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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/12/19 6:56 am • # 76 
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Trump's personal lawyer Giuliani hires his own attorneys
Karen Freifeld, Jan Wolfe

Rudy Giuliani, a personal lawyer for U.S. President Donald Trump and a central figure in a congressional impeachment inquiry, has hired lawyers to represent him as prosecutors examine his interactions with two men arrested on campaign finance charges.

A former New York mayor and federal prosecutor, Giuliani wrote on Twitter that he is being represented by three New York lawyers - Robert Costello, a former Manhattan federal prosecutor, Eric Creizman and Melissa Madrigal.

Giuliani is under scrutiny by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office in connection with Ukraine-born Lev Parnas and Belarus-born Igor Fruman, a law enforcement source told Reuters last month.

Parnas and Fruman were arrested in October on charges of illegally funneling money to a pro-Trump election committee and other political candidates.[nL2N2780U9] They have pleaded not guilty.

Giuliani has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing.

He is central to a Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives impeachment inquiry into whether Republican Trump abused his office for political gain.

The inquiry is focused on a July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who served as a director of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

In a transcript released on Wednesday of testimony here by Bill Taylor, the top U.S. envoy in Ukraine, Giuliani was mentioned 68 times. At one point, Taylor spoke of when it became clear a meeting between Zelenskiy and Trump was conditioned on investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian influence in the 2016 elections.

“It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani,” Taylor testified.

For nearly a year, Giuliani has pursued unsubstantiated allegations that Biden pushed to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor to stop him from investigating Burisma. Giuliani has said Parnas and Fruman assisted him in this effort.

Giuliani also told Reuters he played a role in the effort to remove Marie Yovanovitch, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine recalled in May.

“You can knock yourself out looking at everything I do and I do not break laws,” Giuliani said in an Oct. 14 interview.

DEFENDING TRUMP

Giuliani tweeted on Wednesday that the investigation he conducted into what he called Ukrainian collusion and corruption was in defense of Trump, who he said was wrongly accused of colluding with Russia to influence his 2016 election.

A spokesman for the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment. Creizman confirmed he was representing Giuliani. Costello did not immediately return a call for comment.

Costello has represented deceased hotel mogul Leona Helmsley and the late George Steinbrenner, who owned the New York Yankees.

According to his firm’s website, Costello served as the former deputy chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York, which brought the charges against Parnas and Fruman. Giuliani led that office from 1983 to 1989.

Parnas and Fruman are accused of using a shell company to donate $325,000 to the pro-Trump committee, America First Action, and raising money for former Texas Congressman Pete Sessions as part of an effort to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Giuliani told Reuters in October that he was paid $500,000 to provide business and legal advice to Fraud Guarantee, a company Parnas co-founded.

Giuliani has said he had no involvement in the flow of money at the heart of the indictment of Parnas and Fruman.

As part of their impeachment inquiry, House Democrats have subpoenaed Giuliani’s communications in connection with his efforts to push the Ukraine investigation.

Trump has derided the congressional probe as a political smear, and Giuliani has said he would not cooperate.

Trump added Giuliani to his legal defense team in April 2018 in connection with the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian interference in the 2016 election to undermine Trump’s Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. Giuliani quickly went on a media blitz in defense of Trump. [nL1N21E0IV]

In March, Mueller determined there was insufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia.

Costello told Reuters in March he had known Giuliani for 45 years. Last year, he asked him about the possibility of Trump pardoning Michael Cohen, the president’s former fixer and lawyer.

In an April 21, 2018, email that leaked, Costello told Cohen he could “sleep well tonight. You have friends in high places.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN1XG2WH


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/12/19 2:35 pm • # 77 
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Retired Navy commander releases DEVASTATING anti-Trump ad

Democrat Elaine Luria served the U.S. in uniform for 20 years, joining the Navy when she was 17. She beat Republican Scott Taylor for Virginia’s 2nd Congressional district seat in 2018 by a narrow margin. Now she is launching her reelection campaign with a powerful new ad

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrat ... live_video


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/13/19 8:34 am • # 78 
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Well worth to listen to Graham over and over again...

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4819793/ ... mpeachment


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/17/19 10:26 am • # 79 
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Marie Yovanovitch raced onto my "personal heroes" list ~ she is/was a ROCK STAR!!! ~ Sooz

Trump’s central argument against impeachment crumbled under the weight of Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony
Written by Amanda Marcotte / Salon November 15, 2019

In the morass of conflicting and often incomprehensible Republican defenses of Donald Trump, there is just one that seemed like it might have legs — especially after Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, spoke during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing. That would be the claim that Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine not to strong-arm that nation’s leaders into boosting his re-election campaign, but because of a generalized opposition to “corruption” in that nation. This was laughable on its face, since Trump’s clear and public stance throughout his political career has been pro-corruption. But sure, it might be enough to bamboozle some Americans who don’t follow politics closely and somehow missed hearing that their president is a grifter.

