of a U.S. diplomat were offered money from the Treasury by the president, which they refused, according to The Guardian.

Harry Dunn, 19, was riding his motorcycle near the Royal Air Force base in Northamptonshire, England when he was involved in an accident with Anne Sacoolas. Dunn died of his injuries in the hospital while Sacoolas claimed diplomatic immunity and left the United Kingdom. Trump invited Dunn's parents, Tim Dunn and Charlotte Charles, to the White House to discuss the case.

Toward the end of the meeting, Trump intimated that he had Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin "standing by ready to write a check."

"It was almost as if he let it slip out," said family spokesman Radd Seiger. "When he said, 'We've got the driver here', he basically meant we're all going to have a big hug and a kiss and I'll get my Treasury guy to write a check. That's how it was. On the day it just didn't register with me, but the more I think about those words, the more shocking it is."

The asshole thinks the Treasury Secretary is his money guy, and that he can just write a check and make things go away, like he's Logan Roy from HBO's Succession.

Oh wait, that's what he actually did with Stormy Daniels.

Why is this man not in prison?

The Reach To Impeach,.Con't

House Republicans are trying to disrupt next week's public impeachment hearings by spending the entire time demanding the whistleblower and Hunter Biden testify instead.  Luckily, it doesn't really matter what they want.

Republicans and the president have complained that the Democrats’ inquiry is unfairly partisan. When the Democrats deny the witnesses they’ve requested, the Republicans will then present that as evidence of a one-sided process.

Witnesses who testified out of public view have corroborated the crux of the case against Trump — that he pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals — so the Democrats see no need for the whistleblower, who heard the story secondhand, to testify. Three career State Department officials are returning next week for the public hearings.

Republicans want to publicly question witnesses who would divert the conversation away from questions about Trump’s behavior to allegations only tangentially related to the case, such as unfounded claims that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and that the Bidens acted nefariously in their dealings with Ukraine.

In the request that the anonymous whistleblower be asked to testify publicly, Nunes argued that Trump “should be afforded an opportunity to confront his accusers.” He also asked that all individuals who provided information to the whistleblower be compelled to appear.

Democrats have pushed back on Republicans’ desire to expose the identity of the whistleblower, citing protections afforded to federal employees who anonymously disclose information about government wrongdoing.

In addition to Hunter Biden, the Republicans said they also want to hear from Biden’s business partner, Devon Archer, who served with Biden on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Nunes writes that both Biden and Archer’s time with Burisma “can assist the American public in understanding the nature and extent of Ukraine’s pervasive corruption, information that bears directly on President Trump’s long-standing and deeply-held skepticism of the country.”

So why would I care about what Devin Nunes wants, when Devin Nunes literally gets no say in the process?

Because it makes me laugh.  Adam Schiff isn't going to do a damn thing.

In denying the GOP witness list, Schiff will point to parameters he laid out earlier this week limiting the scope of the public hearings to Trump’s actions related to Ukraine.

The narrow guidelines set forth by Schiff center on three fundamental questions:

●Did Trump request a foreign government conduct investigations that would benefit the president’s personal political interests?

●Did Trump, or his aides, use the power of the presidency to apply pressure on Ukraine? 

●Did the Trump administration attempt to obstruct justice by concealing evidence of the president’s actions related to Ukraine?

Keep those three questions in mind as we head into next week.

A Taxing Explanation, Con't

The White House is going all the way to the Supreme Court to keep Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance from seeing Donald Trump's tax returns and it could be a major, precedent-setting case involving Presidential power...if the high court takes it up, which is no guarantee.

President Trump's lawyers intend to petition the U.S. Supreme Court by Nov. 14 to review a lower court ruling requiring the president to turn over eight years of his tax returns to a state grand jury, according to a letter written Friday.

Why it matters: This case would mark the first time the Supreme Court makes a decision on Trump's legal argument — that he is immune from criminal investigation while in office — and could "produce a major statement on the limits of presidential power," the New York Times reports.

Details: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which said on Monday that Trump must turn over his tax returns, dodged Trump's legal arguments that he is exempt from criminal investigations while in the White House. Instead, the court stated the president’s accounting firm is being subpoenaed for the documents — rather than Trump himself. 

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance subpoenaed Trump's tax returns as part of an investigation into hush-money payments allegedly made to Stormy Daniels by by the Trump Organization during the 2016 election.

Background: Trump has filed at least three lawsuits to block the release of his tax returns. The president, his family and his company also filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank to block the bank from complying with congressional subpoenas for their business records.

My guess is the court won't touch the case and the narrow scope of the Second Circuit ruling -- that Vance is entitled to the tax returns because Trump's accountants aren't immune to the subpoena -- will stand.  But of course, the returns will be leaked, and we'll find out that Trump has been fast, loose, and comically ugly with his numbers.

It'll be a massive embarrassment to loser Trump, and he will lash out.

On the other hand, we could finally get that republic-ending Supreme Court precedent that the Chief Executive and the entire branch are utterly immune to state legal proceedings.

At this point, who knows?