Tweets Of The Day -- Ukraine Investigating (Checks Notes) Trump Pals

BREAKING: Ukraine's Interior Ministry announces criminal probe into alleged illegal surveillance of former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch after text messages released by House investigators showed Robert F. Hyde and Lev Parnas discussing her being tracked in Kyiv.

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) January 16, 2020

To recap, Trump tried to use taxpayer money to extort Ukraine into announcing a sham investigation into a political rival to manipulate the 2020 election, but Ukraine has announced an investigation into an element of that extortion scheme instead.

— Adam Serwer🍝 (@AdamSerwer) January 16, 2020

Congratulations to Trump on finally getting Ukraine to announce an investigation into some Americans.

— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) January 16, 2020

But none of the investigations that Ukraine is announcing are of Joe Biden.

— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) January 16, 2020

Bill Barr is super concerned about “illegal spying”...so he’s going to have DOJ all over this too, right? https://t.co/fZfb838xR2

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) January 16, 2020

We already know Attorney General Trump lawyer and rooting hog cosplayer William "Low" Barr won't be opening any investigation of this because (as we note below) the Justice Department had access to the Lev Parnas information months ago and sat on it. Oh, yeah, and that same information implicated him as having knowledge of the Giuliani efforts to smear the Bidens.

Trump Broke Law Withholding Ukraine Aid

The non- partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just issued its legal decision on the withholding of aid to Ukraine last year.  Their summary legal conclusion is in the Digest paragraph (click to enlarge). The full 9- page report is here (pdf).



"Therefore we conclude that OMB violated the ICA (Impoundment Control Act)." Seems like some people need to be held accountable for this, right?!  Like trials, or an impeachment or something something? Also, the phrase "Faithful execution of the law" reflects the Presidential oath of office that the GAO is pointedly noting fraudster Donald "Rump" Trump violated.

Bombshell Lev Parnas Interview

Here are just four segments from Rachel Maddow's bombshell interview with Rudy "You Have a Fool For a Lawyer" Giuliani's "associate" Lev Parnas on MSNBC last night.

"Trump knew exactly what was going on."



Vice President Mike "Dense" Pence was tasked with getting the Ukrainian President to announce an investigation into the Bidens.



Attorney General Trump attorney William "Low" Barr was also in the loop.



Surprise not surprised!  Festering weasel Rep. Devin Nunes and his aide Derek Harvey were involved with Giuliani's "drug deal," too.



The Republican Party, and specifically the Trump regime, is a crime organization, pure and simple. Which is why this is also true:

This Lev Parnas interview with @maddow is kinda like if one of the Watergate burglars had gone on the MacNeil Lehrer Report in '74 and directly implicated Nixon and his staff, at least if you imagine that interview would be ignored and change no one's mind.

— Orin Kerr (@OrinKerr) January 16, 2020

NOTE:  The interview continues tonight on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC at 9 p.m. Eastern time.

More Evidence Of Trump/ Giuliani's Ukraine "Drug Deal" Emerges

Yesterday's release of documents provided to the House Intelligence Committee by Lev Parnas provided the strongest confirmation yet that the safari(s) to Ukraine by Trump consigliere Rudy "You Have a Fool For a Lawyer" Giuliani were specifically to 1) get Ukraine to announce an "investigation" of the Bidens for Trump's political advantage, in exchange for releasing military aid, 2) that Trump specifically authorized this "drug deal", and 3) that an associate/ stooge of Giuliani's named Robert Hyde told Parnas he had corruption- fighting U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich under surveillance:

New materials released by House Democrats appear to show Ukraine’s top prosecutor offering an associate of President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

The text messages and documents provided to Congress by former Giuliani associate Lev Parnas also show that before the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was removed from her post, a Parnas associate now running for Congress sent menacing text messages suggesting that he had Yovanovitch under surveillance in Ukraine. A lawyer for Yovanovitch said Tuesday that the episode should be investigated.  [snip]

Among the revelations in the documents released Tuesday: a message from Giuliani to Parnas saying he had involved a person he called “no 1” — possibly Trump himself — in an effort to lift a U.S. visa ban on a former Ukrainian prosecutor who was planning to come to the United States to make claims about Biden.

The materials also include a letter Giuliani wrote to Ukraine’s then-president-elect, Volodymyr Zelensky, requesting a May 14 meeting with the new leader in Giuliani’s “capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent.” Giuliani scrapped his planned trip, and the meeting never took place.

Here's the letter from Giuliani to President- elect Zelinsky presenting himself  as operating with Trump's "knowledge and consent" in the next to last paragraph (click to enlarge):



Here are notes on Ritz-Carlton Vienna stationary written by Parnas and other documents detailing some of the quid pro quos that were underway.

Here's a little background on the aforementioned "menacing" Mr. Hyde (no relation to Dr. Jekyll, although he does seem to have some emotional issues).

Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer write on the importance of the documents to the upcoming impeachment trial:

... These new documents demolish at least three key defenses to which Trump and his allies have been clinging: that he was really fighting corruption when he pressured Ukraine on matters related to the Biden family; that Hunter Biden should be called as a witness at the Senate impeachment trial; and that there’s no need for a real, honest-to-goodness trial in the Senate.

Let's once again thank Speaker Pelosi for delaying sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, allowing for this additional damning evidence to become public at a crucial time.

The Russian Campaign To Re-Elect Trump Is Underway

The malevolent Russian state is already working hard to ensure the re- election of its puppet Donald "Tovarich" Trump in 2020: 

With President Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the affair, according to security experts.

The hacking attempts against Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, began in early November, as talk of the Bidens, Ukraine and impeachment was dominating the news in the United States.

It is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for. But the experts say the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens — the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment.

The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia’s hacking of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, once they had the emails, the Russians used trolls to spread and spin the material, and built an echo chamber to widen its effect.

