Last Call For Biden Derangement Syndrome

And in less than 24 hours after Donald Trump stands on the south lawn of the White House and demands Ukraine investigate Joe Biden, the former Soviet republic moves to make Trump happy.

Ukraine’s new chief prosecutor said Friday his office will conduct an “audit” of an investigation into Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that had recruited Hunter Biden for its board.

A criminal probe of the company was closed in 2016, and President Trump has alleged it was because of pressure by Hunter Biden’s father, then-Vice President Joe Biden. Trump has insisted that Ukraine open a new investigation.

Ukrainian officials said previously that the probe was focused on the years 2010 to 2012, before the younger Biden joined the board. They also have said that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing on his part.

Prosecutor General Ruslan Ryaboshapka reiterated at a news conference Friday that he knows of no evidence of criminal activity by Biden.

He said that he is aware of at least 15 investigations that may have touched on Burisma, its owner Nikolai Zlochevsky, an associate named Serhiy Zerchenko, and Biden, and that all will be reviewed. He said no foreign or Ukrainian official has been in touch with him to request this audit.

The audit does not mark a reopening of the investigation, but it could buy Ukraine some time in dealing with the White House, analysts said.

But it should get Trump off their backs.  Meanwhile, we've absolutely discovered the quid pro quo in a series of devastating text messages involving US special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who has come forward with the goods.

House investigators released numerous text messages late Thursday night illustrating how senior State Department officials coordinated with the Ukrainian president’s top aide and President Trump’s personal lawyer to leverage a potential summit between the heads of state on a promise from the Ukrainians to investigate the 2016 U.S. election and an energy company that employed the son of 2020 Democratic candidate Joe Biden.

The texts, which former special U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker provided investigators during a nearly 10-hour deposition Thursday, reveal that officials felt Trump would not agree to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky unless Zelensky promised to launch the investigations — and did so publicly. 

Although the texts do not mention Biden by name, congressional Democrats leading an impeachment inquiry are pointing to them as clear evidence that Trump conditioned normal bilateral relations with Ukraine on that country first agreeing “to launch politically motivated investigations,” top Democrats said in statement Thursday night.

“heard from White House — assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / ‘get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington,” Volker texted Zelensky’s aide, Andrey Yermak, on July 25, hours before Trump and the Ukrainian president spoke via phone. The rough transcript of that conversation was released by the White House last week.

Yet two weeks after that call, the president still had not agreed to meet with Zelensky — and administration officials sought to convince the Ukrainians that Trump would need a public pledge before agreeing to the meeting, according to the text messages.

“I think potus really wants the deliverable,” U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland texted to Volker on Aug. 9, noting that Zelensky might give a news conference announcing his intent to investigate. “To avoid misunderstandings, might be helpful to ask Andrey for a draft statement (embargoed) so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover.”
By the next day, the Ukrainians had agreed to announce their plans to carry out Trump’s investigations alongside the date for a meeting between the two heads of state, the messages indicate.

“Once we have a date, will call for a press briefing, announcing upcoming visit and outlining vision for the reboot of US-UKRAINE relationship, including among other things Burisma and election meddling in investigations,” Yermak texted Volker on Aug. 10. Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, sat on the board of Burisma for five years.

But Trump never committed to a meeting. And as the United States resisted giving Zelensky an audience with Trump, administration officials’ discussions suggest the White House was issuing an escalating series of demands.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” U.S. Charges D’affaires in Ukraine William B. “Bill” Taylor texted to Sondland on Sept. 1, after Trump skipped a trip to Poland where he was meant to visit with Zelensky. Sondland swiftly moved the conversation from text messages to a phone call.

And that's exactly what happened.  The deal to push Ukrainian President Zelensky for dirt on Biden in exchange for a face-to-face meeting with Trump in Washington was in the works before the July 25th call and the texts make that painfully clear.

The story isn't about Biden.

