“Stuff is going to hit the fan” when Durham is done “investigating the investigators,” said Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera. “If indictments are warranted, U.S. Attorney John Durham will be bringing them,” wrote conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt.
Lazy Caturday Reads: The Mushrooming Ukraine Scandal
Posted: October 12, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics | Tags: Andrey Kukushkin, Andrey Muraviev, David Correia, Dmytro Firtash, Donald Trump, Hunter Biden, Igor Fruman, Joe Biden, Lev Parnas, Marie Yovanovitch, Mike Pompeo, Rudy Giuliani, SDNY, State Department, Ukraine scandal, Vienna, Yuriy Lutsenko 32 Comments
Three Kittens Sitting & Watching by Jean-Louis Klein & Marie-Luce Hubert, Cyclades, Greece
Good Afternoon!!
The Ukraine scandal is unwinding into a massive conspiracy. Rudy Giuliani is in big trouble and the mob boss in the White House is on the verge of throwing him under the bus. The White House is struggling to deal with the tsunami of bad news–they once again sent out their Ukraine talking points to Democrats, according to The Hill.
Here’s what’s happening.
The New York Times: Giuliani Is Said to Be Under Investigation for Ukraine Work.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani broke lobbying laws in his dealings in Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.
The investigators are examining Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to undermine the American ambassador to Ukraine, Marie L. Yovanovitch, one of the people said. She was recalled in the spring as part of Mr. Trump’s broader campaign to pressure Ukraine into helping his political prospects.
The investigation into Mr. Giuliani is tied to the case against two of his associates who were arrested this week on campaign finance-related charges, the people familiar with the inquiry said. The associates were charged with funneling illegal contributions to a congressman whose help they sought in removing Ms. Yovanovitch.
Mr. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing, but he acknowledged that he and the associates worked with Ukrainian prosecutors to collect potentially damaging information about Ms. Yovanovitch and other targets of Mr. Trump and his allies, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his younger son, Hunter Biden. Mr. Giuliani shared that material this year with American government officials and a Trump-friendly columnist in an effort to undermine the ambassador and other Trump targets.
Trump advisers are pushing him to throw Rudy overboard, according to Politico.
Black Cat on a Windowsill, Korovin Konstantin
For weeks, prominent Republican advisers have been privately imploring President Donald Trump to sideline Rudy Giuliani after a barrage of inconsistent, combative and occasionally cringe-inducing media interviews, according to three people familiar with the conversations.
And that was before the arrest of two foreign-born businessmen who reportedly helped Giuliani try to discredit former Vice President Joe Biden, the leading Democrat to take on Trump in next year’s election. Several reports have indicated Giuliani himself may be caught up in the probe.
Yet Trump remains linked to Giuliani, who was initially hired to help fend of Robert Mueller’s Russia investigators, but who now may have pulled the president into another investigation — one that might lead to impeachment. While the president has long appreciated Giuliani’s pugnacious and never-back-down attitude, Trump allies fear Giuliani will damage Trump with his long-winded monologues and free-wheeling accusations.
The constant sniping from staff could ultimately force Trump to dump his long-valued fixer, as he has done with former personal lawyer Michael Cohen and countless other ousted officials, like ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
“Rudy Giuliani needs to stop talking,” said a former campaign official who remains close to Trump’s team.
Trump claims he doesn’t know Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the two Ukrainian “businessmen” who were arrested on Wednesday night as they tried to flee to Vienna on one way tickets. Unfortunately for Trump, he has been photographed with the two thugs; and Parnas actually attended Trump’s private party celebrating his 2016 election.
Politico: Indicted Giuliani associate attended private ‘16 election night party for ‘friend’ Trump.
Buster Keaton in Electric House, 1922
Lev Parnas described himself to a foreign correspondent at the cash-bar event in midtown Manhattan as a friend of the president-elect who didn’t live far from his South Florida winter home.
Parnas arrived at Trump’s November 2016 election night party, which was held in a ballroom at the Midtown Hilton, with two other men in suits and their heavily made-up wives, according to a forgotten but newly relevant dispatch from the event published at the time in Le Figaro, France’s oldest daily newspaper.
The Ukrainian-born businessman told the paper that a friend from his hometown of Boca Raton, Fla., had hosted several fundraising events for Trump and that his daughter had traveled around the state singing on the candidate’s behalf. It is not clear what friend Parnas was referring to.
