Last Call For Bahama Drama

Is this regime even capable of not being absolute garbage in every aspect?  Like, is everyone involved in the Trump universe an amoral grifting asshole who operates by transactional relationships with everyone else?

A CBS News investigation has uncovered a possible pay-for-play scheme involving the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump's nominee for ambassador to the Bahamas. Emails obtained by CBS News show the nominee, San Diego billionaire Doug Manchester, was asked by the RNC to donate half a million dollars as his confirmation in the Senate hung in the balance, chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod reports.

When Hurricane Dorian ravaged the Bahamas in September, Manchester wanted to help. So the San Diego real estate developer, who prefers the nickname "Papa Doug," loaded up his private jet with supplies and headed for the hard-hit Caribbean country where he owned a home – and hoped to soon be serving as U.S. ambassador.

A Trump supporter, Manchester donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. He was offered the Bahamas post the day after Mr. Trump was sworn in. Manchester said Trump told him, "I should probably be the ambassador to the Bahamas and you should be president."

Then, for two and a half years, Manchester's nomination stalled in the Senate.

His Bahamas relief trip caught the attention of the President. Trump tweeted, "I would also like to thank 'Papa' Doug Manchester, hopefully the next Ambassador to the Bahamas, for the incredible amount of time, money and passion he has spent on helping to bring safety to the Bahamas."

Three days after the tweet, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel hit up Manchester for a donation. It was no small sum. In an email, obtained exclusively by CBS News, she asked Manchester, "Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?"

The Aristocrats!

"Did you feel like they were putting the arm on you?" Axelrod asked.

"No, I didn't. That's part of politics. It's unbelievable. You give and you give and you give and you give some more and more and more," Manchester said.

"Does any part of you feel if you had just cut the check for $500,000 that you would be the ambassador to the Bahamas?" Axelrod asked.

"No, because first of all, you have to get out of committee and you have to be voted on the floor," Manchester said. "It's a big process."

The Senate confirmation process is exactly what Manchester quickly addressed. He wrote back to McDaniel's request for $500,000, "As you know I am not supposed to do any, but my wife is sending a contribution for $100,000. Assuming I get voted out of the [Foreign Relations Committee] on Wednesday to the floor we need you to have the majority leader bring it to a majority vote … Once confirmed, I our [sic] family will respond!"

"You know what this looks like," Axelrod said.

"Well -- it looks like it to you. But it's not the facts," Manchester said. "My wife gave out of separate funds and she in fact loves Donald Trump."

As usual, a couple of observations.

One, the US ambassador post to the Bahamas was essentially left open for 30 months because Trump couldn't find anyone to buy it, I guess.  This is what the US State Department is on a post-Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo world with most of the career diplomats having been purged.  There's just lackeys and posts to be filled by those who can give Trump's campaign half a mil.  And yes, I understand ambassadorships have gone to big donors in the past for both parties, but now it's a requirement.

Two, this doesn't even make the top 25 Trump regime scandals so far.  Really, it doesn't.  That should bother everyone on the freakin' planet.  This regime is so debased that it has become a parody of itself, the blatant corruption is now utterly normalized and accepted as how America does business in 2019.

America's still a country built on 400 years of slavery, pillage, and white supremacy.  Trump didn't change that at all.  We just reverted to the historical mean.  Growing up in the 80's and 90's and seeing the Soviet Union go down made my generation think that things were going to get better, and for a while they did.

Oh, and speaking of diplomats...

Several GOP lawmakers were more “shaken” by the testimony from State Department aide David Holmes than they publicly let on, according to one top congressional GOP source.

Behind closed doors, many expressed frustration that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland would place a call to President Trump in a public restaurant, and are concerned that Holmes’ testimony was the most convincing argument for Trump’s direct involvement in the campaign to pressure Ukraine.

Holmes’ testimony is also making some GOP members worry about how far Sondland will go in his public testimony Wednesday.

Two senior Republican sources said that some House Republicans are also worried about how Sondland will handle himself at Wednesday’s hearing. The sources pointed out that Sondland is not an accomplished diplomat and one source added he believes Sondland was unprepared and ill-fitted for the job as US ambassador to the EU.

According to multiple State Department and former State Department officials, he was not well regarded by the US diplomatic community.
House Republicans are also increasingly worried about the political fallout from the hearings overall and the impact of multiple witnesses who are career professionals.

They are especially concerned about the reaction from independent voters and suburban women voters who are watching Trump attack witnesses both on Twitter and on television.

Sondland is being set up for crucifixion.  We'll see if he can help his case by telling the truth about Trump, or whether he goes down in flames.  As for David Holmes, the staffer for Ambassador Bill Taylor who overheard Trump's telephone tirade in a Ukraine restaurant, he will be testifying on Thursday, so if Sondland decides to lie this week, he's going to get burned before the week is out.

On national TV, no less.

Stay tuned.

A Questionable Glass Of Orange Aid

Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty makes an excellent point: this White House lies about everything, so nobody believes the reports that Donald Trump's weekend "unscheduled routine physical checkup" is either routine or a checkup.

Who could forget the fables from his personal physician, Harold Bornstein, who released a letter in 2015 assuring the nation that an overweight 70-year-old man with a lifetime of bad eating habits and an aversion to strenuous exercise would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency?” (Bornstein later said Trump himself had dictated the letter.)

Then there was the miraculous growth spurt that occurred between the issuing of his driver’s license in 2012 and his physical in 2018, which reportedly added an inch to his height. That exam also allowed him to come in exactly 1 pound short of being classified as medically obese at a reported 239 pounds. By 2019, however, Trump had added another four pounds and crossed the line.

