The Reach To Impeach, Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Statement from American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers:

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

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

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

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

In the Documents:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The documents are here.

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

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

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

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Several stories related to the impeachment inquiry broke late last night, so we'll review.  First, and arguably most important: indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas's lawyer says Parnas is willing to testify to Congress against Giuliani...and GOP Rep. Devin Nunes.

A lawyer for an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani tells CNN that his client is willing to tell Congress about meetings the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee had in Vienna last year with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden. 

The attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, represents Lev Parnas, the recently indicted Soviet-born American who worked with Giuliani to push claims of Democratic corruption in Ukraine. Bondy said that Parnas was told directly by the former Ukrainian official that he met last year in Vienna with Rep. Devin Nunes. 

"Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December," said Bondy. 

Shokin was ousted from his position in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including then-vice president Biden, over concerns that Shokin was not pursuing corruption cases. 

Nunes is one of President Donald Trump's key allies in Congress and has emerged as a staunch defender of the President during the impeachment inquiry, which he has frequently labeled as a "circus." Nunes declined repeated requests for comment. 

Bondy tells CNN that his client and Nunes began communicating around the time of the Vienna trip. Parnas says he worked to put Nunes in touch with Ukrainians who could help Nunes dig up dirt on Biden and Democrats in Ukraine, according to Bondy. 

That information would likely be of great interest to House Democrats given its overlap with the current impeachment inquiry into President Trump, and could put Nunes in a difficult spot. 

Bondy tells CNN his client is willing to comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry in a manner that would allow him to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

Bondy suggested in a tweet on Friday that he was already speaking to House Intel though the committee declined to comment. 

Somebody's gonna have a rotten Thanksgiving. Several somebodies, in fact.  And this is pretty huge news because Nunes's direct involvement in the Ukraine scandal means he has to recuse himself from the hearings, oh and yeah, there's the legal issues too.

And over in the Senate?  Republicans there were briefed that Russia was running disinformation ops to blame Ukraine for the 2016 election meddling, something Donald Trump has bought into full bore.

In a classified briefing this fall, US intelligence officials told senators and their aides that Russia has engaged in a years-long campaign to shift the blame away from Russia and onto Ukraine for interfering in the 2016 American presidential campaign, according to two US officials.

That briefing aligns closely with Thursday’s testimony from Fiona Hill, President Trump’s former top Russia expert. The message conveyed by US intelligence officials to lawmakers also takes on new relevance as many of those conspiracy theories have been increasingly repeated by Republican lawmakers.

Senators were told that the Russian disinformation operation focused on a handful of Ukrainians who openly criticized or sought to damage Trump’s candidacy — efforts that were significantly less organized than the multi-faceted election interference push ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, one US official said, confirming details first reported by the New York Times.

US intelligence officials also told lawmakers that Russia used intelligence operatives to spread now debunked conspiracies, along with established facts, to frame Ukraine for the interference in the 2016 campaign, the official said.

Russian intelligence officers conveyed that information to prominent Russians and Ukrainians, including oligarchs, to pass along to US political figures and some journalists who likely were unaware of where it came from, according to the same official.

All roads lead to Russia and Putin in the end with Trump and the GOP.  They are compromised so badly that our republic is failing because of it.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Donald Trump wants the United States to abandon Europe to Vladimir Putin and to leave NATO, according to the anonymous book-writing Trump official.

President Donald Trump's criticisms of NATO have been one of the most concerning elements of his presidency to date for career diplomats and Pentagon officials.

A new book written by an anonymous White House insider published this week has shed further light on the president's aversion to the Cold War-era alliance, alleging Trump claimed the U.S. is "getting raped" by its allies and pushed to ditch the accord.

A Warning, by Anonymous, was published earlier this week. It is written by the same unnamed White House official who authored an op-ed for The New York Times last year, claiming to be part of "the resistance" against Trump within his own administration, working to frustrate much of the president's policy agenda.

A portion of the book is dedicated to Trump's belligerent stance on NATO. Since coming into office, the president has repeatedly maligned the alliance and its members, accusing members of not spending enough on joint defense and suggesting the transatlantic bloc is no longer fit for purpose.