As Adam Silverman writes,

The purpose of this hacking is not just to get access to emails and other documents, remove them, and either leak them through third parties to gullible members of the US news media who will be all to happy to publish them in a repeat of 2016 or to credulous surrogates of the President like his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani. The purpose of hacking into these systems is also to be able to adjust actual emails and documents, as well as plant false ones, that can then be removed, leaked, and laundered through the news media with the real emails and documents as part of the ongoing Black PSYOP campaign. If there’s nothing actually incriminating in Burisma’s employees’ or board of directors member’s emails or the company’s documents about Hunter Biden, then the GRU will be happy to fabricate them (agitprop), embed them with the real information, and then ensure that all of that information – real and fabricated – makes its way to the information laundries of the US news media so it can be weaponized against Vice President Biden and on behalf of the President. They did this with the Clinton campaign and DNC emails in 2016 and they’ll do it again here too. [snip]

As I wrote way back in March 2019, the 2020 elections are an information war. And that information war is wrapped within an undeclared interstate war between Russia and the US. And that is the reality that every Democratic campaign, up and down the ballot from municipal special districts to those seeking the presidency, America’s Intelligence Community, the National Security Directorate’s at the DOJ and FBI, and the news media, especially those covering politics, need to understand and prepare for. After the 2016 election and what has now been well documented as happening since as far back as 2014, there is no good excuse for refusing to learn from the past 5 and 1/2 years, for campaigns and the new media to not have counter-influence operations in place and operating, and for Americans not to be informed and realize that we are at war. The 2020 election is not just taking place while that war is ongoing; the 2020 election is actually one theater of operations in that war.

We have little doubt that the "mainstream media" will fall into the same traps it did in 2016. Credulous/ cynical/ partisan media types will pursue any neatly packaged bit of agitprop tossed over the transom or, on the other hand, play down or ignore clear signs and warnings of what the Russians are up to (case in point:  the Russian hacking story the Times featured is on page A 16 of the Washington Post today -- democracy dies in professional jealousy).

Meanwhile, Facebook and other social media platforms are wide open for the Russian agitprop business that's coming their way -- democracy dies in wilful blindness and greed.

Republican Senators Recoiling From Toxic Giuliani

The one person perhaps most responsible for leading world- class moron Donald "The Dumb Don" Trump into the Ukraine thicket and, hence, to his impeachment is his personal consigliere Rudy "You Have A Fool For A Lawyer" Giuliani (um, thank you?).  The very public spectacle of a clearly diminished, if not psychotic, Giuliani fumbling around Ukraine in his latest effort to "prove" it was Ukraine that meddled in the 2016 election, not Russia, has Trump's enablers in the Senate rattled.  The on- going criminal investigation involving indicted Giuliani associates and Russian bag men Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman (and soon Giuliani?) is also giving pause to reptilian Republicans looking for mud to sling during an impeachment trial.

Earlier in December, Sen. Lindsey "Huckleberry" Graham, a thing with no discernible scruples, called on Giuliani to testify on his conspiracy theories "findings" concerning the dealings of the Bidens in Ukraine, ignoring ample evidence that there was no there there.  Now, however, as Giuliani's mania has become more outrageous and his ties to Russian cut- outs more obvious, Huckleberry and other Republican rats in the Senate don't want to be within smelling distance of him:

As senators prep for the impeachment trial they are distancing themselves, now publicly, from Giuliani in an attempt to steer clear of his less-than-reliable associates in Kyiv.

“Rudy Giuliani long ago lost any shred of credibility, especially after the dossier he assembled for the State Department stunningly mirrored Russian propaganda,” Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) told The Daily Beast. “Knowing that, anyone that attempts to defend President Trump’s behavior by citing Rudy’s information over our own intelligence agencies is simply irresponsible, uninformed or willing to be that useful idiot the Kremlin desires.”  [snip]

“I wouldn’t trust Rudy to represent me in a parking dispute so I’d say avoid,” a senior GOP Senate aide said tersely when asked if it was a good idea for Republican senators to meet with Giuliani to get a Ukraine briefing. Another top aide in a different Republican office said their senator had informed staff that they had “no interest at all” in meeting with Giuliani on this, fearing it would amount to a “waste of time,” if not something worse.

Huckleberry, observing that Giuliani's trip to Ukraine was studded with meetings with former pro- Russian prosecutors and a KGB- trained legislator, perhaps sees the danger of having a self- interested lunatic testifying and going off like a, um, "hand grenade" in a public hearing.  So, now he wants the intelligence community to do the job of deep- sixing Giuliani's fever dreams:

“He has not shared any of that information with me,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about the information Giuliani obtained overseas. “My advice to Giuliani would be to share what he got from Ukraine with the IC [intelligence community] to make sure it’s not Russia propaganda. I’m very suspicious of what the Russians are up to all over the world.”

Now he's suspicious.  How convenient.

(Meanwhile, in the "you can't make this stuff up" category, Giuliani has a "director of communications" and traveling companion who's 20- year- old college student and vigorous résumé- padder named Christianné Allen.  If you haven't read this Politico article about Giuliani's grifting alter ego, please do so.  The saying "Birds of a feather flock together" was never more true.)

BONUS:  If you haven't already checked it out, Olivia Nuzzi has a revealing article about her recent conversation with a dotty, Bloody Mary- swilling Giuliani.  Yikes!

(Photo:  Giuliani meeting with Alexiy Derkach, graduate of KGB academy and pro- Russian Ukrainian lawmaker, in Kiev December 5.)

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

The Center for Public Integrity has received 146 pages of documents under court order that bolster and underscore the testimony by impeachment witnesses as to the effort by the Trump regime to withhold aid to Ukraine in exchange for announcement of a bogus investigation into the Bidens. Following the infamous July 25 "I need you to do us a favor" call between Trump and Ukrainian president Zelinsky, this is what Department of Defense officials were doing:

They specifically undertook an unusual maneuver, stopping the disbursements by adding a rare footnote to spending documents for Pentagon operations and maintenance efforts, which declared the Ukraine funding in particular was being held up for a week at a time. Then, over a period of about seven weeks, they tacked the footnote again and again onto eight such documents, each time as a temporary measure.