So now the oldest president in U.S. history claims the purpose of his two-hour medical visit, which was not on his public schedule, was to conduct “phase one of my yearly physical. Everything very good (great!). Will complete next year.” Phase one? What does that entail? Has anyone else ever taken a routine physical in installments spread out over months? Has he signed up for some kind of quirky flexible spending plan with his insurance?

There is, of course, a long history of presidents being less than honest with the country about the state of their health. Grover Cleveland had secret surgery aboard a yacht in the summer of 1893 to hide the fact that he had a tumor on the roof of his mouth. Americans had no clue that Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 stroke was so severe that his wife, Edith, was effectively running the country. In the summer of 1944, the Democratic Party nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt to an unprecedented fourth term, despite the fact that only weeks earlier doctors had written a letter predicting he would not survive to see the end of it. (He died nine months later.) In 1957, a press aide in Dwight D. Eisenhower’s White House told reporters that his stroke had been a “heart attack of the brain,” a phrase the press dutifully reported, as though that was somehow less alarming. Nor did the nation know in real time that the youthful and vigorous John F. Kennedy had a life-threatening case of Addison’s disease, or how close Ronald Reagan came to dying by an assassin’s bullet in 1981.

But medical privacy is something that should not be granted the most powerful person in the world.
As Trump embarks on his effort to convince us that he deserves another four years in office, Americans should demand something more than what they are getting, starting with a briefing from the physicians who treated him at Walter Reed.

“Oh, the rumors are always flying,” his press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Saturday night on Fox News. “He’s as healthy as can be.” Could we please have a second opinion on that?

Let's be honest here. Donald Trump is in terrible health.

He's a 70+ year-old man who eats McDonalds and KFC. You can see it in his speeches and rallies, his slurred pronunciation, his pallor, his obvious physical discomfort standing.  If the truth came out about his health now, in the middle of impeachment, it would be his end and everyone knows it.  Republicans would convince Trump that this was his golden parachute out, his resignation for "health reasons" being the price for dropping the investigation and installing Pence in the caretaker role.

Now, maybe this is Trump's ticket out.  Maybe the truth of his illness is being held behind the scenes as congressional leaders and Pence quietly discuss the terms of Trump's exit.

Or maybe the stress is just killing him and he knows he's screwed.

That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

Donald Trump is in real trouble in Georgia, at least if the latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll is to be believed.

A majority of Georgians disapprove of President Donald Trump’s performance in the White House and he appears to be facing a hard fight against each of the five top Democratic candidates seeking to replace him, according to an exclusive Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll.

In head-to-head matchups, former Vice President Joe Biden ran strongest against Trump, leading the president 51% to 43%, fueled by solid support from women and independents. Other matchups against South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and U.S. Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are much tighter.

The findings provide an early snapshot of the developing race in Georgia one year out from the election and strengthens claims that the state will be a 2020 battleground.

The poll highlighted the sharp degree of polarization around Trump, who is the focus of public impeachment hearings that begin Wednesday. About 54% of registered Georgia voters disapprove of his record while 44% approve.

It also shows the unsettled nature of U.S. Sen. David Perdue’s quest for a second term in 2020. Though about 50% of Georgians approve of his job performance, only about one-third say they’d support him in next year’s election. A bigger group — 41% — say their choice depends on who the Democratic nominee is.

The findings help illustrate the political challenges facing both parties as Democrats target Georgia as a 2020 battleground, aiming to flip both U.S. Senate seats up for grabs next year and carry the state in a presidential election for the first time since Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory.

The poll was conducted Oct. 30 to Nov. 8 by the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

And it's important to note that GOP Sen. David Perdue isn't a lock for re-election either.  People forget that Ohio and Virginia were in play as battleground states 10 years ago, now they are most certainly not.  Other states have risen to take their place, Georgia is looking like one of the new ones.  I think most Dems would be happy to trade Ohio for Georgia, for example.

Well, unless you happen to live there.

As far as the non-Biden candidates go, Trump only gets 43% against any of the four, with Sanders and Warren get 47%, Mayor Pete 45%, and Kamala Harris 44%.

And Perdue?  Well, he only gets 35% of the vote, with 21% going to the Democrat, but a plurality of 40% say "It depends on who Perdue's Democratic opponent is" and that can't be good news for him.

Impeachment is still split, 46% want Trump removed from office, 47% think he should remain...but this is a state Trump won by 5 points even with Gary Johnson getting 3%.

Democrats should be spending a lot more time in Georgia in 2020.

StupidiNews!

• Students at Hong Kong Polytechnic University blockaded the campus's main entrance and set the barrier on fire to stop police from storming the facility.
• Donald Trump's unscheduled visit to Walter Reed Medical Hospital is being portratyed as a "routine physical" but medical experts say that Trump could be suffering stress-related physical ailments.
• The ouster of Bolivian President Evo Morales and subsequent collapse of the government has led to major food and fuel shortages as thousands continue to clash with security forces in the streets.
• Britain's Prince Andrew is facing condemnation for a BBC interview where he denied allegations that he was friends with indicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
• California researchers have discovered that the biggest methane sources in the state are landfills and not power plants, prompting calls for helping waste management companies to deal with it.

Last Call For I Want My Trump TV

Shepard Smith has already been booted from Trump State TV, Chris Wallace is most likely next.

Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace repeatedly confronted House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) on Sunday over the top Republican’s characterization of last week’s impeachment testimony, accusing the congressman of “very badly” misrepresenting the witnesses’ positions.