Trump even publicly questioned Article 5, the cornerstone of the alliance which requires NATO nations to come to the defense of a member if it is attacked. The article has only been involved once in NATO's 70-year history, by the U.S. following the 9/11 attacks.

According to Anonymous, Trump "has repeatedly astounded advisors" by suggesting he wishes to withdraw from NATO, which is underpinned by American money and military might.

"This would be a huge gift to the Russians, who have long opposed the twenty-nine nation group," Anonymous wrote. 

Anonymous may be a coward and an enabler, but I absolutely believe that a second-term Trump will do to Eastern Europe and Germany what he's already done to Syrian Kurds and walk away from NATO as an alliance, turning everything over to the EU to deal with while we leave the region militarily.

Trump has repeatedly attacked NATO and repeatedly said he wants to cut funding, if not end it. Ukraine's Crimea invaded by Moscow is a trial run.  Putin wants the old Soviet states back.

If Trump is reelected, Putin will get them. Trump will gladly hand them over.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The Republican party only exists to enable Donald Trump to do the things they've wanted to do for decades now, namely reverse the Civil Rights and Voting Rights era and to return the country back to the historical norms as a white supremacist regime.  Paul Krugman on the Death Cult of Trumpism:

Formally, the House of Representatives is holding an inquiry into the question of whether Donald J. Trump should be impeached. In reality, we’ve known the answer to that question for a long time. In a different era, when both parties believed in the Constitution, Trump’s abuse of his position for personal gain would have led to his removal from office long ago.

No, what we’re actually witnessing is a test of the depths to which the Republican Party will sink. How much corruption, how much collusion with foreign powers and betrayal of the national interest will that party’s elected representatives stand for?

And the result of that test seems increasingly clear: There is no bottom. The inquiry hasn’t found a smoking gun; it has found what amounts to a smoking battery of artillery. Yet almost no partisan Republicans have turned on Trump and his high-crimes-and-misdemeanors collaborators. Why not?

The answer gets to the heart of what’s wrong with modern American politics: The G.O.P. is now a thoroughly corrupt party. Trump is a symptom, not the disease, and our democracy will remain under dire threat even if and when he’s gone.

Even if Trump resigned this weekend, the damage he has done to the country will most likely outlive myself.  It will take us decades just to get back to the relative progressiveness of say, 2013.

The usual explanation you hear for G.O.P. acquiescence in Trumpian malfeasance is that elected Republicans fear being defeated in a primary if they show any hint of wavering. And that’s certainly an important part of the story.

Republicans haven’t forgotten what happened in 2014, when David Brat, a Tea Party insurgent, ousted Eric Cantor, at the time the House majority leader. Cantor was a hard-line conservative, but mild-mannered in affect, and perceived as soft on immigration. The lesson was that the G.O.P. base demands red meat, and these days that means supporting Trump no matter what.

But electoral fears aren’t the only thing keeping Republicans in line.

On one side, I don’t think most observers realize, even now, the extent to which many Republicans view their domestic opponents not as fellow citizens but as enemies with no legitimate right to govern.

William Barr, the attorney general, says that progressives are “militant secularists” out to “destroy the traditional moral order.” If that’s how you see the world, you’ll support anything — up to and including soliciting and/or extorting intervention by foreign powers in U.S. elections — that helps defeat those progressives.

I've been saying this for years.  Republicans want to make sure that non-Christians, non-whites, LGBTQ+ folks, women, and immigrants are second-class citizens, legally, morally, and socially. I keep referring to the Republic of Gilead, the fictional dystopia of the Handmaid's Tale, for a reason.

It's not fiction any longer.  It's a civil planning manual.

For those to the manor-born, the safety of being the right people.  For the rest of us, we are tolerated only as long as we support the system.  The second we speak out against the arrangement, we become enemies of the state.

We are only subject to rights as long as they are earned by being one of the good ones. Everyone else is a traitor.  The GOP wants this so badly they can taste it.  They'll never turn on Trump, because he is letting them do whatever they want, and they win as long as they continue to support him.