An unnamed lawyer at OMB, not wanting to participate in what appeared to be an illegal funding policy, decided to quit, as did another OMB official, according to congressional testimony by Mark Sandy, the office’s deputy associate director for national security and a 12-year veteran at the agency. OMB spokespeople have disputed the account, saying the resignations were not over the policy.

The documents, though heavily redacted by Trump consigliere William "Low" Barr, still manage to reveal the concern of staff at the Office of Management and Budget and the Pentagon that the action violated the Impoundment Control Act.  No wonder Republicans are so fearful of more documents and witness testimony coming out in a Senate impeachment trial.  Here's one of the smoking (or as Trump would spell it, "smocking") guns in the release of documents (click to enlarge):

And here is your bureaucracy version of a literally smoking gun:

Newly released #UkraineDocs show that a mere 90 minutes after Trump's phone call, the White House ordered the military aid to be put on hold, but to be "closely held" infohttps://t.co/IqT70JkWBH
HT @Zeddary pic.twitter.com/H9eeHuOlo4

— Peter W. Singer (@peterwsinger) December 21, 2019

The Washington Post has a special section of articles written by 13 writers from around the world on "How Trump Changed My Country."  As you might imagine, none of the changes in any of the 13 countries was for the better.  Here's one snippet from a Russian writer, but please go check out the rest because the cumulative effect is sobering:

One evening in August, Russia’s most popular TV anchor, Vladimir Solovyov, indulged in mocking adoration of Donald Trump. The American president had hinted that he wanted to buy Greenland, and Solovyov said he loved Trump for destroying liberal cliches. This particular cliche appeared to be the belief that in the modern world, strong powers will not engage in land grabs — a topical issue in Russia, which had recently snatched Crimea away from Ukraine. “Strong states will get more lands, weak states will lose them, and Trump is showing that in a crude and vivid manner,” said Solovyov, prompting long applause from the studio audience.

When Russia ditched the communists back in the early 1990s, the triumphant West, led by the United States, beckoned, a shiny role model to pursue. Today, visionless and rudderless, the United States is a laughingstock to Kremlin mouthpieces like Solovyov — and a source of bewilderment, if not disgust, to the country’s liberal critics of President Vladimir Putin. Embodying that disillusionment is Trump, who seems intent on proving decades of Kremlin propaganda about America’s cynicism and lack of scruples. (See: Ukraine.)

The damage Trump has done to our country at home and abroad is already likely irreversible, because it's reasoned that if a debacle like Trump happened here once, it can always happen again.
 
As we noted yesterday, Jon Allsop at the Columbia Journalism Review has consistently pertinent analyses of the intersection of politics and media in our information- diffuse, dystopian times. Here's a segment of a piece he wrote on December 16 on the cult of "bothsideism:"

When it comes to much impeachment coverage, bothsidesism isn’t the beginning and end of the problem, but part of our broader reflex to frame contentious political stories around the concept of partisanship. In parts of the press, a set of party-oriented impeachment narratives has taken hold that contains some truth, but also rests on a selective interpretation of available evidence. Entrenched partisanship—in Congress and the country—is real, and newsworthy, as is the role that our fragmented information ecosystem has played in stoking and reinforcing division. And yet it does not follow, as some journalists and pundits seem to have surmised, that impeachment has been a waste of time. At the beginning of his show yesterday, Todd said the “national response” to impeachment has been “whatever.” And yet, as I wrote earlier this month, support for impeaching Trump, while recently static, is historically high. (A Fox News poll out yesterday reinforced that finding.) Six Republicans in Michigan are not the country.

The media’s job, done properly, is multidirectional: it holds power to account, and communicates matters of public interest to news consumers. On impeachment, too much coverage seems to have got stuck in a feedback loop: we’re telling the public that politicians aren’t budging from their partisan siloes, and vice versa, with the facts of what Trump actually did getting lost somewhere in the cycle. The cult of “both sides” is integral to this dynamic, and it’s serving the impeachment story poorly. Now, more than ever, our top duty should be to fight for the truth.

Perhaps some of our media need to begin with a refresher course like this:



The glitter and sequins are for when you achieve media elite status.

Following the editorial in Christianity Today calling for Trump's removal from office, a conservative newspaper in a deep red state editorializes in much the same vein.  From the Sunday Fargo Forum (ND):

Regardless of one’s faith tradition, Trump stands as a leader who has shredded norms and values and morals. He has undeniably used his office for personal gain — and for the benefit of his sons, daughter and son-in-law — yet the far-right refuses to hold him accountable.

We are supposed to be a nation of laws, not of men. Our Constitution spells out separation of powers as well as checks and balances between equal branches of government.

However we deal with Trump’s misconduct, there will be consequences, for the country and for conservative causes. We want a viable, upright conservative party to shape policy.

The Forum has about a 47,000 circulation on Sundays, and is the primary daily paper in southeast North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota.

Luckily for us (and you), Infidel 753 is back providing us with thought- provoking posts as well as his link round- up, which is the best collection of links to interesting posts on the Internet (in our humble opinion).  As we've said before, if you haven't bookmarked his blog, you're missing out.

Trump Shoves Rudy Under The Bus

Surprise (not surprised)!

Donald Trump denied directing Rudy Giuliani to go to Ukraine to look for dirt on his political rivals, in an interview with former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

“No, I didn’t direct him, but he is a warrior, he is a warrior,” Trump told O’Reilly in an interview streamed on the internet on Tuesday.

Giuliani has said publicly that he conducted an investigation “concerning 2016 Ukrainian collusion and corruption” on Trump’s behalf.

Asked by O’Reilly what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine, Trump said “you have to ask that to Rudy.”

“Rudy has other clients, other than me,” Trump said. “He’s done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years. "  (our emphasis)

Coming next:  "I don't know him very well."

Then: "Who?"

Rudy, you're going down, so you better bring the receipts! 