Wallace pressed the Trump-boosting Louisiana lawmaker on the upcoming testimony of U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sonldand, asking Scalise if it was possible Sondland could “blow a hole in the president’s defense” if he testifies that the president told him Ukraine aid was being held up unless the Ukrainian president publicly announced an investigation into the Bidens.

“Well, the president’s defense is that those things didn't happen,” Scalise responded. “And it’s not just the president's word. President Zelensky himself said that the aid wasn’t conditioned and there was no pressure.”

“The real bottom line is he got the money,” the GOP representative added, reiterating a key party talking point. “Ukraine got the money.”

Wallace, however, pointed out that a dozen people listened in on the now-infamous July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, noting that many of them became immediately upset that Trump pressed Zelensky on investigating a Ukrainian gas firm that Vice President’s Joe Biden’s son worked for.

“Those were [House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam] Schiff's witnesses,” Scalise insisted.

“No, sir, they are career foreign service officers and these are people who worked in the Trump administration,” Wallace retorted, adding that an aide to Vice President Mike Pence recently testified that Trump’s call was “inappropriate.”

“You had Tim Morrison, who was on the NSC staff, who said that he—alarm bells immediately went off for him,” the Fox News host continued. “Alexander Vindman immediately went to see—these are all people, you say they are Schiff's witnesses—they all were working in the Trump administration.”

Scalise attempted to pivot to the whistleblower at the heart of the impeachment inquiry, claiming the Intelligence Community inspector general said the whistleblower had political motivations. Wallace, meanwhile, snapped back: “We are not talking about the whistleblower!”

Wallace isn't going to last must longer at Trump State TV is my guess.  Maybe he'll leave on his own accord, but actually calling out Republicans on air is going to piss off his real boss, Donald Trump.

And speaking of Fox News State TV, Sean Hannity wants Trump to pardon Roger Stone.  Considering Hannity likely runs domestic policy because Trump watches his White Supremacy Hour™ religiously, it's very possible Hannity's audience of one may hold sway...

Trump's Race To The Bottom, Con't

The reason white supremacist Stephen Miller has been employed by the White House is because Donald Trump is a white supremacists too, and calls for Miller's firing are going nowhere precisely due to that fact.

In a statement obtained by The Hill Saturday, White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley defended Miller and argued that the report demonstrates an anti-Semitic attack by the left.

“I work with Stephen. I know Stephen. He loves this country and hates bigotry in all forms – and it deeply concerns me as to why so many on the left consistently attack Jewish members of this Administration,” Gidley said in a statement obtained by The Hill.

Gidley’s statement comes amid calls from Democratic lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) calling for Miller to resign.

Soon after the SPLC’s report broke on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham attacked the SPLC, saying that the organization is “beneath public discussion.”

“We have not seen the report,” she said in a Tuesday statement. “The SPLC, however, is an utterly-discredited, long-debunked far-left smear organization that has recently been forced – to its great humiliation – to issue a major retraction for other wholly fabricated accusations.”

That's right, if you point out Stephen Miller is a racist, according to the White House, not only are you the real racist, you're also antisemitic. Miller's too valuable to Trump to ever get rid of because he's Jewish, and using that fact solely for political cover is...yeah, you get the picture.

But remember Stephen Miller's goal is to end immigration, both illegal and legal, and start reducing America's population of "non-desirables" through mass incarceration and deportation.  More and more, it looks like the Trump regime is going to start testing this process in California as anyone in the regime who objects is being purged by Miller.

A top federal homelessness official announced Friday that he has left his post at the Trump administration’s request, an unexpected move that comes as the White House plans a sweeping crackdown aimed at homelessness in California.

Matthew Doherty, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, wrote in an email to colleagues that the administration “no longer wishes to have me” in the position. Doherty also announced on Twitter that he was leaving at the administration’s request.

“It has been an incredible honor to serve at USICH, and I do feel like I am leaving on my own terms,” Doherty said in an email obtained by The Washington Post. “I believe that I have been able to keep my integrity intact; but, they have now told me to pack my things up and go.”

The Trump administration is still actively exploring options for a crackdown on homelessness aimed at California, a process that has been ongoing for months, according to one person with knowledge of the planning who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal information.

Doherty was appointed in 2015 under the Obama administration to lead the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which is tasked with coordinating the federal response to homelessness across 19 agencies, including the Departments of Housing and Urban Development; Education; Labor and Commerce.

The council is chaired by Frank Brogan, an assistant secretary at the Education Department. For a while in the Obama administration, the council was chaired by the labor secretary, which suggests that the Trump administration has lowered its status.

The council so far has not been involved in planning the administration’s executive actions on homelessness, according to a separate person with knowledge of the administration’s planning who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. The council was created in 1987 and is supposed to coordinate the government’s approach to tackling homelessness. It is unclear who will lead the organization now. Doherty is still listed on its website as the executive director.

The infrastructure put in place to make the federal government more responsive to homelessness is being dismantled for a reason, and that reason is to leave individual states overwhelmed by the problem, declare and emergency, and then implement draconian measures to "fix it".

California indeed has a growing homelessness problem, and years of awful zoning laws and NIMBY liberals are to blame, but don't forget that the Trump regime is now making it worse on purpose.

Sunday Long Read: Who Rescues The Rescuers?

Disaster search-and-rescue teams are becoming even more vital in a world under increasing effects of extreme weather events due to climate change, and as hundred-year events become annual hells to survive, America's first responders are struggling with the ever-growing physical, mental, and emotional toll.

Jack Thomas was home in time for dinner, but he wasn’t really home. His head was still in the fire, gnawing on the details of what his strike team had accomplished, hazards they’d found, a care facility they’d partially saved from the flames. For 19 hours of their nine-day deployment, his team had fought to save those 25 senior apartments, which had somehow been spared when the wildfire tore through town. Thomas knew that if they could stop the fire at the building’s central atrium, these homes would stay standing. And they did.