Tens of millions of Americans now support a criminal enterprise out of necessity, failure to do so means they will be destroyed by the monster they created.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

With the twin investigations into the investigators by Trump's personal lawyer AG Bill Barr almost complete, we're already getting leaks about what the report contains as the regime's efforts to get impeachment off of America's front pages goes into overdrive.

Washington Post A1: Diplomat acknowledges 'quid pro quo' pic.twitter.com/TnooHaB2rq

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 21, 2019

There's little doubt now that another round of big font type headlines like this will end Trump's regime, so the subject is being changed.

A former FBI lawyer is under criminal investigation after allegedly altering a document related to 2016 surveillance of a Trump campaign adviser, several people briefed on the matter told CNN.

The possibility of a substantive change to an investigative document is likely to fuel accusations from President Donald Trump and his allies that the FBI committed wrongdoing in its investigation of connections between Russian election meddling and the Trump campaign. 

The finding is expected to be part of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's review of the FBI's effort to obtain warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act on Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide. Horowitz will release the report next month. 

Horowitz turned over evidence on the allegedly altered document to John Durham, the federal prosecutor appointed early this year by Attorney General William Barr to conduct a broad investigation of intelligence gathered for the Russia probe by the CIA and other agencies, including the FBI. The altered document is also at least one focus of Durham's criminal probe. 

It's unknown how significant a role the altered document played in the FBI's investigation of Page and whether the FISA warrant would have been approved without the document. The alterations were significant enough to have shifted the document's meaning and came up during a part of Horowitz's FISA review where details were classified, according to the sources. 

Some witnesses who have been interviewed in Horowitz's investigation have said they expect the inspector general to find mistakes in the FBI's handling of the FISA process, but that those mistakes do not undermine the premise for the FBI's investigation. 

American intelligence agencies and the Justice Department have not swayed from their finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election by hacking the Democrats and spreading pro-Trump propaganda online. And even former top Trump campaign officials have corroborated special counsel Robert Mueller's finding that the Trump campaign planned some of its strategy around the Russian hacks, and had multiple contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals in 2016. 

Horowitz's investigators conducted more than 100 witness interviews in their review. During one of interviews this year, they confronted the witness about the document. The witness admitted to the change, the sources said. 

The identity or rank of the FBI employee under investigation isn't yet known, and it's not clear whether the employee still works in the federal government. No charges that could reflect the situation have been filed publicly in court. 

The Justice Department and inspector general's office declined to comment. 

So now it becomes a race, which happens first, House Democrats vote on and pass articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, or Barr starts indicting Russia collusion investigators in an obvious attempt to derail impeachment?

Ahh, but Trump and company are getting a major assist from Sen. Lindsey Graham.  The Senate has their part to play in this mess too, and if Trump can't convince Ukraine to investigate Biden, then Lackey Lindsey will.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday requesting documents related to former vice president Joe Biden and his communications with Ukrainian officials, a step seen as a GOP effort to counter the House impeachment investigation of President Trump.

The inquiry by Graham (R-S.C.) is focused on any calls Biden may have had with Petro Poroshenko, then the Ukrainian president, regarding the firing of the country’s top prosecutor, as well as any that referenced an investigation of Burisma, the Ukrainian natural-gas company that employed Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

Graham’s document request suggests he is seeking to legitimize Trump’s accusations that Biden, then vice president, put pressure on Ukraine to fire its lead prosecutor to protect his son, a claim without evidence that has been disputed by officials familiar with the investigation. 

Graham, one of Trump’s fiercest defenders on Capitol Hill, told The Washington Post in late October that he was under intense pressure to launch an investigation into Biden by Trump and his allies.

But he said he would not “turn the Senate into a circus” and would instead focus his committee’s work on the investigation into the Justice Department’s launch of the Russia investigation.

Taylor Reidy, a spokeswoman for Graham, said the senator is now seeking the documents because “Adam Schiff and the House Intel Committee have made it clear they will not look into the issues about Hunter Biden and Burisma.” Rep. Schiff (D-Calif.) is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

“Graham is requesting documents which could shed additional light on that issue and hopes they will be able to answer some of the outstanding questions,” she said.