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., discusses the impeachment inquiry testimony of Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, specifically his belief that speaking the truth because "right matters" is an American virtue:

... His words were a veritable balm in Gilead for a nation sickened to its soul by the orgy of lies and alibis that now passes for leadership. And it hardly seemed worth it (indeed, would have been beside the point) to bring up all the times right has not mattered in America, to subpoena the ghosts of genocide, enslavement, exploitation and imprisonment haunting our history and ask them to testify against Vindman’s evocation of national virtue.

Because what he invoked was not America the actual, but America the aspiration — the more perfect union. And give us credit. If it’s true this is a country that has frequently betrayed its noblest ideals, it’s also true this is a country that had noble ideals to betray in the first place. It was to that America, that dream of America, that Vindman referred.
But even it has seen better days. Even the dream of who we are has been ransacked by the president and his defenders, men and women who would rather walk through fire in gasoline-soaked underwear than admit the truth of his malfeasance.

(We quoted Paul Krugman at length yesterday on the utter corruption of the Republican Party, and would suggest reading his full op/ ed again as a companion to Pitts's op/ ed.)

To no one's surprise, the servile rats in the regime of nitwit crime family boss Donald "Donnie Little Hands" Trump were working overtime to concoct a reason for the withholding of military aid to Ukraine (other than the true reason, that it was extortion/ bribery for Ukraine manufacturing dirt on the Bidens):

A confidential White House review of President Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal, according to three people familiar with the records.

The research by the White House Counsel’s Office, which was triggered by a congressional impeachment inquiry announced in September, includes early August email exchanges between acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after the president had already ordered a hold in mid-July on the nearly $400 million in security assistance, according to the three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations. [snip]

In the early August email exchanges, Mulvaney asked acting OMB director Russell Vought for an update on the legal rationale for withholding the aid and how much longer it could be delayed. Trump had made the decision the prior month without an assessment of the reasoning or legal justification, according to two White House officials. Emails show Vought and OMB staffers arguing that withholding aid was legal, while officials at the National Security Council and State Department protested. OMB lawyers said that it was legal to withhold the aid, as long as they deemed it a “temporary” hold, according to people familiar with the review.

Is Chief of Rats Mick Mulvaney lawyered up?  You better believe he is (he's got Russian spy Maria Butina's lawyer representing him -- you can't make this stuff up)!  And, it doesn't help that Mulvaney works in a back- stabbing, CYA snakepit:

Cipollone, who wants Mulvaney’s job, launches review that finds Mulvaney up to his neck in Ukraine scandal, and the results leak. The WH is not a fun place to work right now. https://t.co/xlufItHBRe

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) November 24, 2019

Adam Serwer writes about Trump's (and his rotted out party's) conspiracy against democracy, and how the Ukraine scandal fits a pattern:

The Republican Party has responded to the increasing diversity of the electorate with an accelerating intolerance for ethnic and religious minorities, and with elaborate schemes to disenfranchise rival constituencies and rig election rules to its advantage. Crucial to this effort is its conviction that the Republican electorate is the only one that can confer legitimacy on elected officials, and that the party’s political opponents are no longer wrong but fundamentally illegitimate, faithless usurpers with no right to determine the direction of the country. This has manifested in the quasi-religious dogma that Trump represents the will of Real America, and therefore defiance of his will is itself a form of treason.

Believing that Republican officials will be convinced by the evidence proffered by Trump’s own staff and political appointees is a mistake, because the underlying facts are not genuinely in dispute. Trumpists are not operating from an ethical framework that even allows acknowledgment that the president is capable of being guilty. Trump is the nation, and the nation cannot commit treason against itself. On the contrary, it is Joe Biden who is guilty of betrayal, defying the tribune of the people by seeking to run against him, and it is Trump’s treacherous staff who convict themselves of treason with every statement that implicates the president. The more evidence of Trump’s misdeeds the Democrats uncover, the more they reveal themselves as traitors. For Trumpists, there is no higher patriotism than bending to Trump’s will, and no more base corruption than defying it.

 The most recent example of the latter being the sacking of Navy Secretary Spencer.

As always, we close by highly recommending you check out Infidel 753's link round-up (and bookmark his blog, by the way), for the most comprehensive array of "various interesting stuff" that he's found searching the Internet.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article237674689.html#storylink=cpy

 

Tweets Of The Day -- Sondland Carpet Bombs Trumpland With Pizzazz

(Once again, Sondland's opening statement -- pdf -- is here.)

Gordon Sondland: “I know that members of this committee have frequently framed these complicated issues in the form of a simple question: Was there a ‘quid pro quo?'

With regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting, the answer is yes.”#ImpeachmentHearings

— (((DeanObeidallah))) (@DeanObeidallah) November 20, 2019

shorter Sondland: there's a cancer on the presidency

— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) November 20, 2019

Nothing like having your government exposed as an organized crime syndicate in real time on live television.

— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) November 20, 2019

Let's take a 30,000 foot view of Sondland's testimony pic.twitter.com/jhKVZm3Qsu

— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) November 20, 2019

Democrats should just cancel tonight's debate and use the air time to replay #SondlandTestimony over and over again.

— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) November 20, 2019

The status of House GOP defenses after #SondlandTestimony :

No quid pro quo❌

No first-hand witness❌

Ukrainians didn't know❌

Trump wasn't involved❌

This was just about corruption❌

— Chris Lu (@ChrisLu44) November 20, 2019

Walter Reed standing by for phase two of the physical.

— Schooley (@Rschooley) November 20, 2019

And,

Happy Sondland Day everyone!
Gather ye pizzazz while ye may.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 20, 2019

Consult your physician if your pizzazz lasts more than four hours.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 20, 2019

(The latter tweets referring to puerile hack Jonathan Allen's November 13 piece at nbcnews.com.)

The Latest Smoking Guns

U.S. Embassy official David Holmes is stepping forward, filling in some of the missing pieces in the Trump- Ukraine extortion/ bribery scheme, providing first- hand knowledge of the Giant Toddler's purpose in shaking down Ukraine.  Strategically memory- challenged Gordon Sondland will have some 'splaining to do:

David Holmes told lawmakers in a closed-door impeachment inquiry Friday that US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland had told Trump the Ukrainian President would do "anything you ask him to" and that Sondland had confirmed the Ukrainians were going to "do the investigation," one day after Trump has asked Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a copy of Holmes' opening statement obtained by CNN.