Walking through his front door, in a suburban Santa Rosa, California, neighborhood the weekend before Thanksgiving, Thomas still smelled of smoke.

He had dinner with his wife, shared photos from the fire, and talked through their holiday plans. Afterward, he unfurled parcel maps across the table while his bags waited, packed, on the couch. After more than a week fighting the most destructive wildfire in California history, the Santa Rosa fire captain had just a few hours to study the maps and get some rest: His deployment on a fire crew was over, but hundreds of people were missing, and FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force #4 needed someone to help manage the search.

Thomas set his alarm for 3 a.m. He was going back to Paradise.

That night, the next morning, and for many days after, trained search and rescue professionals and volunteers from across California and beyond drove into the smoldering heart of catastrophe. The Camp fire, which started the morning of November 8, 2018, and within hours had overtaken the town of Paradise, was unprecedented: in size, pattern, intensity, damage, and number of people missing, which climbed as high as 1,300. It required the largest search in state history — in conditions few of the searchers were trained for. But to leaders like Thomas, it seemed a portent of things to come: Wildfires are becoming more common and worse. And other disasters are, too.

Rachel Allen got to Paradise two days before Thomas, after dark on Friday, November 16, joining the first wave of volunteer searchers responding to the call for mutual aid. It was the earliest she could arrive, leaving her postdoc research behind for the weekend. A member of the Bay Area Mountain Rescue (BAMRU) team since 2012, she has deployed to dozens of searches across the state, usually for one person missing in the wilderness: a snowshoer lost in a storm, a hiker injured and stuck off-trail, or a person with Alzheimer’s who wandered away from home.

She and her team spend hundreds of unpaid hours each year practicing specialized search and rescue skills. But in Paradise, little of their training in snow conditions, rope systems, or tracking was relevant. Allen wore a white Tyvek suit over her hiking boots and learned how to identify what was typically the only trace of people who hadn’t escaped the blaze: small fragments of bone.

When Thomas arrived Sunday morning, just in time for the morning briefing, searchers in a rainbow of red, orange, and hi-viz agency-branded jackets filled the Tall Pines Entertainment Center parking lot: county search teams, mountain rescue teams, law enforcement, the National Guard, all ready for the day’s assignments.

Thomas joined the fray with USAR Task Force #4 — one of 28 teams in the nation equipped for large-scale disaster relief. Most USAR members, like Thomas, are professional firefighters. On top of a grueling season fighting record-setting wildfires, this was his team’s third urban search deployment in as many months. They’d been to the sites where Hurricane Florence made landfall that September. Where Michael had hit in October. And now this.

All weekend, the air was thick with smoke and a pervasive otherworldliness. “If you had told me I was on Mars, I’d be like, ‘OK, right,’” Allen told me. She searched for two days, mostly in silence, wearing a mask she had to remove to speak. Her hiking boots sank with every step into ash up to eight inches deep. The sky was a murky orange. Trees were still green. Everything else was gray. It was a town like any other. But everything had changed.

In 2018, wildfires swept not only California, Australia, and Greece, but also the colder, wetter landscapes of England, Ireland, and Sweden. Kerala, India, was hit by one of the worst floods ever recorded, killing more than 500 people; a heat wave hospitalized 22,000 in Japan; and a series of tropical storms and typhoons affected more than 10 million across the Philippines. A bomb cyclone slammed the U.S. Northeast. Avalanches crushed Colorado. Mudslides buried Montecito, California. Record-breaking hurricanes battered the Southeast. As of this writing, what has come to be known as “fire season” is well underway in California, and fires blaze in New South Wales and Queensland, Australia.

To climate scientists, the pattern of increasing extremes comes as no surprise — it’s in line with projections for life on a warming planet. And at 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit above average, according to NASA, 2018 was one of the hottest years on record. 2019 is on track to be hotter.

When disaster strikes, rescuers like Thomas and Allen drive toward the danger the rest of us are desperate to escape. They’re trained to find us when we’re stuck somewhere — lost, injured, or worse. But a changing planet has raised the stakes: Avalanches, tornadoes, fires, and floods fill news cycles with counts of the missing and cell phone footage of neighborhoods turned to wilderness. The U.N. warns that climate catastrophes are now happening once a week across the globe. And unpredictable shoulder seasons — the busiest months for search and rescue calls — are getting longer. New kinds of disasters require new response plans and training, and bigger ones need more people who know what to do.

Search and rescue teams train for the worst conditions. But the worst conditions are getting worse. Search teams are stretched. Rescuers are burning out. We are all less safe.

Republicans ignoring climate change on behalf of their rapid base and dee-pocketed donors is literally killing us one disaster at a time.  And it's killing the people who are supposed to save us in disasters because they are being burned out.

Down Loserana Way

Louisiana's Democratic Governor, John Bel Edwards, won a close re-election bid on Saturday, knocking back Republican challenger Eddie Rispone and handing Donald Trump another giant L for his growing pile of loser trophies.

In Louisiana, Mr. Trump had wagered significant political capital to try to lift Eddie Rispone, a businessman who ran against Mr. Edwards in large part by embracing the president and his agenda. Mr. Trump campaigned for Mr. Rispone twice in the final two weeks of the race, warning Louisiana voters that a loss would reflect poorly on his presidency — the same appeal he made in Kentucky earlier this month to try to help Gov. Matt Bevin, who ultimately lost.