Friday’s hearing, which featured Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, should be enough to kill the last remaining tendrils of any good-faith claim that Trump was motivated by some — don’t laugh now — deeply felt objection to corruption in Ukraine.

“In her time in Kyiv, Ambassador Yovanovitch was tough on corruption, too tough on corruption for some, and her principled stance made her enemies,” House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff, D.-Calif., said in his opening statement. “And Ambassador Yovanovitch did not just ‘piss off’ corrupt Ukrainians, like the corrupt former prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko, but also certain Americans like Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, and two individuals, now indicted, who worked with him, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.”

In her own opening statement, Yovanovitch carefully laid out the case that she was fired over her anti-corruption work in Ukraine, because “Ukrainians who preferred to play by the old, corrupt rules” had found similarly corrupt Americans and “succeeded in orchestrating the removal of a U.S. ambassador” — if you’re keeping score, that would be Yovanovitch herself.

Despite efforts by Republicans to suggest there was some legitimate reason for Trump to remove Yovanovitch from her post, her testimony made clear that Trump, Giuliani and some of Giuliani’s sleazy associates zeroed in on her specifically because they saw her anti-corruption views as a direct threat to the schemes they had for Ukraine.

Yovanovitch doesn’t seem to have known, while she was at her post in Kyiv, that Giuliani was trying to leverage Ukrainian connections in a scheme meant to level false accusations at former Vice President Joe Biden. But it’s apparent that Giuliani and his goons saw her as a general threat because of her strong anti-corruption views.

Far from being opposed to corruption in Ukraine, Trump appears to have been instinctively drawn to the most corrupt people in the country, and ended up firing his own ambassador in hopes that such corrupt figures could help him cheat in the 2020 election back home.

That in itself is alarming enough. What also came across during the hearing was the personal malice with which the campaign against Yovanovitch — regularly and correctly called a “smear campaign” — was conducted. For months, Giuliani, a corrupt Ukrainian ex-prosecutor named Yuri Lutsenko, Giuliani’s shady fixers, then-Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, Donald Trump Jr. and the president himself spread vicious lies about Yovanovitch, eventually driving her from her post.

The nastiness against Yovanovitch continued after she was driven from the office. During his infamous July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump referred to her (not by name) as “bad news” and said, “Well, she’s going to go through some things.”

“It didn’t sound good. It sounded like — a threat,” Yovanovitch said during the hearing.

Even during Friday’s hearing itself, Trump kept up the vitriol, going on Twitter and blaming Yovanovitch personally for not being able to single-handedly end the civil war in Somalia when she was posted there. Schiff read the tweet aloud to Yovanovitch, calling it “witness intimidation,” which could in itself be an impeachable offense.

The ugliness of Trump and his allies toward Yovanovitch is deeply weird on its surface. It’s one thing for a criminally minded conspiracy of the sort Trump and Giuliani were running to coldly remove anyone they see as a threat to their schemes. It’s another thing to get so obsessive, personal and vitriolic about it.

Ultimately, the most obvious explanation for the depths of animosity goes back, as many things do with Trump, to gender. The hatred towards Yovanovitch and the glee that her Trumpian detractors took in bashing her had a tone familiar to anyone who has seen misogynist gang-ups on social media, such as the Gamergate attacks on online feminist bloggers. For men who hate women, having perceived “permission” to attack one tends to cause them to go buck-wild, and that is obviously what was happening — and continues to happen — with Yovanovitch.

This wasn’t a #MeToo story, but it’s not hard to see the parallels. Yovanovitch was removed for politically corrupt reasons, but it’s clear that Trump and his buddies also just straight up enjoyed taking a woman down a peg.

Yovanovitch’s visible pain at being the target of a misogyny-tinged public assault on her character and career was powerful stuff, especially as she is just the latest in a long line of women who bravely, even while trembling, recount their stories of abuse by Trump and his fellow pigs before a national audience. Yovanovitch is such a sympathetic character that Republicans clearly decided the best way to discredit her was to avoid talking about the larger issues of corruption, and instead to attack her right to be perceived as a victim.

One after another, Republicans on the committee fussed over the fact that Yovanovitch still has a job and has had continued access to prestigious job opportunities, trying to reduce the natural sympathy people can experience when they see someone who feels hurt because she’s been treated unfairly. The idea was clearly to paint Yovanovitch as spoiled and ungrateful — ironically, leaning on sexist stereotypes to try to wave away any concerns that sexism fueled her mistreatment.

Ultimately, these attacks — like all other Republican defenses of Trump — don’t make sense. While it’s distressing to see how badly Trump hurt this woman personally, that’s not really the issue here. The issue here is that Trump is a corrupt criminal, not that he’s an asshole. While he no doubt took pleasure in harming a woman, the bigger problem is why he was doing it, which was in service of a larger campaign to recruit corrupt Ukrainians to help him cheat in the 2020 election. Her pain is compelling, but it’s ultimately beside the point.