Holmes' statement confirmed the testimony from Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, who revealed the July 26 phone call with lawmakers at his public testimony Wednesday, saying Holmes had informed Taylor about it after he first appeared on Capitol Hill behind closed doors last month. Holmes' testimony places Trump closer to the push for Ukraine to open an investigation into his political rival, and raises additional questions about the testimony of Sondland, who is scheduled to testify publicly next week.

"Sondland told Trump that Zelensky 'loves your ass,' " Holmes said, according to a copy of his opening statement. "I then heard President Trump ask, 'So, he's gonna do the investigation?' Ambassador Sondland replied that 'he's gonna do it,' adding that President Zelensky will do 'anything you ask him to.'" 

Holmes, who was subpoenaed to appear on Friday, explained that Sondland had placed the call to Trump, and he could hear Trump because the call was so loud on the terrace of a restaurant, where they dined with two others. [snip]

Holmes also confirmed Taylor's testimony about the President's thoughts on Ukraine, saying he had asked Sondland "if it was true that the President did not 'give a s--- about Ukraine." 

Holmes said Sondland had responded that Trump cares only about "big stuff." When Holmes said that the Ukraine war was big, Sondland responded, " 'Big stuff' that benefits the President, like the Biden investigation that Mr. Giuliani was pushing," Holmes said. (our emphasis)

Holmes's opening statement is at the link embedded above.

Sondland is expected to appear for a second round of testimony on Wednesday.  Now that he's seen Roger Stone facing hard time for lying to Congress, Sondland may be ready to remember more about the direct connection nitwit crime family boss Donald "The Dumb Don" Trump had in the extortion/ bribery scheme.  One has to wonder also how many intelligence services, in addition to our own, were monitoring the non- secure call.

I hear a whoosh of refreshment coming https://t.co/CppC9WFAnd

— George Conway (@gtconway3d) November 16, 2019

Oh, and there's this minor, related matter:

EXCLUSIVE: At last year's WH Hanukkah party, Lev Parnas & Igor Fruman had a private meeting w Trump & Giuliani during which Trump tasked the two men with “a secret mission” to pressure the Ukrainian gov't to investigate Joe & Hunter Biden, sources say. https://t.co/LoeQ7msJIA

— Vicky Ward (@VickyPJWard) November 16, 2019

Details, please:

Among the many guests who had their pictures taken with President Donald Trump at the White House's annual Hanukkah party [!] last year were two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.  [snip]

At one point during the party that night, Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a large reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani, according to two acquaintances in whom Parnas confided right after the meeting.

Word of the encounter in the White House last December, which has not been previously reported, is further indication that Trump knew Parnas and Fruman, despite Trump publicly stating that he did not on the day after the two men were arrested at Dulles International Airport last month.

Eventually, according to what Parnas told his confidants, the topic turned to Ukraine that night. According to those two confidants, Parnas said that "the big guy," as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and Fruman with what Parnas described as "a secret mission" to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter. (our emphasis)

Parnas, of course, is now cooperating with the House impeachment inquiry as well as with Southern District of New York prosecutors after his and Fruman's indictments for conspiracy, false statements and falsification of records in violation of campaign financing laws. 

[cough cough] The smoke from all those guns going off is getting pretty thick.

It Begins -- Public Hearings On Trump's Ukraine Extortion

Beginning at 10 a.m. EST this morning, the most consequential Congressional hearings in a generation will begin. 

Ambassador William Taylor, charge d'affaires at the American embassy in Ukraine, and George Kent, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, will be testifying in tandem about their knowledge of corrupt demagogue and con man Donald "Impeachable Me" Trump's extortion of Ukraine to manufacture political dirt on a potential rival in exchange for the release of military aid funds.  Here's a brief look at the impeachment hearing schedule.

10 a.m.: The House Intelligence Committee will formally begin the hearing.

10:05 a.m.: Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff and ranking Republican Devin Nunes will give opening statements. The two witnesses will then give their opening statements.

Following opening statements, questions will begin. The chairman and ranking member will each have 45 minutes to ask questions or allow their staff to ask questions. They will have as many alternating 45-minute rounds as they need. Rank-and-file lawmakers will ask questions after that.

The hearing is expected to end between 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

It's basically being televised/ streamed everywhere. The Associated Press website will have running updates of the hearing if you're unable to watch.

Blogging will be limited during the course of the hearing.

BONUS: MSNBC's coverage will include commentary from none other than George Conway, conservative lawyer and unfortunate husband of Trumpist and nasty alternative facts generator Kellyanne Conway. Bwahahaha!

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.  We have some long excerpts today, so let's get started.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.,  has some good advice on how to keep Republicans from cheating you out of your vote (garnered from Carol Anderson of Emery University).  Here are the first four things you should be aware of now, and take action if needed:

1. Check periodically with election officials in your state to make sure you’re properly registered and that your name has not been purged. “We know these lists are flawed. So it’s really important to double check and make sure that you haven’t been wiped off the list erroneously”...

2. If you’ve moved, “Alert election officials just to give them your new address”...

3. “Make sure that your polling place is where you think it is. Georgia, for instance, is continuing to shut down polling places. So whereas you may have always gone to Southside Church to vote, Southside Church may not be the place anymore. They may have moved it five miles away from you”...

4. “Be prepared for chicanery.” In other words, be on the lookout for fake sample ballots, misleading robo-calls and other dirty tricks...

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article237159024.html#storylink=cpy

There are several more, so go check out the rest.  Because, even though there are more of us than there are of them,

Trump’s party knows all too well that the numbers are against them, that they cannot win nationally without cheating. So they do. Behind a fig leaf of concern over imaginary voter fraud, Republicans have imposed photo I.D. laws, voter purges and polling-place closures that disproportionately disenfranchise those who don’t vote GOP. Meaning, pretty much everyone who’s not a straight, white, angry, older male lacking a college diploma.