Of the three governor’s races this year, all in deep red states, Republicans won only one, in Mississippi. Republicans also lost control of both chambers of the state legislature in Virginia, where many Democratic candidates were sharply critical of Mr. Trump.

The victory was a deeply personal one for Mr. Edwards, a conservative Democrat in a state and region where his party can often be a disqualifier in statewide races. He campaigned on his accomplishments in office, like balancing the budget, increasing education spending and expanding Medicaid. He also highlighted his conservative stances on abortion and guns and showcased his background as a West Point graduate and son of a sheriff, to appeal to right-leaning voters. 

In his victory speech, Mr. Edwards said, “Our shared love for Louisiana is always more important than the partisan differences that sometimes divide us. And as for the president: God bless his heart.” 

Before the election, Mr. Rispone, a construction magnate from Baton Rouge, had never before run for political office. He vaulted ahead after more prominent Republicans decided against running and became competitive against the governor after cloaking himself in Mr. Trump’s popularity. 

The results indicated that many voters here were happy with the incumbent. 

And on a night when the attention of many Louisianans was split between the election and the football game between top-ranked Louisiana State and the University of Mississippi, Mr. Edwards ventured an explanation for why voters were comfortable re-electing him. 

“It is an easier state to govern when the Saints and LSU are winning,” he said in an interview. “People are just in a better mood.”

Rispone ran the Trump playbook to a T: wealthy businessman, never held office, ran as an outsider, savaged his Democratic opponent, fully embraced Trump and Trumpism.

He lost anyway.  The story was the suburbs, where Bel Edwards outperformed and countered Rispone's advantage in the rural parts of the state.  Just like in Kentucky and in Virginia, just like in 2018, suburban voters have turned on Trump and the GOP.

Trump couldn't save Matt Bevin.  He couldn't help Eddie Rispone.  And soon, he won't be able to save himself.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

House Intelligence Committee members heard from Marie Yovanovich on Friday and it was devastating for Trump as I pointed out yesterday.  But the real damage may have come from a later closed-doors deposition from diplomat Bill Taylor's aide who overheard DOnald Trump's phone call with EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland about Ukraine.  His name is David Holmes, and he just might have delivered a fatal blow to both Sondland and Trump. WaPo's Aaron Blake:

At three distinct points, we have seen Sondland’s testimony called into question. The first time was when other witnesses said he talked about a quid pro quo with Ukrainian officials on July 10, which Sondland soon confirmed via clarified testimony. The second was this week, when Taylor disclosed that Holmes had overheard a Sondland call with Trump on July 26 that Sondland had failed to mention and in which Trump asked about the investigations he was asking for. “Sondland will address any issues that arise from this in his testimony next week,” his lawyer said Wednesday.

And now Holmes undermines a central claim in Sondland’s testimony: That Sondland didn’t know that Trump and his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani’s interest in investigating a Ukrainian company that employed Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had anything to do with the Biden family.

“I noted that there was ‘big stuff’ going on in Ukraine, like a war with Russia,” Holmes says of his conversation with Sondland on July 26, “and Ambassador Sondland replied that he meant ‘big stuff’ that benefits the president, like the ‘Biden investigation’ that Mr. Giuliani was pushing.”

The quote about the “Biden investigation” is key. Sondland said in his deposition that he had pushed for an investigation into Burisma Holdings, which had employed Hunter Biden, but that he didn’t know there was any connection to the Bidens.

Not only is that a lie, we now know Sondland very publicly, in the middle of a Ukrainian restaurant, put Donald Phone on speaker to signify how important He himself was to Trump's operation.  One of the great boneheaded moves in criminal history, no doubt.

It gets worse.

Holmes says Taylor told him that on a June 28 call he had with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and the “three amigos” — Sondland, special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry — “it was made clear that some action on a Burisma/Biden investigation was a precondition for an Oval Office meeting.”

This detail, notably, was not part of Taylor’s own testimony, though Taylor quickly came to believe that such a meeting was indeed conditioned on Ukraine launching such an investigation.

Taylor testified that on the June 28 call, before Zelensky was added to the line, Sondland said he didn’t want interagency officials on the call, because “he wanted to make sure no one was transcribing or monitoring as they added President Zelensky to the call.”

So yes, the quid pro quo was premeditated and involved several US officials in the Trump regime: Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani, Sondland, as well as Ukrainian criminal fixer Lev Parnas, who is currently singing like a canary to the feds.

Finally, Holmes says he agreed to testify because of the GOP "defenses" of Trump, because he knew they were lies.

Holmes’s account is something he says he didn’t consider to be relevant — until he saw some of the defenses of Trump.

Holmes mentions that Trump defenders have argued that perhaps Trump himself wasn’t personally involved in the quid pro quos. He also mentions a GOP argument that was prominent during Wednesday’s hearing featuring Taylor and top State Department aide George Kent: that the witnesses didn’t have firsthand knowledge of some of the key events.

“I came to realize I had firsthand knowledge regarding certain events on July 26,” he said, referring to the date of his overhearing the Sondland-Trump call, “that had not otherwise been reported and that those events potentially bore on the question of whether the president did, in fact, have knowledge that those officials were using the levers of our diplomatic power to induct the new Ukrainian president to announce the opening of a particular criminal investigation.”

It’s worth noting that, despite early GOP attempts to portray Holmes as a partisan — on Friday they promoted a photo of him shaking hands with Barack Obama — he won an award in 2014 after raising concerns about Obama’s Afghanistan policy. Holmes, who served in Afghanistan, was awarded for his “constructive dissent.”

Holmes doesn’t directly say that his testimony contradicts the GOP’s arguments, but it’s certainly suggested. And it makes his full deposition, which we have yet to see, worth paying close attention to.