Yovanovitch herself made this point in her statement, arguing that her removal “should concern everyone in this room” because “shady interests the world over have learned how little it takes to remove an American ambassador who does not give them what they want.”

She will now be subject to an absolute flood of misogynist abuse, similar to the one Christine Blasey Ford endured when she stepped forward to accuse Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. It will get personal. She will be called whiny and vindictive, and painted with all sorts of reductive sexist stereotypes. In the face of this, it’s important to understand that at the end of the day, this isn’t about Marie Yovanovitch. It’s about the fact that Trump is a criminal — and he hated her because he saw her as a woman who wanted to prevent crimes.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/trumps-central-argument-against-impeachment-crumbled-under-the-weight-of-marie-yovanovitchs-testimony/


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/17/19 1:57 pm • # 80 
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Read an article this morning that said after Nunes and Stefanik played their little rules game trying to pretend the Dems were being unfair, Stefanik's Democrat opponent in her district raised $400,000 in an hour. I'll try to find the article and post it.


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PostPosted: 11/18/19 11:28 am • # 81 
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Here's a thought: I'm almost beginning to believe that maybe the DiC's craving need for attention is being bolstered by him playing the "victim" ~ :ey ~ "live links" in original ~ Sooz

On impeachment, three days that Trump would like to forget
11/18/19 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen

Friday’s testimony from Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, was quite brutal for the White House, leaving little doubt that Donald Trump and his associates hatched a scheme that prioritized the president’s interests over the United States’. Her appearance came on the heels of equally damaging testimony from Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state.

But observers who turned their attention away from the impeachment inquiry after Yovanovitch left the hearing room to a standing ovation missed a 72-hour period that likely brought a feeling of dread to many in the White House. Late Friday, for example, David Holmes further tied Trump to the Ukraine scheme.

Quote:
David Holmes, a career foreign service officer, told impeachment investigators Friday that he overheard a phone call between President Donald Trump and E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland in which the president asked Sondland if Ukraine would investigate the Bidens, a source with direct knowledge of his closed-door testimony said. […]

“I heard President Trump then clarify that Ambassador Sondland was in Ukraine. Ambassador Sondland replied, yes, he was in Ukraine, and went on to state that President Zelenskiy ‘loves your ass.’ I then heard President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’” Holmes recounted, according to the statement. “Ambassador Sondland replied, that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that President Zelenskiy will do, ‘anything you ask him to.’”

In case this isn’t obvious, Holmes appears to have, among other things, directly implicated the president in the scheme for which Trump is likely to be impeached.

Making matters worse was testimony from Mark Sandy, the deputy associate director for national security programs at the White House budget office.

Quote:
A longtime budget official testified Saturday that the White House decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine in mid-July was highly irregular and that senior political appointees in the Office of Management and Budget were unable to provide an explanation for the delay.

The testimony from Mark Sandy, the first employee of OMB to testify in the House impeachment probe, appeared to confirm Democrats’ assertion that the decision to withhold nearly $400 million in congressionally approved funds for Ukraine, including millions in lethal aid, was a political one.

Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has said decisions like these occur “all the time.” It now appears that claim wasn’t true.

Sandy, you’ll recall, was removed from the Trump administration’s process for funds dispersal while the White House’s scheme was being implemented. The power was put in the hands of Michael Duffey, a political appointee at OMB, who recently served as the executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party.

Making matters worse still was what we learned about the testimony from Tim Morrison.

Quote:
A former White House national security official told House investigators that Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, was acting at President Trump’s behest and spoke to a top Ukrainian official about exchanging military aid for political investigations – two elements at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on the National Security Council, testified that between July 16 and Sept. 11, he understood that Sondland had spoken to Trump about half a dozen times, according to a transcript of his sworn Oct. 31 deposition released by House committees Saturday. Trump has said he does not know Sondland well and has tried to distance himself from the E.U. ambassador, whom Trump put in charge of Ukraine policy along with two others, even though Ukraine is not part of the European Union.

And let’s not forget the newly released transcript of testimony from Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence.

Quote:
Ms. Williams, who listened to the call between Messrs. Trump and Zelensky on July 25, told House impeachment investigators that she found Mr. Trump’s request for investigations “unusual and inappropriate.”

She said the request made her wonder about the reason for the hold on the security assistance. Ms. Williams testified that she never received an official explanation for the hold.