It's about Trump selling out the country to win an election.

Mitch McConnell Has To Go

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may be telling reporters that there will be Senate trial if Trump is impeached, but in ads running here to Kentuckians online, he's telling everyone that'll never happen.

In a new campaign video on Facebook, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell pitches himself as the man who can end the House's impeachment inquiry, a sign of how the chief Republican in the chamber might handle an impeachment trial should the House pass articles charging President Donald Trump with crimes. 

"Nancy Pelosi is in the clutches of a left-wing mob," McConnell says directly to a camera. "They've finally convinced her to impeach the President. All of you know your Constitution. The way that impeachment stops is a Senate majority, with me as majority leader." 

"But I need your help," he adds. "Please contribute before the deadline." 

Last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced her support for an impeachment inquiry into Trump, asserting that Trump used his office for personal political gain in July when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate, and his son Hunter. 

On September 25, a day after Pelosi's announcement, McConnell said Senate Republicans "support the established proper procedures" for considering a whistleblower's complaint at the center of the House's investigation. McConnell told Politico that the Democrats had "already overplayed their hand" and there was "no quid pro quo" between Trump and Zelensky, according to a White House's summary of the call. Democrats countered that Trump had held up nearly $400 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine not long before asking the Ukrainian leader to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani on the probe into the Bidens, even though he did not explicitly mention the aid on the call. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden. 

That same day, the McConnell campaign account unveiled Facebook ads on the topic that consumed Washington, according to Facebook's ad library. "Pelosi is obsessed with impeaching President Trump," said one ad. "And your conservative Senate Majority is the ONLY THING standing in her way." A couple days later, McConnell's video was attached to the ads. 

And yes, those ads are running here in Kentucky.  Kinda awful really.

Also, there's no way McConnell will let a true Senate trial proceed.  You can take that to the bank.

Time for us to elect Amy McGrath.

Beijing In The Membrane

With Donald Trump casually mentioning on the White House south lawn yesterday that China should investigate Joe Biden because hey, trade talks are coming up guys, the crew at CNN decided to follow up on Trump's most recent call with President Xi Jinping and wouldn't you know it, of course he brought up Biden, the quid pro quo this time being Trump remaining silent on Hong Kong protests.

When President Donald Trump suggested — without prompting — that China should investigate Joe Biden and his son, he thrust another political grudge into what was already the world's most complicated and consequential relationship. 

The move startled Chinese officials, who say they have little interest in becoming embroiled in a US political controversy. And it amounted to the latest extraordinary effort by Trump to openly request political assistance from foreign governments. 

Thursday's comments weren't the first time Trump has injected Biden into his relationship with China, though he said Thursday he has never pushed Xi to investigate the former vice president. Nor is it the first time he has sought to trade favors with Xi, who this week celebrated the 70th birthday of his ruling communist party with a note of congratulations from Trump. 

During a phone call with Xi on June 18, Trump raised Biden's political prospects as well as those of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who by then had started rising in the polls, according to two people familiar with the discussion. In that call, Trump also told Xi he would remain quiet on Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed. 

The White House record of that call was later stored in the highly secured electronic system used to house a now-infamous phone call with Ukraine's President and which helped spark a whistleblower complaint that's led Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry into Trump. 

On Thursday, Trump told reporters at the White House he'd consider asking his counterpart in Beijing to investigate the Bidens, adding to a growing list of foreign leaders he's tried to enlist in his attempts to bring down a potential Democratic challenger. 

"It's certainly something we can start thinking about," Trump said when questioned whether he would seek the help of Xi in investigating Biden. "Because I'm sure that President Xi does not like being under that kind of scrutiny."

The impeachable offenses keep adding up, Trump admits more seemingly daily at this point.

Dems can impeach, but there's no guarantee it will matter.

StupidiNews!