Expect that to be released soon, and perhaps for Holmes to testify in open hearing as a result.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Washington Post finally steps in and defends the Ukraine whistleblower that has made the impeachment proceedings that we're now watching possible, rightfully casting them as a hero whose allegations have been corroborated and stressing how much danger they are now in from Trump.

The lights are often on late into the evening at CIA headquarters, where a team of elite analysts works on classified reports that influence how the country responds to global crises.

In early August, one of those analysts was staying after hours on a project with even higher stakes. For two weeks, he pored over notes of alarming conversations with White House officials, reviewed details from interagency memos on the U.S. relationship with Ukraine and scanned public statements by President Trump.

He wove this material into a nine-page memo outlining evidence that Trump had abused the powers of his office to try to coerce Ukraine into helping him get reelected. Then, on Aug. 12, the analyst hit “send.”

His decision to report what he had learned to the U.S. intelligence community’s inspector general has transformed the political landscape of the United States, triggering a rapid-moving impeachment inquiry that now imperils Trump’s presidency.

Over the past three months, the allegations made in that document have been overwhelmingly substantiated — by the sworn testimony of administration officials, the inadvertent admissions of Trump’s acting chief of staff and, most importantly, the president’s own words, as captured on a record of his July 25 call with the leader of Ukraine.

As the impeachment inquiry entered a new phase of public hearings on Wednesday, the outlines of the case have been thoroughly established: President Trump, his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and two diplomats are alleged to have collaborated to pressure Ukraine to pursue investigations to bolster Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2016 election and damage the prospects of his potential opponent in next year’s election, former vice president Joe Biden.

Trump cites corruption in Kyiv and European stinginess to justify actions on Ukraine. Neither rationale withstands close scrutiny.

To advance this hidden agenda, Trump and his allies orchestrated the ouster of a U.S. ambassador, the withholding of an Oval Office meeting from Ukraine’s new president and the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

But beyond that familiar fact pattern, the revelations reflect a country in political crisis.

The United States has embarked on an impeachment proceeding against a president for only the third time in its history. The voluminous testimony so far has revealed a government at war with itself over how to respond to Trump’s frequent conflation of the country’s interests with his own. After casting itself as a force against corruption, condemning politically driven prosecutions in other countries, the United States now appears to have sought to coerce such actions from a partner nation.

It is not clear whether any of this would have come to light were it not for the actions of a relatively junior CIA employee, who is now the target of almost daily attacks by Trump and right-wing efforts to make his identity widely public.

While Pelosi and Schiff have been openly defending the whistleblower, and the media (other than Fox News State TV of course) have been protecting the whistleblower's identity against a raging thug of a chief executive, it's far past time that the media has laid out the reasoning for choosing to defend this hero.

Despite all the GOP dirty tricks and smoke and mirrors, the whistleblower's case has been solidly backed up at every juncture by evidence and testimony.

This is the case to remove Trump from office, being made as we watch.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

So far, and it's very early in the public hearing process, national opinion about impeachment hasn't changed minds...yet.

The televised impeachment hearings that began this week in the U.S. House of Representatives do not appear to have changed many minds about President Donald Trump, with public support for his impeachment about the same before and after the first U.S. diplomats testified, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

The national online poll, which ran from Thursday to Friday morning, showed that 44% of U.S. adults said Trump “should be impeached,” while 40% said he “should not be impeached.” A similar poll that ran earlier in the week found 45% supported impeachment and 42% opposed it. 

The Reuters/Ipsos poll also found that about 68% of Americans said they were following the hearings. That includes 28% who said they were watching or listening to the hearings on live broadcasts. About 25% said they had not paid any attention to the impeachment proceedings in Congress. 

Among those paying attention, 41% said the hearings had made them “more supportive” of impeaching Trump, while 25% said they had made them “less supportive.” That finding, combined with the overall lack of movement in public opinion regarding impeachment, suggests the hearings so far have mostly provided people with a rationale for their earlier support or opposition to impeachment.

More Americans will follow the hearings I suspect.  Today was particularly bad for the Trump regime as former US Ambassador to Ukraine testified about Donald Trump's intimidation efforts, which happened in real time because he couldn't stop himself from tweeting threats at a witness testifying while he watches her on TV.

House Democrats are calling Donald Trump’s decision to attack Marie Yovanovitch mid-hearing on Friday a blatant example of witness intimidation, further building the case to charge the president with obstruction in potential articles of impeachment. 

Lawmakers of both parties were stunned to see Trump’s disparaging tweet about the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in the middle of a hearing where she had already described in great detail how she felt personally threatened by the president.

“What you saw today — witness intimidation in real-time by the president of the United States,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told reporters during a brief pause in the hearing.

“Once again, going after this dedicated and respected career public servant in an effort to not only chill her but to chill others who may come forward,” Schiff added. “We take this kind of witness intimidation and obstruction of inquiry very seriously.”

Trump's attack was vile, stupid, and thuggish even for him.

Yovanovitch was laying out to House investigators in often-emotional detail how she had been recalled early from her post as the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv amid a smear campaign orchestrated against her by Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and others.

"Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad," Trump tweeted out as Yovanovitch spoke. "She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him." 

He continued: "It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors. They call it 'serving at the pleasure of the President.' The U.S. now has a very strong and powerful foreign policy, much different than proceeding administrations. It is called, quite simply, America First! With all of that, however, I have done FAR more for Ukraine than [Obama]."

Again, real-time witness threats and intimidation, real-time obstruction of justice, in front of all America.  The opinion polls aren't moving toward critical mass...yet.