This, right on cue, was enough to generate another angry Trump tweet, accusing Pence’s aide of being a “Never Trumper.” The vice president’s office, in an embarrassing display, soon after described Williams as “a State Department employee.” That’s technically true, though Pence and his team chose her to help advise the vice president on matters of national security. Team Pence apparently doesn’t see the need to stand in support of its own colleague, who dared to say what was plainly true.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of the White House’s most shameless cheerleaders, told reporters yesterday, “I think, frankly, things are going well for the president.” Maybe the far-right congressman was referring to some other president?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/impeachment-three-days-trump-would-forget


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PostPosted: 11/19/19 1:42 pm • # 82 
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jimwilliam wrote:
Read an article this morning that said after Nunes and Stefanik played their little rules game trying to pretend the Dems were being unfair, Stefanik's Democrat opponent in her district raised $400,000 in an hour. I'll try to find the article and post it.

And deservedly so, jim! ~ every day, every single day, of these impeachment hearings the GOPers manage to find a [previously unimaginable] new LOW ~ :drfl ~ Sooz

GOP's impeachment antics backfire: Maybe Elise Stefanik just wants to lose
Stefanik's fall: Why did a congresswoman from an upstate New York purple district just set herself on fire?
Sophia Tesfaye / November 19, 2019 4:31PM (UTC)

Since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives following sweeping midterm victories last year, Republicans have had little recourse to stop attempts at congressional oversight of the Trump administration. So, they’ve resorted to rotating a few willing members to dutifully gaslight, grandstand and exhibit fake outrage while hoping to create the illusion of fighting the good fight — all for Fox News hosts who hail them as the true heroes of the republic.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, is on permanent assignment, as witnessed by his disgraceful conduct during impeachment hearings. Important supporting roles are filled by Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio (and of the Ohio State wrestling team's sex scandal), and now the newest rising Republican star, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York.

When public impeachment hearings began last Wednesday, House Republicans suddenly subbed in Jordan for fear of not having strong enough attack dogs on the House Intelligence Committee. They also apparently did not have enough women, which isn't that surprising — of 102 women in the House, only 13 are Republicans. When it came time to question Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Republicans relied on Stefanik, the only woman on the committee, to do their grilling. A third-term congresswoman from rural upstate New York who made history at age 30 in 2014 as the youngest woman ever elected to Congress — a record since surpassed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — Stefanik emerged Friday as one of the leading Republican voices defending Trump.

She called for the original CIA whistleblower to be outed, repeatedly clashing with Committee chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and pushed the thoroughly debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind election meddling in 2016.

Minutes after the hearing started, Stefanik said to Schiff: “We know clearly you're going to interrupt us throughout this hearing.”

“Since the chairman has gaveled out all of my colleagues with their unanimous consent,” complained Stefanik, “I am going to read for the record many of the chairman’s comments in September of the importance of hearing from the whistleblower.”

When the committee returned from intermission during its Friday impeachment hearing, Nunes tried to yield some of his time to Stefanik, in violation of long-established House rules. As she began to speak, Schiff promptly gaveled her off.

“What is the interruption for this time?” Stefanik shot back. Schiff reiterated that she wasn’t recognized.

“I just recognized her,” Nunes asserted. “You’re gagging the young lady from New York?”

Stefanik then protested before finally ceding. “This is the fifth time you have interrupted members of Congress, duly elected members of Congress,” she said. At the end of the six-hour public hearing, she accused the Democrats of having a “regime of secrecy.”

It was an unbelievably transparent charade, of course. Republicans on the committee deliberately broke the rules so that they could appear on Fox News and complain about it later. They no doubt had the "muzzled" talking point prepared in advance.

What’s less obvious is why Stefanik willingly took on such a high-profile role during the impeachment hearings. Her district tilts only slightly Republican, and voted for Democrats in six previous presidential elections before swinging to Donald Trump in 2016. Stefanik's brand was built around a carefully cultivated image of moderation, and she’s now rebranded herself as a Trump loyalist and all-out obstructionist in the mold of Jordan and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.

Conservative media immediately criticized Schiff for interrupting a woman and Republicans rushed to promote her. But Stefanik's likely 2020 Democratic opponent, Tedra Cobb, announced Sunday on Twitter that she raised $1 million in the days since Stefanik’s outburst.

Stefanik, for her part, has tweeted the link to her fundraising page eight times on her personal account since Friday. But with glorious infamy comes greater scrutiny, as she quickly found out after posing for a picture with Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and Republican congressional candidate in Florida.

Now Stefanik seems stuck. Either she continues to spearhead obstructionism and raises boatloads of cash for her opponent after every hearing, or she backs off. A newspaper that endorsed Stefanik in 2016 wrote last week that she “is sacrificing her integrity.”

“She is a loyal mouthpiece for Trump’s talking points,” wrote the editorial board of the Post-Star of Glens Falls, New York. “In a different time, she could have grown into a position of power and respect; instead, she is another Trump acolyte, tossing buzzwords to the mob and crying ‘fake news’ at every fact she wishes would go away.”