• The FBI and Homeland Security have issued law enforcement briefs involving security for the movie weekend premiere of Joker, federal officials say several mass shooting threats have been made.
• A 2009 Banksy painting depicting British Parliament as chimpanzees sold for a record 9.9 million pounds at a Sotheby's auction on Thursday, a record for the British street artist.
• Hong Kong's government is expected to approve sweeping new emergency laws to deal with months of protests, including a ban on face masks and what protesters fear could become martial law.
• Campaign officials say Bernie Sanders will appear in next week's Democratic primary debate after the senator was treated for heart issue in Las Vegas this week.
• Attorney General William Barr is once again renewing a Trump regime Justice Department call to tech giants for full back door access to encryption and user data when a warrant is issued. 

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Smoking guns, get your smoking guns here, we've got a great stock and the best selection!

In newly disclosed text messages shared with Congress, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine at the time writes to a group of other American diplomats that "I think it's crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

The exchange, provided by former U.S Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker as part of his closed-door deposition before multiple House committees Thursday, shows what appears to be encrypted text messages he exchanged with two other American diplomats in September regarding aid money President Donald Trump ordered to be held back from Ukraine.

In the exchange, obtained by ABC News, the concerns are expressed by Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine. Gordon Sondland, the United States Ambassador to the European Union, responds to Taylor, saying that charge is "incorrect," insisting the president has been “crystal clear no quid pro quo of any kind”.

Sondland then suggests to the group take the conversations off line, typing “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.” It’s unclear if the conversation continues, based on the material obtained by ABC News.

Sondland, a hotelier and Republican megadonor, contributed over $1 million to the president’s inaugural committee before eventually being nominated and confirmed to the top role as the United States representative to the European Union. .

Taylor is a career foreign service officer who has served as the top diplomat in Kyiv since May, when Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was recalled by the administration. Yovanovitch had been smeared by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani for months as blocking Ukrainian investigations into corruption -- an allegation the State Department at the time called an "outright fabrication" that "does not correspond to reality."

But Trump referred to Yovanovitch as "bad news" in his controversial July 25 call with Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy.

The texts came just days before the White House released the military assistance to Ukraine -- almost $400 million from the State Department and Pentagon meant to boost the U.S. partner against Russian aggression.

The US diplomat to Ukraine certainly thought there was quid pro quo going on.  The guy who donated a million bucks to Trump to buy himself the ambassadorship to the European Union said "No it's not, also let's stop texting about this."

These idiots are so bad at this it's funny.

Orange Implosion, Con't

So we've reached the point in the Ukraine/Biden cycle in Trump's behavior where he simply does whatever Democrats are accusing him of doing in order to 1) normalize it for future repetition and the "so what if he does it?" defense from the GOP and 2) dare Democrats to actually do anything about it, which so far they have done absolutely nothing that seems to be discouraging him.

President Donald Trump urged another foreign government to probe Joe Biden and his son Thursday, saying the Chinese government should investigate the former vice president and son Hunter Biden over the latter's involvement with an investment fund that raised money in the country.

"China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine," Trump told reporters outside the White House.

While Trump said he hasn't requested Chinese President Xi Jinping investigate the Bidens, the public call mirrors the private behavior on which Democrats are partially basing their impeachment inquiry — using the office of the presidency to press a foreign leader to investigate a political rival.

It is "certainly something we can start thinking about, because I’m sure that President Xi does not like being on that kind of scrutiny, where billions of dollars is taken out of his country by a guy that just got kicked out of the Navy," Trump said Thursday of asking China to probe the Bidens. "He got kicked out of the Navy, all of the sudden he’s getting billions of dollars. You know what they call that? They call that a payoff."

The remarks come amid a tense trade war with China. The president, discussing progress on negotiations with Beijing on a possible trade agreement just moments prior to his remarks about the Bidens, told reporters that "if they don't do what we want, we have tremendous power.”

Chinese officials will be in Washington next week in another attempt to revive talks, Trump said.