They will after today.

Stone Cold Guilty

The jury in the Roger Stone trial took less than 48 hours to find the Trump confidante guilty on all seven counts, including lying to Congress and witness tampering, in his trial for covering for Donald Trump over the Russian hacking of DNC emails in 2016.

The panel of nine women and three men deliberated for less than two days before finding Stone, 67, guilty on all seven counts resulting from his September 2017 testimony to a House intelligence committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Kremlin’s efforts to damage Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Stone, in a gray-blue suit, stood at the defense table with his left hand in his pants pocket, watching impassively as the verdicts were read. He sighed and frowned as he left the courtroom, offering a half-smile to reporters who had covered the proceedings while his wife hugged crying supporters.

Michael Caputo, a Stone friend, was kicked out of the courtroom for refusing to stand for the jury after the verdict and — when ordered to do so — turned his back to the panel.

Roger Stone was found guilty on Nov. 15 of lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstruction of justice over remarks about WikiLeaks’ 2016 email releases. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

Stone and his attorneys departed the courthouse without comment and went with their legal team into a waiting vehicle.

A judge set Stone’s sentencing for Feb. 6 and allowed him to remain free until then. Stone faces a legal maximum penalty of 50 years in prison — 20 years for the witness tampering charge and five years for each of the other counts, although a first offender would face far less time under federal sentencing guidelines.

Stone’s indictment was the last brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, revealing important details about the Trump campaign’s keen interest in computer files hacked by Russia and made public by WikiLeaks. He was accused of lying to Congress and tampering with a witness, an associate whom prosecutors said Stone threatened in a bid to prevent the man from cooperating with lawmakers.

Stone is essentially facing a life sentence for his role in facilitating the WikiLeaks dirty tricks screw job of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, and suddenly there's a very real federal guilty verdict tying Donald Trump to Russian collusion.

Does Trump pardon Stone to monkey-wrench the impeachment parade?

We'll find out.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

We've known for some time now that Rudy Giuliani was most likely under investigation for criminal wrongdoing involving his role in Trump's Ukraine bribery and extortion scandal, now we know he definitely is under investigation.

Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible campaign finance violations and a failure to register as a foreign agent as part of an active investigation into his financial dealings, according to three U.S. officials.

The probe of Giuliani, which one official said could also include possible charges on violating laws against bribing foreign officials or conspiracy, presents a serious threat to Trump’s presidency from a man that former national security adviser John Bolton has called a “hand grenade.”

A second official said Giuliani’s activities raise counterintelligence concerns as well, although there probably wouldn’t be a criminal charge related to that. The officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, provided the first indication of the potential charges under investigation.

Giuliani is a central figure in the U.S. House impeachment inquiry, which focuses on an effort led by the former New York City mayor to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate the president’s political rivals. If Giuliani is charged or indicted, he could expose Trump to a new level of legal and political jeopardy, especially if he’s accused of committing a crime on the president’s behalf.

“I would not be surprised if he gets indicted,” said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. “It’s clear Giuliani is up to his ears in shady stuff and there’s tons of smoke.” 

Witnesses in the impeachment inquiry have described how Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine and a White House meeting for the country’s newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, to force him to investigate a company connected to former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Biden is a Democratic frontrunner to challenge Trump in 2020.

Democrats have called Trump activities with Giuliani’s assistance as a potential abuse of presidential power, while some Republicans have argued that Trump’s conduct doesn’t merit his removal from office.

Giuliani is under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which he once led. The office began to scrutinize his activities in Ukraine as prosecutors investigated two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The two were subsequently charged in the U.S. with illegally funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to U.S. officials and a political action committee that backed Trump.

Parnas and Fruman were working for Giuliani on matters related to Trump. It’s not clear, however, whether the investigation of Giuliani is focusing on the work he did for the president.

Giuliani, his lawyers and the White House didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Two observations: first, so far, not even Bill Barr has been able to make this investigation disappear.  A trial set for next year would be devastating for anyone related to the Trump regime and everyone knows it.

Second,  the case against Giuliani must be devastating.  We know Lev Parnas, one of the two Ukranian associates of his, is now cooperating and says Trump contacted him last year about Ukraine and how Ambassador Marie Yovanovich had to be fired.  Things are moving quickly here on this front.

The April 2018 dinner was designed to be an intimate affair, an opportunity for a handful of big donors to a super PAC allied with President Trump to personally interact with the president and his eldest son.

In an exclusive suite known as the Trump Townhouse at Trump’s Washington hotel, the group — including Jack Nicklaus III, the grandson of the famous golfer, and a New York developer — snapped photos, dined and chatted about their pet issues with the president for about 90 minutes.

Among those in attendance were two Florida business executives who had little history with Republican politics but had snagged a spot at the dinner with the promise of a major contribution to the America First super PAC. They turned the conversation to Ukraine, according to people familiar with the event, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private dinner.

One of the men, Lev Parnas, has described to associates that he and his business partner, Igor Fruman, told Trump at the dinner that they thought the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine was unfriendly to the president and his interests.

According to Parnas, the president reacted strongly to the news: Trump immediately suggested that then-Ambassador Marie ­Yovanovitch, who had been in the Foreign Service for 32 years and served under Democratic and Republican presidents, should be fired, people familiar with his account said.

Parnas declined to comment. Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Fruman, declined to comment.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Parnas’s account of personally discussing Ukraine with Trump more than 18 months ago suggests that he and Fruman had more personal interaction with the president — and potentially more influence over his views on that country — than the White House has acknowledged.

The Rudy factor is about to explode this wide open.

StupidiNews!