2020 is an all- hands- on- deck election;  make sure your vote is counted.

Speaking of 2020, Electoral Vote looks at a possibly significant shift in the white working- class female demographic (found via Infidel 753):

McClatchy is running a series of studies of key demographic groups that will probably determine who wins the White House in 2020. The first one is about white working-class women, who make up about 20% of the electorate. They went solidly for Trump in 2016, but many are now having misgivings about doing that again in 2020 (in contrast to white working-class men, whose support of Trump is unwavering).

A study of polls, focus groups, and interviews with voters and over a dozen party strategists, shows that Trump has little chance of winning white working-class women by 27 points again, as he did in 2016. One hint came in 2018, when they went from R+27 to R+14, a drop of 13 points. Forty percent of them now favor impeaching him, up from only 11% in September.

Many voters told the McClatchy reporter that they didn't especially like Trump in 2016, but they hated Hillary Clinton. She won't be on the ballot in 2020. Also important is that Democrats are showing up in rural areas like Howard County, IA, which went for Obama by 21 points in 2012 and for Trump by 20 points in 2016. One resident, April Cheeseman, was repelled by both Trump and Clinton in 2016, but now says she will probably support whomever the Democrats nominate. Many other people had the same story to tell.

The Democrats don't have to win white working-class women outright to capture Iowa's 6 electoral votes, but if they can knock 10 or 15 points off Trump's margin with them, that might be enough. The same holds for most of the neighboring states. If the Democrats show up, listen to people, and take what they hear to heart, they have a good chance of making big gains with this key demographic group.

These aren't Trump dead- ender cultists.  They've been paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and they also vote pocket book issues like health care and minimum wage.

The public impeachment hearings are starting this week, and Margaret Sullivan has some pointers for the media on how to serve the public interest:

Stress substance, not speculation. Journalists and pundits love to ponder about how the public is reacting to news, though they aren’t much good at it. [snip]

“Decline to speculate on how this is playing to voters in the swing states,” is the advice of New York University professor and press critic Jay Rosen.

A related issue: The extreme likelihood that the media will be focusing on the partisan fight, rather than the substance of what is being proved or not proved in the hearings themselves...[snip]

Don’t let stunts hijack the coverage. If we know anything about Trump’s reaction when things get tough, it’s that he and his allies will haul out some attention-grabbing performance art and its distractions. [snip]

Avoid Barr-Letter Syndrome. It was a little over six months ago that Attorney General William P. Barr took it upon himself to summarize the Mueller report in a misleading letter that the news media — pretty much en masse — represented as an accurate summation of the 448-page report about Russian interference in the 2016 election and its aftermath. [snip]

You’d think journalists would have learned that lesson. But then more recently came the release of a partial, rough summary of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that asked for “a favor.” (The phone call, of course, is at the heart of the impeachment hearings, which explore Trump’s holding up military aid to Ukraine in trade for help in damaging his political opponents.)

In the initial round of coverage, almost all in the news media characterized this as “the transcript,” which strongly suggested that it was verbatim. It wasn’t — though it was damning enough, anyway.

Partly as a result, we see legions of Trump fans in T-shirts with the words “Read the Transcript.”(Actually, anybody who reads the transcript would discern abuse of power.) [snip]

Beware mealy-mouthed and misleading language. Punditry will be running even more amok than usual once the hearings begin. And we’ll be hearing a lot about what a divided nation we have and how ugly politics has become. We’ll be hearing the term “quid pro quo” endlessly...

"Extortion" and "bribery" make the point more accurately and directly (or "shakedown," as crime family boss Trump would understand the word).

In case you missed it, it looks like one of Trump consigliere Rudy "You Have A Fool For A Lawyer" Giuliani's bagmen is flipping:

An associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who was involved in a campaign to pressure Ukraine into aiding President Trump’s political prospects has broken ranks, opening a dialogue with congressional impeachment investigators and accusing the president of falsely denying their relationship.

The associate, Lev Parnas, had previously resisted speaking with investigators for the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings, which are examining the president’s pressure attempts in Ukraine. A former lawyer for Mr. Trump was then representing Mr. Parnas.

But since then, Mr. Parnas has hired new lawyers who contacted the congressional investigators last week to notify them to “direct any future correspondence or communication to us,” according to a copy of the letter.

The lawyers also signaled on Monday that Mr. Parnas, who was arrested last month on campaign finance charges, is prepared to comply with a congressional subpoena for his documents and testimony. (our emphasis)

Needless to say, the legal peril for Rudy just went up exponentially.

We once again close by recommending you visit Infidel 753's link round- up for much more variety and scope than we can offer.  He puts in a lot of effort every week just on this one feature, and you owe it to yourselves to check it out.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article237159024.html#storylink=cpy[snip]

Ukraine Shakedown Call Memo Had "Crucial" Phrases Edited Out

While what was in the memorandum (not a transcript!) of the July 25 shakedown call between insipid crime family boss Donald "Dumb Don" Trump and the Ukrainian president was damning enough, it appears some of those ellipses in the memorandum hid more incriminating evidence.  What a surprise!

The revelation came from testimony yesterday by Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman:

Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, told House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that the White House transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president omitted crucial words and phrases, and that his attempts to include them failed, according to three people familiar with the testimony.

The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, and an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son Hunter.

Colonel Vindman, who appeared on Capitol Hill wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military medals, told House impeachment investigators that he tried to change the reconstructed transcript made by the White House staff to reflect the omissions. But while some of his edits appeared to have been successful, he said, those two corrections were not made.  [snip]

It is not clear why some of Colonel Vindman’s changes were not made, but the decision by a White House lawyer to quickly lock down the reconstructed transcript subverted the normal process of handling such documents, according to people familiar with the matter. 