So for almost two weeks now Trump defenders have been able to say "You can't prove he actually requested Biden be investigated, it's hearsay, it's not admissible in a court of law, Trump deserves full due process" even though all of that is 100% garbage.

And here Trump is on an idle Thursday not only saying Ukraine should investigate Joe Biden, but that China should too and hey, trade talks are coming up, that would definitely help.

No wonder then the call for impeachment is growing.  The best Democratic inquiry is to shut up and let Trump impeach himself on national TV.

Americans by a 45%-38% plurality now support a vote by the House of Representatives to impeach President Donald Trump, a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds, as allegations continue to swirl around an embattled White House.

By a similar margin, 44%-35%, those surveyed say the Senate, which would then be charged with holding a trial of the president, should convict Trump and remove him from office.

The survey of 1,006 adults, taken Tuesday and Wednesday, underscores the perilous situation the president finds himself in as House committees subpoena documents and prepare to hear testimony into accusations that he pressured the leader of Ukraine to investigate a political rival, then tried to hide the account of their phone conversation.

This was before today's massive public admission of a criminal act by Trump.

He's this close to the dam breaking and the impeachment and removal happening, and it's about to catch Mitch McConnell in a vise if he tries to ignore the impeachment vote and refuses to hold a Senate trial.

It won't work.

Trump is damning himself.

The Orange Implosion continues.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

It seems every day there's new damning information coming out about the Trump regime, Ukraine, and the effort to create dirt on Joe Biden out of shadows and tweets, plus the effort to discredit and even prosecute the Mueller probe investigators.  

Former Trump campaign chairman and now convicted fraudster felon Paul Manafort represents the perfect merging of the Ukraine storyline and the Mueller probe, as Manafort was campaign runner for pro-Russian Ukrainian presidential candidate (and Putin stooge) Viktor Yanukovich. Wouldn't you know it, Trump "legal eagle" Rudy Giuliani apparently thought it would be a good idea to tap Manafort's "expertise" on Ukraine while he was behind bars.

In his quest to rewrite the history of the 2016 election, President Trump’s personal attorney has turned to an unusual source of information: Trump’s imprisoned former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Rudolph W. Giuliani in recent months has consulted several times with Manafort through the federal prisoner’s lawyer in pursuit of information about a disputed ledger that would bolster his theory that the real story of 2016 is not Russian interference to elect Trump, but Ukrainian efforts to support Hillary Clinton.

The alliance, which Giuliani acknowledged in an interview this week with The Washington Post, stems from a shared interest in a narrative that undermines the rationale for the special counsel investigation. That inquiry led to Manafort’s imprisonment on tax and financial fraud allegations related to his work in Kiev for the political party of former president Viktor Yanukovych.

Giuliani’s effort is gaining traction on Capitol Hill. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, have announced their renewal of an inquiry into any coordination between Ukraine and Democratic Party officials.

Manafort, who is serving a 7½ -year term in a federal prison in Pennsylvania, has continued to express support for Trump, and Trump has never ruled out giving him a pardon.

Trump’s push on a July 25 call to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the matter, and also probe former vice president Joe Biden, triggered an impeachment inquiry in the House. Many of the accusations Giuliani has been making about Ukraine recycle those that Manafort’s team first promulgated.
Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team in April 2018 to help defend the president against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe, and the former mayor said he launched his own investigation into Ukraine late last year, which led him to consult with Manafort. He said he has not spoken directly to Manafort in two years.

“It was that I believed there was a lot of evidence that the [Democratic National Committee] and the Clinton campaign had a close connection to Ukrainian officials,” Giuliani said, noting that he was never advocating for a pardon of Manafort. “It was all about Trump. I don’t think I could exonerate Manafort.”

Manafort’s lawyer, Kevin Downing, did not respond to a request for comment.