This looks like a no-win situation for Stefanik. She may become a MAGA fan favorite but she’s jeopardized her electoral advantage in a purple district by singlehandedly funding her previously unknown opponent’s campaign. She should take a lesson from the trajectory of former Rep. Claudia Tenney, another member from upstate New York who made a name for herself by claiming that many mass shooters turn out to be Democrats and that the deep state was responsible for ordering Ben Carson's $31,000 dining set. Tenney fell victim to the 2018 blue wave, losing narrowly to Democrat Anthony Brindisi in a district Trump carried by 15 points.

Stefanik would like to paint herself as an “independent-minded bipartisan” but she has now made clear that the entirety of the GOP has sold their souls to Trump. She must now run for re-election on a record of enabling a corrupt and unfit president even as he has failed to boost Republican candidates to victory in red states. Perhaps this is another benefit of the televised impeachment hearings. Republicans are shameless, and now they're setting themselves on fire.

https://www.salon.com/2019/11/19/gops-impeachment-antics-backfire-maybe-elise-stefanik-just-wants-to-lose/


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PostPosted: 11/19/19 6:35 pm • # 83 
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I watched that Brindisi race because it was too close to call for a very long time.


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/20/19 9:56 am • # 84 
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BUCKLE UP, folks! ~ the evidence, especially from "the GOP's witnesses", is beyond even my own expectations ~ I'm now expecting a full-blown melt-down from the DiC ~ :eek ~ some "live links" in original ~ Sooz

In impeachment hearings, even the GOP’s witnesses are hurting Trump
11/20/19 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 11/19/19, 9:00 PM ET, "Republican-requested impeachment witnesses do Trump no favors", accessible via the end link.]

Yesterday was the first day in which the House impeachment inquiry featured public testimony from witnesses requested specifically by Republican members of the panel. As NBC News reported, these witnesses “were expected to provide testimony helpful to the president.”

The report added, succinctly, “They did not.”

Not surprisingly, the proceedings covered an enormous amount of ground over the course of several hours, but as Rachel noted at the top of last night’s show, this was among the most striking moments of the afternoon session:

Quote:
Under questioning from Democrats, Tim Morrison, the former top National Security Council official for Russia and European affairs, was asked to recall a September 1 conversation between US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and Ukraine official Andriy Yermak. That discussion has become central to the question of whether US military assistance to Kyiv was conditioned upon Ukraine opening investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden’s family and other Democrats.

According to Morrison, it clearly was.

“What did Ambassador Sondland tell you that he told Mr. Yermak?” Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman asked Morrison. Morrison replied, “That the Ukrainians would have to have the prosecutor general make a statement with respect to the investigations as a condition of having the aid lifted.”

Morrison went on to describe a conversation with Sondland, following the ambassador’s conversation with Trump, who said Zelensky had to make a statement the White House wanted to hear as a condition for security assistance to be released.

Oh. So the committee members and everyone watching heard from Morrison – a Republican-called witness who, up until very recently, was part of Donald Trump’s White House team – confirm that there was, in fact, a quid pro quo, communicated to Ukraine by a Trump emissary. If our vulnerable ally was going to get the military aid it was desperate to receive, the Ukrainian government would have to publicly declare an investigation into one of the American president’s domestic political rivals.

NBC News’ report added, “So much for helping Trump.”

Of course, the man sitting alongside Morrison, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, didn’t make things any better for the White House.

Quote:
Volker amended his testimony from his Oct. 3 closed-door deposition, telling the members of the committee Tuesday that he now sees that others in the Trump administration sought an investigation into the Biden family and that they told Ukraine’s government that millions in military aid depended on it. […]

This was a significant shift by Volker and it reinforces the emerging narrative being established by House Democrats that military aid for Ukraine was, in fact, conditioned on the launching of specific investigations by Ukraine.

A Washington Post editorial added that it was “striking” to see that witnesses called by the committee’s Republican members “added to the evidence that President Trump abused his office and twisted long-standing U.S. policy in Ukraine to serve his personal political interests.”

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/impeachment-hearings-even-the-gops-witnesses-are-hurting-trump#break


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PostPosted: 11/20/19 10:56 am • # 85 
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I think the reason they called those two is that they have said some weird stuff.

it is an attempt to undermine the process, in other words.


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PostPosted: 11/20/19 4:22 pm • # 86 
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Living in his own personal fantasy land ~ I confess that whatever the DiC claims, I immediately seek out the direct opposite for the truth ~ :ey ~ Sooz

Despite devastating testimony, Trump falsely claims exoneration (again)
11/20/19 02:28 PM
By Steve Benen

The public hearings in the impeachment inquiry have been quite devastating for Donald Trump, but Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony was especially brutal. As former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara explained, Sondland has effectively destroyed every White House defense: “Trump didn’t care about Ukraine; there was a quid pro quo; Trump & Rudy demanded the announcement of investigations; everyone was in the loop; Ukraine knew about the linkage; all was directed by Trump.”

It’s against this backdrop that the president – you guessed it – claimed exoneration.

Quote:
President Donald Trump claimed that testimony E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland gave in the House impeachment inquiry, exonerated him, saying that “it’s all over.”