In the whistle-blower complaint that was made public, the C.I.A. officer wrote that placing the rough transcript in the server was part of an effort to lock it down, restrict access and a sign that “White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call.”  (our emphasis)

Our reaction when we saw those ellipses in the memorandum was "what incriminating evidence did they edit out?"  By now, though, it's almost like carrying coal to Newcastle,  thanks to what they left in the memorandum anyway, multiple corroborating testimonies, and the blurting confessions by Dumb Don and his acting chief of staff.  But the selective editing and locking it down in the secure system could be evidence of a cover- up and obstruction of Congress, though there was no recording of the call on the American side to match to the memorandum and the rough transcript is locked away for now.  All things that would happen if you're totes not hiding more quid pro quo evidence.

NSC Official To Testify About "Alarming" Ukraine Shakedown Campaign

Another White (Supremacist) House official who listened to the July 25 shakedown call between crime family boss Donald "Dumb Don" Trump and the Ukrainian president will confirm today that there was a specific request made by Dumb Don for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. There also should be immediate repercussions for morally-/ethically- /memory- challenged Amb. Gordon Sondland from this:

A White House official who listened to President Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky will tell House investigators on Tuesday that he was so alarmed by the Ukraine pressure campaign that he twice alerted a top White House lawyer.

Lt Col. Alexander Vindman, who has served on the National Security Council since 2018, will recount overhearing U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland — a key player in the pressure campaign — discuss with Ukrainian officials the need for the country to launch investigations into the 2016 election and the Bidens in order to secure a Zelensky meeting with Trump.  [snip]

The conversation, according to the testimony, happened after a White House meeting with the Ukrainians had already been cut short by then-National Security Advisor John Bolton when Sondland brought up the request for the investigations.

“Following this meeting, there was a scheduled debriefing during which Amb.
Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into
the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma,” Vindman’s prepared remarks said. “I stated to Amb. Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security, and that such investigations were not something the NSC was going to get involved in or push.” [snip]

Vindman also listened in on the now-infamous July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, in which the President asked the Ukrainian leader for a “favor.”

“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen,” Vindman plans on saying. The statement goes on to say that were Ukraine to investigate the Biden family or Burisma — the gas firm on whose board Hunter Biden sat — “it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”

“This would all undermine U.S. national security,” the statement reads.  (our emphasis)

The text of Lt. Col. Vindman's opening statement is provided at the link above.

Given the White House's own account of the call, the admission on camera by Dumb Don and lickspittle twit Mick Mulvaney, and now multiple eyewitnesses, there can be absolutely no question about the nature or intent of the "request" that was made and what "deliverables" were being held in abeyance to get that request acted on by Ukraine.

Now Sondland's previous sworn testimony is called into question on several key points by at least three witnesses that we know of:  former Amb. William Taylor, former NSC staffer Fiona Hill and now Lt. Col. Vindman.  Both have stated there was a definite quid pro quo that Sondland was fully aware of and engaged in communicating.  Moreover, Sondland's own attorney attempted damage control over the weekend by leaking that Sondland, in private testimony, said he believed there was a quid pro quo involved in the Ukraine shakedown.  Watch today's testimony from Vindman spur Sondland to scurry back to the Hill to amend his public testimony.  Let's hope his resignation follows shortly thereafter.

BONUS: Trump's depraved cultists have already begun their McCarthyite smear campaign against Vindman, a decorated Army officer and a patriot.  Also, be sure to read this background on Lt. Col. Vindman from Philip Bump (with a Ken Burns tie- in), which makes the cultists' smears all the more depraved.

BONUS II:

I hope everyone understands what it means for every immigrant, every Jew, and everyone with roots in countries outside of Western Europe if Republicans get away with smearing a purple heart winner because his family are Soviet emigres. https://t.co/MSztk9NS6w

— Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) October 29, 2019

Vindman served in the Army. On the other hand, Duffy served on *checks notes* The Real World Boston https://t.co/Jv1u8hJLcC

— *Palpatine voice* UNLIMITED DADPUNS🍝 (@AdamSerwer) October 29, 2019

BONUS III:  Sondland might not escape with a "let me just amend my previous lies, er, testimony, please" gambit --

Based on all the testimony so far, I believe that Ambassador Gordon Sondland committed perjury. https://t.co/lOGRj8s1yP

— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) October 29, 2019

(Photo: Lt. Col. Vindman)

Vile Distraction Alert!

If you can believe the "two people familiar with the matter" =cough= DOJ political hacks? =cough= who are being cited, the lawless regime is ramping up its efforts to smear the patriots who first initiated the probe into Putin puppet Donald "Tovarich" Trump's 2016 election collusion with Russia.  What ... curious timing:

Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

The opening of a criminal investigation is likely to raise alarms that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies. Mr. Trump fired James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director under whose watch agents opened the Russia inquiry, and has long assailed other top former law enforcement and intelligence officials as partisans who sought to block his election.

Do you notice something missing from the Times' sources' account?  Like maybe the grounds for making it a criminal inquiry?  They're not there because there are none. The leak of this dubious (at best) information is coming at a time when the impeachment inquiry is taking up all the media oxygen, polls are moving quickly in the direction of impeach and remove, and the involvement of corrupt theocrat AG William "Low" Barr up to his double chin in the Ukraine shakedown scandal is becoming more public.

Is is just us, or do you smell a distraction?

Greg Sargent does:

I think it's plausible that William Barr might release his "review" of the origins of the Russia investigation as impeachment hits its climax, for maximum confusion/fog machine effect:https://t.co/2rjCJ4R9Lo pic.twitter.com/HwZaseTePi

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) October 23, 2019

The distraction may also be to divert the spotlight away from Barr's own skeevy role in the Ukraine shakedown, as Sargent points out here:

The testimony from Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, also contains a key revelation about Attorney General William P. Barr — one that provides an occasion to revisit his role in this scandal, and hints at how Barr will likely continue perverting the U.S. government machinery to help Trump get away with it.

Taylor’s key mention of Barr comes in a very damning passage. Taylor recounted that he’d learned that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had informed Ukraine that the frozen military aid would be conditioned on launching the “investigations” Trump wanted. [snip]

Taylor then adds:

We also discussed the possibility that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, rather than President Zelenskyy, would make a statement about investigations, potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr’s probe into the investigation of interference in the 2016 elections.