This is the grand 2020 plan, to exonerate Trump now by blaming all the Ukraine stuff on Hillary, and to try to destroy Joe Biden so he can't win in 2020 and Trump gets a second term.

It won't work unless we let it.

StupidiNews!

• The former Dallas police officer who was convicted of the murder of Botham Jean, an unarmed black man in his own apartment, was sentenced to ten years for the murder, eligible for parole in five.
• The World Trade Organization has ruled $7.5 billion in new Trump tariffs on EU imports, including on Irish whiskey, over the EU's illegal support of Airbus.
• A vintage WW II B-17 bomber crashed at a Connecticut airport killing seven and closing Bradley International Airport for several hours as fire crews responded to the resulting blaze.
• Indonesian President Jokowi says nationwide protest will "not deter" his reform agenda as students clashed with police armed with teargas in Jakarta.
• Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Mark Warner are behind a bipartisan effort to warn tech giants they need to stop "deepfake" videos spread on social media ahead of the 2020 elections.

Last Call For Pence-ive Position

And now Donald Trump is throwing VP Mike Pence under the bus in order to ensure Pence doesn't try to stab him in the back, because this is, as the kids say, a multinational criminal syndicate masquerading as a government.

President Donald Trump told Vice President Mike Pence to cancel his plans to attend the inauguration of Ukraine’s new president earlier this year after initially pushing for him to go, according to a person familiar with the matter, confirming an assertion from the whistleblower now at the center of an impeachment investigation into Trump.

Aides to Pence disputed that, blaming logistics _ not Trump _ for the decision.

The aides who rushed to defend Pence added that the vice president never mentioned Trump’s potential Democratic rival Joe Biden in repeated conversations he has had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, including some that were part of a campaign to pressure the new government on corruption.

Trump has said he raised Biden as an example of corruption in Ukraine in a summertime phone call with Zelenskiy that now at the center of the impeachment probe. There is no evidence that Biden was involved in corruption in the eastern European nation.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, Pence has been a loyal lieutenant, praising him effusively and defending him aggressively. But the vice president has rarely been drawn into any direct controversy involving the president until now.

The controversy focuses on a July 25 phone call in which Trump, according to a rough transcript released by the White House, repeatedly pressed Zelenskiy to investigate Biden and his family. The intelligence community whistleblower said it was part of a broader effort by the president and his lawyers to solicit a foreign country to dig up dirt on a political rival for president in 2020.

Pence, according to aides, did not listen in on that call.

Pence has served as a key intermediary between the United States and Ukraine. In the complaint, the whistleblower says he or she had learned from U.S. officials that “on or around 14 May, the President instructed Vice President Pence to cancel his planned travel to Ukraine to attend President Zelenskiy’s inauguration on 20 May” and sent Energy Secretary Rick Perry to lead the delegation instead.
The whistleblower also alleged that Trump had made clear that a meeting or phone call between himself and Zelenskiy would depend on whether Zelenskiy “showed willingness to ‘play ball’” on issues including investigating the Bidens and a conspiracy theory about the origins of the investigation into Russian election meddling.

A person familiar with the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations, said it was Trump who directed Pence to skip the event.

This is of course someone in the White House making sure Pence goes down if Trump does, or trying to anyway.  I wouldn't know if Pence would be impeached either, but he may be forced to resign or into a caretaker role if Trump gets sunk.  At this point a lot of paths are open, but very few of them lead to where Mike Pence is President for longer than a year and change.

Still, two major admissions in this leak: Trump is scared, and he doesn't trust Pence.

Lond-ain In The Membrane

It keeps getting worse for the Trump regime when it comes to pressuring foreign leaders for personal favors to help his political chances. It wasn't just the leaders of Australia and Ukraine that Donald Trump reached out to in order to get foreign intelligence to try to discredit Joe Biden and the Mueller investigation, but UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as well.

President Trump called Boris Johnson to ask for help in discrediting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, The Times of London reports. 