Addressing reporters as Sondland publicly testified in front of the House Intelligence Committee, Trump recounted a conversation he had with the ambassador and claimed that, “I just noticed one thing and I would say that means it’s all over.”

The Republican echoed this on Twitter, declaring, “Impeachment Witch Hunt is now OVER!” adding, “This Witch Hunt must end NOW.”

Obviously, no one could seriously believe this, but what I find amazing is the larger pattern: the boy who cried wolf has been replaced with the president who cried exoneration.

As regular readers may recall, this began in earnest in March 2018, when Trump claimed that the House Intelligence Committee had completely exonerated him in the Russia scandal. That wasn’t true.

Trump then said the Justice Department inspector general’s office had “totally” exonerated him in the Russia scandal. That was both wrong and kind of bonkers.

He then claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee had also exonerated him in the Russia scandal. That also wasn’t true.

After Michael Cohen’s public congressional testimony, Trump said his former fixer exonerated him. In reality, what Cohen testified was that he didn’t have any direct evidence of cooperation between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign, though Cohen added that he believes Trump is “capable” of having committed the crime.

The president convinced himself that Judge T.S. Ellis exonerated him, which did not happen. Soon after, he suggested Judge Amy Berman Jackson had done the same thing, and that wasn’t true, either.

Trump later said the Mueller Report “totally” exonerated him, despite the special counsel literally and explicitly saying the report “does not exonerate” the president.

Obviously, it’s impossible to see Sondland’s sworn testimony as being good for the White House, but with a track record like Trump’s, he shouldn’t be disappointed when no one believes him.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/despite-devastating-testimony-trump-falsely-claims-exoneration-again


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PostPosted: 11/20/19 4:46 pm • # 87 
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From my Facebook feed ~ this puts it into perfect perspective! ~ :st :st :st ~ Sooz

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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/21/19 10:42 am • # 88 
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It's his "mood swings" that most rattle me ~ :ey ~ Sooz

‘Frustrated’ Trump going through manic mood swings as he watches impeachment hearings unfold: report
Published on November 21, 2019 / By Tom Boggioni

According to a report at Politico, Donald Trump is a man of many moods, veering wildly between calm and fury as the House conducts impeachment hearings that could hold the key to his future in office and beyond.

The report notes that on Wednesday, as Trump appointee E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland explicitly accused the president of engaging in a quid pro quo threat to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the government helped him attack possible political rival Joe Biden, the president was particularly prickly.

“President Donald Trump has gone through a range of emotions since House Democrats started their public impeachment hearings last week about whether he threatened to withhold Ukrainian security aid unless the country opened politically advantageous investigations, according to more than half a dozen people who have spoken to Trump in the last several days,” the report states. “On Wednesday, Trump was frustrated, defiant and uncharacteristically terse.”

With the report noting Trump snapped, “I want nothing! I want nothing! I want no quid pro quo. This is the final word from the president of the United States. I want nothing,” and not taking questions on Wednesday, the pressure on the president is becoming increasingly evident.

“It was the latest in a series of ever-shifting Trump reactions — which can change by the hour — to the public portion of the impeachment inquiry,” Politico notes, adding that a White House insider attempted to explain the president’s mood.

“Sometimes he’s super calm and cheery and other times he’s pissed when he sees something,” the anonymous official remarked. “His reactions are human.”

The report goes on to state that the White House was preparing the president’s messaging prior to Sondland’s testimony, with an administration official admitting, “There’s been a lot of work to prepare for today and how to handle: from Hill coordination; to facts and questions; to rapid response and messaging; to what [Trump] should consider saying, and when.”

According to another White House official, Trump is “unsure” how the public is responding to the impeachment hearings which is contributing to his mood swings.

“I think he’s in a decent mood under the circumstances,” the source stated. “He’s frustrated and irritated but he’s not overly frustrated and irritated given the situation he’s in.”

“On the first day of public hearings last week, Trump was feeling more optimistic because he thought William Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, was a weak opening witness, given that he had little firsthand knowledge of the situation, said two people with knowledge of the president’s thinking,” Politico reports. “But on Friday, the second day of hearings, he felt frustrated after multiple people inside and outside the White House told him he made a mistake by criticizing a Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, as she was testifying. Democrats immediately accused him of trying to intimidate a witness.”

“There are good days. There are bad days,” explained a Trump campaign official. “He fully expects that. He knows in a big rolling production like this there are going to be both.”

You can read more here.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/frustrtated-trump-going-through-manic-mood-swings-as-he-watches-impeachment-hearings-unfold-report/


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/21/19 12:39 pm • # 89 
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This is what I am hoping happens.