• Two students are dead and three more injured as a 16-year-old gunman opened fire at a high school in California on Thursday, the suspect is in critical condition.
• Ohio Republicans are trying to pass legislation that could force teachers to accept student religious reasons as correct answers in science classes.
• German lawmakers are moving forward with a bill to require the country reduces carbon emissions to 55% of 1990 levels by the end of the next decade.
• British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn is promising that broadband internet access will be nationalized if elected as Prime Minister next month.
• Multiple cities and counties are suing the FCC over implementation of an August vote to limit local regulation of cable TV and broadband services.

Last Call For Trump State TV, Con't

Zandardad texted me yesterday about the impeachment hearings and mentioned he thought that the case against Trump was going to be distorted into sound bites of Republicans yelling and claiming victory over the "dismantled" Democratic argument.

On Fox News Trump State TV, he was right.  CNN's Brian Stetler waded into the crazy weeds.

I wanted to know what President Trump was hearing about day one of the televised impeachment hearings. So I decided to mute all my other TVs and just watch Fox News on Wednesday night. 

I heard White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham say that "today was a joke." I heard Donald Trump Jr. say "it's insanity." I heard Jeff Sessions ask, "Where's the beef?" 

Here's how I would sum up everything I heard from Fox's prime time hosts: Wednesday's hearing was a bust. It was all just hearsay. It was a "disaster" for the Democrats and a "great day" for the Republicans. Impeachment is "stupid." Impeachment is "fake." There's nothing impeachable here. There's no reason to hold hearings. This inquiry needs to stop right now. 

The message was one-sided and overwhelming. Every host and practically every guest said the Republican tribe is winning and the Democrat tribe is losing. I'm sure the president loved watching every minute of it. That's one of the reasons why this right-wing rhetoric matters so much -- because it is reassuring and emboldening Trump. 

I decided to write it all down because of something that CNN's Oliver Darcy wrote earlier in the day. "Don't expect viewers, listeners, and readers of right-wing media to walk away from Wednesday's impeachment hearings with a different opinion of President Trump's behavior," Darcy said. "In fact, it's possible they might be more convinced than ever that Trump did nothing wrong. Why? Because right-wing media has largely -- and unsurprisingly -- focused on the moments in the hearing favorable to its preferred narrative." 

He was right.

If Fox News had existed during Watergate, Nixon would have been re-elected in 1976 in a landslide.

Oliver Darcy writes: All day long, pro-Trump websites hyped clips of GOP stars like Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes "eviscerating" or "destroying" their opponents. THOSE were the moments that generated focus -- not the instances when Taylor or Kent shed new light on the Ukraine scandal. And after the hearings wrapped, Trump's defenders in media dismissed the hearings as "boring" and a bust for the Democrats. If you were watching the hearing through the lens of the right-wing media, you probably didn't see a case against the president being built. You probably walked away thinking the Democrats' case collapsed... 

Which is the point.  Fox News is the last line of defense for Donald Trump's ongoing years of criminality.  He would have never been elected without them, let alone survived the last three years in office without being tossed out on his ass.  Meanwhile the rest of our media was just as broken, as Alternet's Joshua Holland observes.

Yes, the first day of testimony was “consequential.” There was “substance”–new evidence that the President of the United States* personally directed that security aid to a vulnerable ally in the middle of a war be blocked in order to coerce them to pursue widely debunked conspiracy theories about his political rivals–but where was the pizzazz?

Impeachment week featured no sharks whatsoever. No nubile young women bared their breasts during the hearing and nobody in the chamber was injured in an amusing accident like on America’s Funniest Home Videos. No Republican was forced by the overwhelming weight of the evidence to halt his questioning and concede that the leader of their party really is a narcissistic charlatan. Jim Jordan didn’t have a sudden epiphany and tearfully apologize for turning his back on the abused wrestlers he used to coach. It was just some more boring details of high crimes in the Oval Office revealed during the fourth presidential impeachment process in the nation’s history. At least Clinton’s impeachment had some sex to spice up the proceedings.

These kinds of analyses are born of a deep cynicism that pervades so much of the media (I’m often guilty of it myself). It stems from the sense that, in a society as polarized as ours, nothing really matters. Opinions are locked in. Motivated reasoning leads readers and viewers to reject reporting that doesn’t support their worldviews.

The Republican base won’t abandon Trump and Senate Republicans fear primaries more than they do a slide into authoritarianism. Trump isn’t going to be escorted kicking and screaming from the Oval Office by the Marshal of the Supreme Court, so what’s the point? Ambassador Bill Taylor and Deputy Secretary of State George Kent offered gripping some really testimony–there was substance–but we all knew how Tucker Carlson would cover it at 8 pm. Same shit, different day when you really think about it.

That’s not entirely wrong. Investigative reporters sometimes unearth damning stories that bring down a politician or drive an effort for some new legislation, but most reporting doesn’t change people’s minds and won’t change the world. But even if there’s a kernel of truth to it, that cynicism blinds one to the importance of crucial moments in history like the one we’re living through now, and renders one incapable of covering it with the appropriate gravity.

It’s also, at least to a degree, a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most people worked yesterday and didn’t catch the hearings live. They rely on the media not only for the facts, but also for cues about how to interpret them. Some of those people woke up this morning to the message that while there was some sort of substance to yesterday’s, nothing interesting happened. There’s nothing to see here. Move along.

Which is exactly what Zandardad feared.

Republicans in the Senate enable Trump.  But Fox News enables them, and it's even more dangerous.  They are going to kill the hearings any way they can for their viewers, and take the country down with them.

But what's worse is our own cynicism about a "doomed" process.