Trump is said to have called Johnson on July 26, two days after the prime minister took office, and reportedly asked Johnson for help in gathering evidence to undermine the investigation into his campaign’s links to Russia. 

That call also was one day after Trump spoke to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in the phone call that sparked the impeachment proceedings against him. Trump also contacted the Australian prime minister for help with an investigation into the origins of the Mueller inquiry.

The Times reports Attorney General William Barr arrived in London days after Trump’s call with Johnson to attend a meeting of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance. Barr reportedly told British officials that he suspected the information that led to the Mueller investigation came from British agencies.

And again, this only happened two months ago, and directly after the now infamous July 25 Ukraine call that set off this landmine.  That also means Trump has contacted two of the other Five Eyes intelligence allies, the other two being New Zealand and Canada. 

Trump probably has a pretty dim view of Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau, who are far more liberal than the rest of the Five Eyes countries, so it's entirely possible he didn't contact either.

Still, it means he's using Bill Barr as his personal legal investigator to try to discredit an investigation by Barr's own Justice Department, and that's nowhere near kosher.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The situation as it is right now, where Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is refusing House impeachment inquiry depositions for several members of his staff, is untenable both legally and politically, and everyone knows it.  There's two fronts Pompeo is now fighting on, first, he's facing an internal revolt from his own State Department staffers.

The State Department’s inspector general is expected to give an "urgent" briefing to staffers from several House and Senate committees on Wednesday afternoon about documents obtained from the department’s Office of the Legal Adviser related to the State Department and Ukraine, sources familiar with the planned briefing told ABC News.

Details of the briefing, requested by Steve Linick, the inspector general at State, remain unknown. Linick is expected to meet with congressional staff in a secure location on Capitol Hill.

The unusual nature and timing of the briefing – during a congressional recess – suggests it may be connected to a recent intelligence community whistleblower allegation which describes, in part, the State Department’s role in coordinating interactions between Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, and Ukrainian officials.

The inspector general is the department's internal investigator and watchdog, and the office generally operates independently of the department's political leadership.

Once again, this is the State Department's inspector general, going over Pompeo's head to brief Congress on Ukraine, an issue the IG says is "urgent".  You'd better believe this is the IG going to House Dems to give them the information they've requested from Pompeo's staff about the Ukraine mess.  It's going to be amazing when whatever info he has leaks.

The second front is from House Dems themselves.

House Democrats accelerated their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s interactions with Ukraine’s president, issuing a subpoena that seeks documents from his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has until the end of the week to turn over documents subpoenaed by three House committees. Pompeo was among those listening in on Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Three Democratic House chairmen turned up the heat on Pompeo -- warning him of possible criminal charges -- after he rejected a plan by their committees to take testimony from five State Department officials starting Wednesday.

In a letter on Tuesday night, Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, Oversight & Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee said Pompeo “appears to have an obvious conflict of interest” because he listened to the call.

If that’s the case, the chairmen wrote, “he should not be making any decisions regarding witness testimony or document production in order to protect himself or the president.”

The lawmakers said that State Department officials who interfere with congressional inquiries could face criminal charges or the withholding of their salaries.

There's that inherent contempt.  Sort of, the letter doesn't mention it, and if the Dems are counting on Bill Barr to prosecute, they're insane.  I hope this means inherent contempt.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Consumer products giant Johnson & Johnson has reached a $20.4 million settlement with two Ohio counties ahead of a major trial scheduled for later this month.
• Colombian coastguard officials say they picked up three cocaine smugglers whose boat had capsized, the shipwrecked smugglers survived by clinging to floating bales of cocaine worth millions.
• A federal judge has rejected claims that Harvard University's admissions program amounted to discrimination against Asian-Americans, the Trump regime had written a brief supporting the case.
• Embattled UK PM Boris Johnson says Parliament must accept his final Brexit terms or face a "no-deal" Brexit that could collapse the country's economy.
• Hospitals in both Alabama and Australia have been crippled by ransomware attacks, meaning hospitals are turning away all but the most critical patients.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

As expected, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the State Department will not cooperate with House impeachment inquiry depositions this week.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fired a broadside at House Democrats on Tuesday, saying State Department officials scheduled to appear this week before committees conducting the impeachment inquiry would not be made available until “we obtain further clarity on these matters.”