Looks like Barr is forging (yes) ahead on his "investigate the investigators" sham, regardless of Ukrainian/U.K./Italian/etc., cooperation.  He's nothing if not a corrupt tool.  His eagerness to undermine his own Justice Department's and intelligence community's findings are a profound attack on our institutions and the rule of law.  But, as with all these vicious Trump lickspittles, the only thing that matters is power, and maintaining it, regardless of the damage done to our country.  (Reps. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler released a joint statement on the matter.)

We await the inevitable rush by the usual media suspects to "but her emails!" the shit out of this.

BONUS:

Senate Intel is wrapping up a three-year bipartisan investigation, and we've found nothing remotely justifying this.

Mr. Barr's "investigation" has already jeopardized key international intelligence partnerships.

He needs to come before Congress and explain himself. https://t.co/hl9qM86QrM

— Mark Warner (@MarkWarner) October 25, 2019

Tweets Of The Day -- Cooper Testimony Corroborates Ukraine Quid Pro Quo

Kate Brannen, executive director at Just Security, has a scoop about yesterday's testimony from the Department of Defense's DAS for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia's Laura Cooper:

From what I've heard, her testimony confirmed a lot of what other witnesses have told House investigators:

1. There was unanimous support from Trump's Cabinet and the interagency to supply Ukraine with security assistance. But the White House withheld it anyway.

— Kate Brannen (@K8brannen) October 24, 2019

2. Providing security assistance to Ukraine is in the interests of the United States. Withholding it is not.

— Kate Brannen (@K8brannen) October 24, 2019

3. She was made aware of a quid pro quo between the security assistance and a commitment from Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.

— Kate Brannen (@K8brannen) October 24, 2019

No wonder the Republican assclowns wanted to distract from her testimony yesterday.

Building the case, step by step, brick by brick.

Ambassador Taylor Testifies To Quid Pro Quo With Ukraine

If banana Republicans weren't in charge of the Senate and other levers of power, this would be game (the phone call "transcript"), set (Mick Mulvaney's confession), match in the impeachment inquiry:

The senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine said Tuesday he was told release of military aid was contingent on public declarations from Ukraine that it would investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election, contradicting President Trump’s denial that he used the money as leverage for political gain.

Acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. testified behind closed doors in the House impeachment probe of Trump that he stands by his characterization that it was “crazy” to make the assistance contingent on investigations he found troubling. [snip]

Taylor said he spoke to Ambassador Gordon Sondland, the U.S. envoy to the European Union.

“During that phone call, Amb. Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President [Volodymyr] Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election,” Taylor said in the statement.  [snip]

 “Amb. Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Amb. Sondland said, ‘everything’ was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance,’” Taylor told House investigators.

 “He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations."  (our emphasis)

Let's see the amoral cowards spin this away.

Here's where you can read Amb. Taylor's opening statement.

Mulvaney Cops To Ukraine Quid Pro Quo (UPDATED)

The latest White (Supremacist) House "defense," ladies and gentlemen:

"To be clear, what you described is a quid pro quo" -- Here's Mick Mulvaney casually admitting that Trump held up aid to Ukraine as leverage to get the Ukrainian government to investigate the 2016 election pic.twitter.com/ylz7BKEmKd

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 17, 2019

UPDATE:  Mick, Mick, Mick --

A GOP committee source following Mulvaney’s press briefing: “His diatribe has blown up the Sondland interview—Democrats are referring to the transcript mid-interview. WTF”

— Alayna Treene (@alaynatreene) October 17, 2019

Senior DOJ official, reacting to Mulvaney: "If the White House was withholding aid in regards to the cooperation of any investigation at the Department of Justice, that is news to us.” @evanperez

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) October 17, 2019

More reaction: A source familiar with the reaction inside the president's legal team adds: "I think people are a bit stunned."@Acosta

— Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) October 17, 2019

Anyone stupid enough to work for Trump is too stupid to pull off the con. https://t.co/Fbw0Pgxg9o

— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) October 17, 2019

We're stunned, too -- at the overwhelming stench of corruption and incompetence.

Two Giuliani Associates Arrested (UPDATED)

If you're downstream of the impeachment dam, you may want to evacuate.  Two of dingbat Rudy "Ghouliani" Giuliani's go- betweens in his plot to manufacture dirt about the Bidens have been arrested:

Two foreign-born donors to a pro- Trump fundraising committee who helped Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to investigate Democrat Joe Biden were arrested late Wednesday on criminal charges of violating campaign finance rules and are expected to appear in court on Thursday, according to people familiar with the matter.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Florida businessmen, have been under investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan, and are expected to appear in federal court in Virginia later on Thursday, the people said...

If they don't skip (as they apparently were arrested trying), prosecutors may be looking for these jamokes to offer up incriminating information on someone up the food chain on this or any other investigation.  Or, since this is the U.S. Attorney's office, un- indicted co- conspirator William "Low" Barr may just make the case go away, as he did with the Stormy Daniels hush money campaign violation case and, most recently, with his attempt to kill the whistleblower complaint, obstructing justice to protect the criminal dimbulb in the Oval Office.  Or, maybe the dimbulb himself will get involved to protect a Ghouliani crime associate, as it's been revealed he did in 2017. Interesting and hopeful development nonetheless.

Only the best!

UPDATE: The net could ensnare more Trumpists --

If prosecutors are correct, this means two people who worked on legal matters for Trump were simultaneously running a straw donor scheme on behalf of foreign interests.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 10, 2019

Congressman 1 is Pete Sessions https://t.co/UkOBYS82tw https://t.co/ovQxqDjVzZ

— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 10, 2019

Huh. @GOPLeader is on the take.

No wonder he doesn't want to pursue impeachment on issues relating to his campaign donors. https://t.co/IRFZwR9u9J

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) October 10, 2019

(GOP Leader is California dimbulb Rep. Kevin McCarthy, world's worst witness for the defense.)

(Pence, Fruman, Parnas, Buffoon, Ghouliani in happier times)

Lock them up!  Lock them up!

(Image: "Don't tell the cops where I'm hiding!")