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/22/19 11:33 am • # 90 
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I'm convinced that the vast majority of today's "Republicans" have morphed into mindless robots closely resembling juvenile delinquents with a singular goal focused on the more harm they can foist on others the better ~ :ey ~ Sooz

On impeachment, Republicans’ incompetence does Trump no favors
11/22/19 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 11/21/19, 9:05 PM ET, "Impeachment witness rips 'domestic political errand' for Trump", accessible via the end link.]

Donald Trump took a few moments during a White House cabinet meeting this week to reflect on the impeachment proceedings on Capitol Hill. The president who initially said he wasn’t watching the hearings apparently tuned in and was impressed with what he saw – from some of the lawmakers.

“I just got to watch – and the Republicans are absolutely killing it,” Trump said. “They are doing so well.”

As this phase of the impeachment process comes to an apparent end, it’s worth pausing to appreciate the degree to which the president had this backwards. Indeed, Trump shouldn’t be praising his Republican allies; he should be scolding them for their incompetence.

GOP lawmakers, for example, occasionally flaunted their ignorance about basic details they were supposed to have learned.

Quote:
During the committee’s public hearing on Thursday, though, a series of interlocutors from the Republican side demonstrated that they were not particularly familiar with the testimony that had already been given – or, at least, that they were willing to present that past testimony in a way that changed its significance.

Republicans also pursued lines of inquiry that hurt their own side.

Quote:
As any lawyer knows, you’re not supposed to cross-examine a witness by asking questions you don’t know the answer to. But that happened over and over again with Republicans at Thursday’s impeachment hearing, and it had predictably ugly consequences for the GOP.

As Rachel noted on the show last night, at one point during yesterday’s proceedings, questions from Republican staff attorney Steve Castor proved so damaging for the White House that Ranking Member Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) intervened, cut Cantor off, and redirected the conversation toward safer partisan ground.

Even the witnesses House Republicans specifically called to testify ended up providing information that made matters quite a bit worse for Donald Trump.

To be sure, the Republicans’ incompetence as part of the impeachment inquiry was evident before the public-hearing phase of the process. It’s been well documented, for example, that GOP lawmakers routinely failed to show up for some of the closed-door depositions. Transcripts also showed that when House Republican lawmakers did appear, they peddled conspiracy theories and pursued pointless lines of inquiry, to no one’s benefit.

But it’s one thing for members of Congress to be bungling and ineffectual in private; it’s worse when their ineptitude is on national display before the cameras. If Trump took such things seriously, he should be furious with his allies’ failure to properly prepare and mount a credible defense on his behalf.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/impeachment-republicans-incompetence-does-trump-no-favors#break


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/22/19 2:54 pm • # 91 
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He knows he won't be convicted by the Senate.


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/22/19 6:16 pm • # 92 
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I just read his approval rating went up (Emerson poll) and his impeachment rating went down - go figure. So disheartening there are people who refuse to take their head out of the sand :(


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/22/19 7:46 pm • # 93 
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Karolinablue wrote:
I just read his approval rating went up (Emerson poll) and his impeachment rating went down - go figure. So disheartening there are people who refuse to take their head out of the sand :(

Their heads are NOT in the sand ... they are up their own butts ~ :o

Sooz


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/22/19 8:33 pm • # 94 
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They get their news from Fox who keeps saying that the witnesses are all exonerating Trump


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/23/19 10:01 pm • # 95 
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IMO, Dems were weak. Subpoenas were issued, were ignored and they did nothing. They should have arrested the buggers, labelled them as hostile witnesses and forced them to testify.


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/24/19 2:16 am • # 96 
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oskar576 wrote:
IMO, Dems were weak. Subpoenas were issued, were ignored and they did nothing. They should have arrested the buggers, labelled them as hostile witnesses and forced them to testify.


Apart from actual technical difficulties, the drawback to doing that, Oscar, is it cuts two ways. Just about every President, including Obama, had flunkies defying House subpoenas.


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/24/19 7:59 am • # 97 
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Quote:
Just about every President, including Obama, had flunkies defying House subpoenas.


Makes no difference to me who's breaking the law.


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/24/19 1:58 pm • # 98 
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oskar576 wrote:
Quote:
Just about every President, including Obama, had flunkies defying House subpoenas.


Makes no difference to me who's breaking the law.


I don't recall anybody on here rooting for Eric Holder to be arrested and jailed for ignoring Ryan's subpoenas.


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/24/19 8:32 pm • # 99 
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More to contemplate ~ :ey ~ Sooz

Three Big Takeaways From Two Weeks of Impeachment Hearings
Brian Beutler / Nov.22.19

The public phase of the Ukraine inquiry has ended, or at least entered a hiatus. And after seven hearings with 12 witnesses, we have learned much more in terms of both atmospheric details and new, incriminating facts, than we did at the outset.

But while much of the story is known, certainly enough to impeach the president, the hearings also underscored just how much of the story remains to be told.

Here are three key takeaways as the second week of impeachment hearings draws to a close.