The refusal, in a letter to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), described the demand for depositions by five officials who played a role in U.S. relations with Ukraine as “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly, the distinguished professionals of the Department of State.”

A spokesman for the committee had no immediate comment.

The statements came as Pompeo’s role in the Ukraine investigation broadened with reports that he was a participant in the July 25 call by President Trump to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to the impeachment investigation.

Before that report, first published by The Wall Street Journal, Pompeo had brushed off questions about the incident, saying last week that he had not yet read the transcript of the telephone call released by the White House, or the whistleblower complaint that it sparked.

The committee, along with the House Intelligence and Oversight panels, had requested the five officials to appear for depositions this week and next, to begin Wednesday with Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled by Pompeo as ambassador to Ukraine in May, prior to the end of her tour.

Other State Department officials scheduled for depositions include Kurt Volker, the administration’s special envoy to Ukraine, who resigned last week; Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent; U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland; and State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl.

Well, ball's in your court, House Democrats. The response sure as hell better involve the words "inherent contempt".  And yes, it warrants that response because this is obstruction of justice, pure and simple.

It seems to me that Pompeo wants to have a long-drawn out court fight over this to buy the Trump regime some time, but again, the response needs to be painful enough to motivate Pompeo to comply sooner rather than later.

We'll see what happens.

We Gotta Face The Face(book) Con't

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is not silently sitting by this 2020 campaign season despite all the candidates giving his company quite a bit of money for internet advertising.  The Verge got their hands on audio and transcripts of Zuckerberg's latest employee Q&A session, and they are a doozy.  The Zuck has declared war on one candidate in particular, and given the power that Facebook commands, that alone is an argument the candidate, Liz Warren, is correct: the company should be broken up.

Question: With the recent FCC fine, investigation, and with the rise of politicians like Sen. Warren, I was wondering how personally worried you are about regulators coming in and breaking up Facebook?

Mark Zuckerberg: Well, I think you want to separate out a couple of things. I’m certainly more worried that someone is going to try to break up our company. Now, there’s a separate question about, at the end of the day, there is the rule of law — which, for all of the concern about the direction the country is going in, as someone running a company that operates in a lot of different countries, I have to say one of the things that I love and appreciate about our country the most is that we have a really solid rule of law, which is very different from a lot of other places around the world.

So there might be a political movement where people are angry at the tech companies or are worried about concentration or worried about different issues and worried that they’re not being handled well. That doesn’t mean that, even if there’s anger and that you have someone like Elizabeth Warren who thinks that the right answer is to break up the companies ... I mean, if she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge. And does that still suck for us? Yeah. I mean, I don’t want to have a major lawsuit against our own government. I mean, that’s not the position that you want to be in when you’re, you know, I mean … it’s like, we care about our country and want to work with our government and do good things. But look, at the end of the day, if someone’s going to try to threaten something that existential, you go to the mat and you fight.

And I just think the case is not particularly strong on this … It’s just that breaking up these companies, whether it’s Facebook or Google or Amazon, is not actually going to solve the issues. And, you know, it doesn’t make election interference less likely. It makes it more likely because now the companies can’t coordinate and work together. It doesn’t make any of the hate speech or issues like that less likely. It makes it more likely because now ... all the processes that we’re putting in place and investing in, now we’re more fragmented.

It’s why Twitter can’t do as good of a job as we can. I mean, they face, qualitatively, the same types of issues. But they can’t put in the investment. Our investment on safety is bigger than the whole revenue of their company. [laughter] And yeah, we’re operating on a bigger scale, but it’s not like they face qualitatively different questions. They have all the same types of issues that we do.