“We are confident,” Parnas, told the newspaper, “America wants a change.” The newspaper described Parnas as an insurer. (Parnas co-founded a company, Fraud Guarantee, that at some point retained Giuliani as a lawyer.)
I posted this one in the comments yesterday, but it bears repeating. Reuters: Indicted Giuliani associate worked on behalf of Ukrainian oligarch Firtash.
One of the two Florida businessmen who helped U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney investigate his political rival, Democrat Joe Biden, also has been working for the legal team of a Ukrainian oligarch who faces bribery charges in the United States, according to attorneys for the businessmen and the oligarch.
Lev Parnas, one of the two associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, served as a translator for lawyers representing oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Parnas was arrested on Thursday along with the other Florida businessman, Igor Fruman, on unrelated charges that included illegally funneling $325,000 to a political action committee supporting pro-Trump candidates.
The Barn Cat by Ron McGinnnis
Both men had worked in an unspecified capacity for Firtash before Parnas joined the Ukrainian’s legal team, according to a person familiar with the Florida men’s business dealings with Firtash….
Firtash, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen, is battling extradition by U.S. authorities on bribery charges from Vienna, where he has lived for five years.
Federal prosecutors in Illinois said in court papers in 2017 that Firtash was an “upper-echelon” associate of Russian organized crime. He was indicted in 2013 and charged with bribing Indian officials for access to titanium mines. Firtash has denied any wrongdoing.
Firtash was “financing” the activities of Parnas and Fruman, the source familiar with their business dealings said. The source did not detail their specific work for the oligarch or how much money he had paid them and over what period.
Firtash’s attorneys are Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing, who also have been working for Trump. Parnas and Fruman are being represented by former Trump attorney John Dowd.
I’ll be honest, I’m still trying to sort all these stories out. It’s kind of like reading a Russian novel–it’s difficult to keep all the names straight. I’m just sharing the latest news I’ve read.
CBS San Francisco reports on another arrest in the SDNY Ukraine/Giuliani investigation: Ukrainian Andrey Kukushkin, Linked To Giuliani Associates, Arrested In San Francisco On Campaign Finance Violations.
Andrey Kukushkin, 46, is one of four people named in a grand jury indictment announced Thursday by U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman of the Southern District of New York.
The others, all Florida residents, include two associates of presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Ukrainian-born Lev Parnas, 47, and Belarus-born Igor Fruman, 54, and a fourth defendant, David Correia, who was born in the United States. The four men are all U.S. citizens….
From The Circus, Merna Kennedy and Charlie Chaplin, 1928
Kukushkin was arrested in San Francisco Thursday morning, according to William Sweeney, assistant chief of the FBI’s New York field office. He made an initial appearance before U.S. Magistrate Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco and was ordered to be held in custody until a detention hearing on Friday, according to court records.
He is expected to be transferred to New York at a later date to face the charges there.
All four defendants are accused of conspiring in a scheme to disguise contributions of $10,000 each to two Nevada state office candidates from an unnamed Russian businessman who wanted to obtain licenses for marijuana businesses. Federal law prohibits campaign contributions from foreign nationals.
Everyone is trying to find out who the unnamed “Russian businessman” in the SNDY indictment is. David Corn speculates at Mother Jones: Who’s the Secret Russian in the Indictment of Giuliani’s Pals? We Found Some Clues.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman—who had been helping Giuliani search for dirt on Joe Biden and the Democrats in Ukraine—and David Correia and Andrey Kukushkin, who were each identified as businessmen, were charged in what seems to be overlapping capers. Parnas and Fruman allegedly made secret donations to Republicans in an effort to advance their business interests and promote the agenda of one or more Ukrainian officials (which included firing the US ambassador to Ukraine). And these two Giuliani confederates also teamed up with Correia, a business partner of Parnas, and Kukushkin and allegedly made donations secretly financed by a Russian national to Republican candidates for state offices in Nevada to buy influence they could use to set up a cannabis business there. This Russian, who would be part of their legal marijuana venture, sent $1 million from overseas accounts to Fruman that was to be used for contributions to federal and state candidates in Nevada and other states, according to the indictment. It’s illegal for a foreigner to funnel donations to US candidates.
Painting by Mischa Askenazy, 1888-1961
The mystery: Who is this wealthy Russian who allegedly tried to make illegal contributions to US politicians in pursuit of launching a cannabis venture?