We're coming up on the crossroads.  The second week of December is when the House is expected to vote on impeachment before the holidays.  Barr is going to wreck as much as he can in order to try to save his boss, and Graham is going to flood the zone with bullshit hearings and subpoenas in order to counter-program impeachment.

It's going to get truly nasty.

StupidiNews!

• After touring the country for more than 30 years, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is heading back home to take up permanent residence in San Francisco.
• Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says the indictments against him unveiled Thursday for bribery and corruption charges are "an attempt to stage a coup" and he will not recognize them as valid.
• Michael Bloomberg is officially filing paperwork to enter the 2020 Democratic primary after all, joining an already crowded field.
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is launching a new political party after leaving his current party, the new Alliance for Brazil will fight corruption and "advance Christian values".
• Apple has canceled the launch of its high-profile Apple TV+ movie The Banker after allegations of sexual assault surfaced against one of the film's co-producers.

Last Call For A Taxing Explanation, Con't

I expected California's tax return requirement law for presidential candidates not to stand up to any federal Constitutional tests, but the Trump regime won a unanimous victory in California's state Supreme Court today as the law was struck down.

President Donald Trump won’t have to release his tax returns to get on California’s 2020 primary ballot following a unanimous ruling from the state Supreme Court on Thursday that invalidated a new state law.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 27 into law in July to compel presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returns to get on California’s primary ballot. Jessica Patterson, chairwoman of the Republican Party then sued the state.

Under California’s constitution, the state must administer an “open presidential primary whereby the candidates on the ballot are those found by the secretary of state to be recognized candidates throughout the nation or throughout California.”

The court ruled the added requirement for tax returns “is in conflict with the (state) constitution’s specification of an inclusive open presidential primary ballot.”

Republicans arguing against California’s law claimed it would force “recognized candidates” off the ballot and discourage potential candidates from running for office, thus defying the constitution’s mandate for an “open” primary.

“Lawmakers didn’t even take into account the conflicts it may have with the state constitution,” Patterson said of the struck down law. “This is a pretty direct example that California Democrats here have been completely arrogant and their overreach knows no bounds. This was a solution in search of a problem.”

Patterson had worried fewer Republicans would show up for the primary if Trump weren’t at the top of the ticket, especially as Democrats appear fired up going into the 2020 primary, which the state had bumped up from June to March.

Under the state’s primary system, the two highest vote-getters could both be Democrats, which would prevent a Republican from advancing to the general election in down-ballot races.

“If we didn’t have our presumed nominee on the ballot in the 2020 primary, there would be Republicans that stayed home,” Patterson said.

The bill targeting Trump’s taxes came with a pressing deadline, and the Supreme Court’s decision provides clarity ahead of a key date. The law Newsom signed would have required those running for president to submit their tax returns to Secretary of State Alex Padilla by Nov. 26 in order to appear on the primary ballot.

I said this was a waste of time back in May and that it would never survive SCOTUS if it got there when Newsom signed it in July, but it ended up not even surviving state courts.

Other states have similar bills pending, but I would almost certainly expect them to be scrapped after this.  If it can't even pass California's courts, there's no possible fate for this but a 9-0 drubbing by the Roberts Court.

This was a stupid idea six months ago, it's a stupid idea now, and it's going to be even more stupid to appeal it.  Let it go, guys.  The Constitution is pretty clear about what the requirements for running for President are, and "your tax returns" isn't in there.

Besides, since the whole point was to expose Trump's tax returns (and let's not pretend that anything else was the motive) that's being fought in federal courts by House Democrats currently.  Let's stick to that and not open up the 55-gallon worm drum of red states being able to name their own requirements for who gets on the 2020 ballot, shall we?

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Today's impeachment hearings continued to be abysmally bad for Donald Trump as White House Russia expert Dr. Fiona Hill and State Department aide David Holmes backed up the most disastrous testimony for Trump yesterday from EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland.

Fiona Hill and David Holmes testified today that they very easily realized that Trump’s allies were talking about an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden when they mentioned “Burisma,” a Ukrainian energy company.