So yes, I think that the direction of the discussion is concerning. I at least believe, I think, there are real issues. I don’t think that the antitrust remedies are going to solve them. But I understand that if we don’t help address those issues and help put in place a regulatory framework where people feel like there’s real accountability, and the government can govern our sector, then yeah, people are just going to keep on getting angrier and angrier. And they’re going to demand more extreme measures, and, eventually, people just say, “Screw it, take a hammer to the whole thing.” And that’s when the rule of law comes in, and I’m very grateful that we have it.

Zuck's position is that if there's not a framework in place to keep America from getting pissed off at tech companies, he'll be forced to fight legal battles that he's sure he'll win, but the expense means it'll be bad for the company's bottom line.  My immediate next question here is summed up by Matt Yglesias:

As Zuckerberg said, Warren winning would cost him a lot in legal fees.

Trump, by contrast, boosts profits with corporate tax cuts.

Does he have an obligation to shareholders to help spread fake news that helps him beat her?

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 1, 2019

And there we have it.  Zuckerberg is either unaware of the power his company has in shaping the 2020 election, or he does, and doesn't care.  Hard to say which is worse.

Australia...In The Membrane?

Yep, as widely expected, it wasn't just Ukraine's leader that Trump sought help in winning the 2020 election from, but Australian PM Scott Morrison as well on a different call, and this time it was to investigate the Mueller probe.

President Donald Trump sought help from the Australian prime minister to investigate the origins of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

A Department of Justice spokesperson Monday evening confirmed the conversation, which an administration official described to NBC News as a routine call that occurs when a head of state seeks the assistance of another country’s law enforcement agencies. It was "asking his law enforcement to work with ours," the official said.

The call to Scott Morrison, the Australian leader, came recently after Attorney General William Barr in May asked John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, to lead an inquiry into whether the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign was properly predicated. The Justice Department spokesperson said Barr asked Trump to make the call to seek Australia’s help.

"As the Department of Justice has previously announced, a team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the origins of the U.S. counterintelligence probe of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign," spokesperson Keri Kupec said in a statement. "Mr. Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials."

The New York Times first reported this story, later confirmed by NBC News. The news comes amid an ongoing impeachment inquiry stemming from allegations that Trump pushed the Ukrainian president to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

So it's on, apparently it's open season to see which foreign government can come up with something that will help Bill Barr discredit the Mueller probe first to justify sending Justice Department investigators to jail for daring to look at Donald Trump's crimes.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine call ropes in another major player who was 100% aware of it as he was on the call listening: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was on the July phone call where President Donald Trump asked his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate Joe Biden and his son, a senior State Department official told NBC News. 

The July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy and a related whistleblower complaint are now at the center of House Democrats' impeachment inquiry.

Pompeo's involvement in the call — during which Trump told Zelenskiy that Biden's conduct sounded "horrible" to him — was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. It's not unusual for the nation's top diplomat to be on a president's call with a foreign leader, but Pompeo has not acknowledged his involvement.

Pompeo dodged questions about the phone call and the complaint during an interview with ABC's "This Week" on Sept. 22, days before the White House released a summary of the call which showed Trump asking about the Bidens' dealings in Ukraine.

Pompeo had argued against releasing the transcript, saying it would set a bad precedent — never acknowledging he knew exactly what was in the call.
Asked about reports of the substance of the conversation, Pompeo said he wasn't familiar with them and couldn't comment on them. "You just gave me information about a [intelligence community] report, none of which we've seen," he said.

Pompeo went on the Sunday shows and lied through his teeth about the Ukraine call.  Not exactly the actions of an innocent person, huh?

All of these guys are guilty of aiding and abetting, and its starting to look like a race to get Trump out before he can trigger the mass purge of the Justice Department and start rounding up Obama officials.