1. Trump is SUPER guilty.

This has been obvious since at least September, when President Trump released the summary of his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, during which Trump conditioned military support for Ukraine’s war against Russia on investigations of his political enemies. But he’s even guilty by the standards Republicans set for themselves when the Ukraine scandal broke wide open.

Many Republicans set the bar for impeachment at “explicit” quid pro quo—arguing against reason that the rough transcript of the call left a great deal to the imagination. In October, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who’s perhaps Trump’s most slavering loyalist on Capitol Hill, said, “If you could show me that Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.”

Well, on Wednesday, Trump’s Ukraine point man, E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland confessed: “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?’” Sondland said. “The answer is yes.”

Naturally, Republicans have tried to sweep their own standard down the memory hole, but by their own lights, Trump’s guilty.

2. Republican excuses bit the dust.

As the inquiry has progressed, congressional Republicans have veered from excuse to excuse—usually hypothetical, often contradictory—to absolve the president himself, if not all of his subordinates, of wrongdoing. By design, the hearings elicited testimony that debunked these excuses one by one.

Some of the most prominent of these included:

    * There was no quid pro quo!

    See above.

    * Maybe Trump’s subordinates went rogue!

    Even if you ignore the Trump-Zelensky transcript where Trump asks for an investigation of the Bidens in exchange for Javelin missiles, David Holmes—a State Department diplomat stationed in Kyiv—testified that he overheard Sondland and Trump discuss the progress the Ukrainians had made on the investigations on a cell phone call the day after Trump spoke with Zelensky.

    Sondland told Trump that “President Zelenskyy ‘loves your ass,’” Holmes testified. “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

    Zelenskyy will do ‘anything you ask him to.’” So no, nobody went rogue. As Sondland swore, “We followed the president’s orders.”

    * Maybe the Ukrainians didn’t realize they were being extorted.

    Yes, they tried this. But multiple witnesses explained it simply wasn’t true. Most explosively, Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, uncovered and provided new hard evidence that the Ukrainians knew what was up way back in July. “My staff showed me two unclassified emails that they received from the State Department.” The first, she testified, read, “the Ukrainian embassy and the House Foreign Affairs Committee are asking about security assistance.” The second read “that the Hill knows about the [frozen aid] situation to an extent, and so does the Ukrainian embassy.” To have put any stock in this excuse in the first place, you’d have to believe Ukrainian officials are extremely stupid, but as it turns out, they documented their awareness.

    * Well, it all worked out in the end, no harm no foul.

    First, the high crime of bribery includes solicitation, so even if Ukraine never announced the investigations, and received the military aid they were entitled to by U.S. law, Trump is still guilty.

    Second, Trump released the aid on September 11, after he learned that a whistleblower had filed a formal complaint about his conduct, and after three House committees had launched an investigation of the frozen aid. So he got caught.

    We have not yet seen documentation spelling out why Trump agreed to release the aid; such documentation may not actually exist, except in the minds of guilty men like Trump and acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. But it doesn’t have too.

3. There’s still enough left to learn.

The unresolved question of whether the administration has evidence that Trump released the funds because he had transitioned into coverup mode underscores how many threads Democrats have yet to pull.

    * Sondland testified that Mulvaney, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Vice President Mike Pence, and even then-national security adviser John Bolton were read in on the scheme, and some of them actively supported it.

    * There is a treasure trove of documents, at the State Department and elsewhere, establishing everyone’s level of involvement, but the administration has lawlessly refused to turn them over to Congress.

    * We still don’t know how many other governments Trump has corrupted U.S. relations with, how many call summaries the White House has stored on a classified server to hide corruption, or what those summaries say. In private depositions and public hearings, witnesses declined to comment on any foreign-leader communications other than two Trump-Zelensky calls, in part because the scope of their subpoenas did not include matters outside of Ukraine.

This is all information the public deserves to know, even if it doesn’t make Trump any more impeachable than he already is, and even if it doesn’t change any Republican minds. The good news is some of this information may still seep out. A federal judge has ordered the State Department to produce some of the concealed Ukraine documents by tonight, pursuant to an outside FOIA request. On Monday, a federal judge will decide whether former White House Counsel Don McGahn must testify to the impeachment inquiry on unrelated matters, and that decision may pave the way for other witnesses to come forward. But it would be a shame if the House intelligence committee concluded its Ukraine investigation without fleshing out at least some of these critically important unknowns.

https://crooked.com/articles/impeachment-hearings-takeaways/?fbclid=IwAR3NUHaYA0O0bVK-v7yU2XBJvkMgskyQwHw0YSQtBUMd4qXHLOV9RffRmfM


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 Post subject: Re: Impeachment?
PostPosted: 11/25/19 6:14 am • # 100 
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Things must be getting bad when they can't even slip things past Fox.

Devin Nunes was just caught by Fox host Maria Bartiromo as he was unable to answer a question about his own involvement in digging up dirt on Biden in Ukraine.

https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrat ... live_video


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