Some context: Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, had a high-paid position on the board of Burisma. He took the job while his father was the point person for the Obama administration’s policy toward Ukraine, raising concerns about a conflict of interest.

Remember: Despite that potential ethical lapse by Hunter Biden, there’s no evidence of criminality or corruption by the Bidens in Ukraine. Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani have been spreading conspiracies about the Bidens all year.

Today, Democratic staff lawyer Daniel Goldman asked Hill, “Was it apparent to you that when President Trump, Rudy Giuliani or anyone else was pushing for an investigation into Burisma, that the reason why they wanted that investigation related to what President Trump said here, the Bidens?” 

“It was very apparent to me that that was what Rudy Giuliani intended, yes, intended to convey that Burisma was linked to the Bidens and he said this publicly repeatedly,” Hill said.

Holmes also said “yes,” he understood that Burisma was code for the Bidens.

Other players in the scandal have testified that they didn’t make the connection until many months later. This includes former US special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker and US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. Both Volker and Sondland were handpicked by Trump to deal with Ukraine issues – not career foreign service officers.

Volker said that he if made the connection, he would have raised objections, but he thought the references to Burisma were part of a legitimate Ukrainian probe into the Ukrainian company. Sondland said he made the connection later in the summer, and didn’t see any of Giuliani’s many television interviews and social media posts about the Bidens.

Volker and Sondland are essentially saying they took Trump and Giuliani at face value – that they were deeply concerned about a random Ukrainian company – and didn't take any steps to figure out what they were talking about.

Another key witness, former National Security Council aide Tim Morrison, testified this week that when Hill first told him about Giuliani’s interest in a "Burisma" probe, he googled the company and figured out the Biden connection.

Sondland was a bombshell for sure, but a problematic one.  He spent quite a bit of time throwing multiple people -- VP Pence, SecState Pompeo, Energy Sec Perry, WH Chief of Staff Mulvaney, and Trump himself -- under the nearest bus.  But it was obvious he was trying to save himself in the process out of enlightened self-interest.  This is still a man who bought an ambassadorship for a million bucks in order to help out his hotel chain, something the Grifter-In-Chief appreciated on multiple levels.

But Dr. Hill and Mr. Holmes are career civil servants and foreign policy experts, Dr. Hill in particular served as a CIA analyst under both Bush 43 and Obama based on her years of experience and has written three books on the subject, including an Amazon best seller on Putin and his politics.  And she roasted the GOP today, attacking the ludicrous notion that Ukraine was somehow behind Russia's 2016 election interference as Kremlin misinformation and warning that these efforts are still going on right now, with the GOP-led Senate refusing to take action to strengthen our defenses.

The evidence at this point is so overwhelming that Democrats want to wrap this up and get to the impeachment votes already.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said today that Democrats would not fight in court to get acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former national security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — key administration figures implicated in public testimony so far — to testify. But some members of Congress think that the investigation has already gathered enough evidence without those witnesses.

Both Reps. Peter Welch and Jackie Speier said the case is overwhelming even without those firsthand witnesses and documents.

"I think we have been hampered in our ability because the White House, the State Department, the Department of Defense have all withheld documents from us, but even with our hands tied behind our backs, we've been able to present the American people a compelling argument for moving forward with a review of whether or not we should have articles of impeachment bought to the floor of the House," Speier said.

She continued: "The President helped us out immeasurably by releasing the summary of his telephone call" with Ukraine.

She said that the conversation "establishes the elements of bribery, where someone in office requests from someone else something of value, the investigation, and then withholds the White House meeting and the military aid. "

We spent three years on whether Donald Trump colluded with Russia to try to fix the 2016 campaign.

There's zero doubt that Donald Trump colluded with Ukraine in order to try to fix the 2020 election.

BREAKING: Netanyahu Indicted On Multiple Charges

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been indicted on multiple charges, including bribery and breach of trust, related to three cases of corruption and favor trading.

Israel’s attorney general on Thursday formally charged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a series of corruption cases, throwing the country’s paralyzed political system into further disarray and threatening the long-time leader’s grip on power.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit charged Netanyahu with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three different scandals. It is the first time a sitting Israeli prime minister has been charged with a crime. Mandelblit was set to issue a formal statement later Thursday.

Allegations against Netanyahu include suspicions he accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of champagne and cigars from billionaire friends, offered to trade favors with a newspaper publisher and used his influence to help a wealthy telecom magnate in exchange for favorable coverage on a popular news site.

The indictment does not require Netanyahu to resign but is expected to raise pressure on him to step down.

I'd have to say he's done, especially due to his inability to form a government because of the pending charges.  Now that those pending charges are no longer pending, the calls for his resignation will hopefully be too much for him to survive politically.

And let's keep in mind this is a straight-up bribery case: Netanyahu is being charged with personally taking goods and services of value in exchange for political favors.  If this sounds familiar, it's the flip side of what Donald Trump did with Ukrainian President Zelensky, Trump offered a bribe, whereas Netanyahu is the one on the receiving end here.

I'm sure since Republicans tell us Donald Trump is so interested in fighting corruption in other countries by crooked leaders, and that Trump has sole discretion to hold up foreign aid to countries who are not meeting high standards of conduct, that a Prime Minister indicted for bribery would be cause to freeze all foreign aid to Israel, right?

Right?

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

StupidiNews!

• GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham tell Fox News State TV that the Justice Department inspector general report on the FBI's handling of the Russia probe will be released on December 9th.
• The Trump regime wants Georgia GOP Gov. Brian Kemp to appoint Republican Rep. Doug Collins to fill the vacant seat of retiring GOP Sen. Johhny Isakson ahead of any Senate impeachment trial.
• Pope Francis on Thursday condemned the exploitation of women in children while on a papal visit to Thailand, openly addressing the country's lawmakers on Bangkok's sex trade.
• Donald Trump is expected to sign a package of bills supporting Hong Kong's democracy protests passed by near-unanimous veto-proof margins in both the House and Senate.
• Brad McQuaid, the lead designer of legendary MMORPG Everquest, has passed away at age 51, McQuaid went on to co-found Sigil Games and was working on his next project, Vanguard.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The FBI wants to talk to the Ukraine whistleblower, most likely about Rudy Giuliani, according to the Associated Press.

The FBI last month requested an interview with the whistleblower whose complaint fueled the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump and Ukraine, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday.

An agent from the FBI’s Washington field office reached out to the whistleblower’s lawyers last month to seek an interview about the substance of the complaint, according to this person, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the request with The Associated Press.

The person said it was clear from the FBI that the whistleblower was not regarded as the target of any investigation but rather a potential witness. It was not immediately clear what specifically the FBI might be looking into. The requested interview has not taken place.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment on the request, which was first reported by Yahoo News.

The whistleblower, a CIA officer, filed a complaint on Aug. 12 about Trump’s phone call weeks earlier with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. During the call, Trump pressed for investigations into Democratic rival Joe Biden and into the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Considering Rudy's two Ukranian contacts have already been indicted and Rudy is almost guaranteed to be next, my guess is it's almost certainly involving the case against Giuliani.  What information the whistleblower has against Giuliani specifically, I don't know.

But let's not forget the FBI is under Chris Wray, who reports to Bill Barr these days.  I can certainly understand why the whistleblower's lawyer, Mark Zaid, might not want to give the feds in the DC FBI office the dirt on Rudy right now when the SDNY is already on the case.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Day-O, Pompeo

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

StupidiNews!

• Thousands of Indiana teachers drove to the state capitol in Indianapolis for a one-day demonstration to protest low wages and decreasing school funding.
• The Afghan Taliban has handed over two Western hostages to US forces Tuesday in exchange for three high-ranking Taliban militants, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
• The House has passed a stopgap funding bill to keep the government running through December 20, the Senate will need to approve the bill before midnight Thursday to avoid a shutdown.
• After the Senate unanimously passed a measure backing Hong Kong protesters, Vice President Mike Pence warned Beijing that any US/China trade deal will be "very hard" if China uses violence.
• A new British study finds elite professional gamers have the same mental and emotional stress levels and concerns as professional athletes in traditional sports.