The indictment does not say. It refers to this individual only as “Foreign National-1.” And the question cannot be yet answered definitively. But California state records and emails obtained by Mother Jones indicate that a Russian businessman named Andrey Muraviev had previously worked with Kukushkin to develop a cannabis enterprise.
It’s complicated so if you’re interested, head over to Mother Jones and read all about it.
NBC News has a scoop on the ousting of former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch: Lutsenko is the Ukrainian official who prosecutors say urged 2 Giuliani associates to push for the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador.
The unnamed Ukrainian official referenced in a federal indictment as directing a plot to oust the then-U.S. ambassador is Ukraine’s former chief prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, according to a U.S. official familiar with the events.
According to the source, Lutsenko is the Ukrainian official who prosecutors say urged two associates of Rudy Giuliani to push for the removal of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was forced out in May.
The associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, were arrested Wednesday night as they prepared to board a one-way flight out of the country at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C.
Painting by Peter Adderley
“They sought political influence not only to advance their own financial interests, but to advance the political interests of at least one foreign official — a Ukrainian government official who sought the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,” Geoffrey Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a Thursday news conference.
The indictment says the efforts by Parnas and Fruman to remove then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, a respected diplomat with deep knowledge of Ukraine, were “conducted, at least in part, at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.”
Read the rest at NBC News. Lutsenko is the prosecutor that Trump urged Ukraine’s President Zelinsky not to fire in the July 25th phone call.
One more from Foreign Policy: Pompeo’s State Department Reels as Impeachment Inquiry Sinks Morale.
The fast-moving impeachment inquiry into U.S. President Donald Trump has dragged the State Department into the center of the scandal and further wrecked morale at Foggy Bottom, presenting a stress test for how Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will balance his relationship with America’s diplomats against his relationship with the president.
The ever-expanding probe into the Trump administration’s apparent efforts to coerce foreign governments into digging up dirt on political rivals has even lower-level State Department officials wondering if they, too, need to lawyer up, with the foreign service officers’ union starting a legal defense fund for career officials caught in the impeachment crossfire.
The latest State Department drama came on Friday as Marie Yovanovitch—a decorated career diplomat forced out of her job as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in May following a pressure campaign from Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his now indicted associates—testified before Congress. The White House sought to ban her voluntary testimony, but she went ahead after a subpoena from the House of Representatives.
Some nine current and former officials said many in the State Department are shocked and angry that Pompeo did little to shield her. No senior State Department official, including Pompeo, defended Yovanovitch as she was thrust into the spotlight amid the impeachment scandal. The State Department, again at the behest of the White House, also blocked the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, from testifying before Congress on Tuesday, though his lawyer said Friday that he will testify next week.
“You don’t get credit for saying something about swagger, then caving the first time you get heat,” said Daniel Fried, who served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs under former President George W. Bush, referring to Pompeo’s promise last year to restore the State Department’s “swagger.”
Read more at FP.
I have no doubt there will be more news breaking this weekend and I can’t wait! What do you think?
Fractured Fairy Tale Friday Reads: Russians Hiding under the White House Beds
Posted: October 11, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: constitutional crisis, Pompeo, Rudy Guilliani, Russian Expressionists, Ukraine 32 Comments/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/bluerider_631.jpg)
Two riders before the red, 1911, woodblock, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. (Wassily Kandinsky)
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
We’re beginning to see just how wrapped up Republicans are with Russians. I ran across this from bellingcat this morning by Casey Michel. And we thought only the NRA was awash in Russian money and influence!!! “Money Talks: Len Blavatnik And The Council On Foreign Relations”.
Last month, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of America’s leading think tanks, announced that it had received a substantial donation that would help round out the organization’s upcoming budget. As a statement on the CFR’s website detailed, a CFR member had graciously decided to help facilitate funding for CFR’s intern program. The donation, as CFR’s statement detailed, would provide “paid internships to over one hundred interns each year,” and would help “cultivat[e] the next generation of leaders in government, academia, and the private sector.” CFR President Richard Haass, as he wrote on Twitter, was “[g]rateful” for the “generous gift.”
It’s easy to see why CFR’s brass would express gratitude for the gift. After all, issues surrounding paying interns have circulated among any number of American institutions over the past decade, from media to civil society to, as CFR’s announcement noted, think tanks. A CFR spokesperson told Bellingcat that the donation totaled $12 million.
There was one problem, though. As CFR noted, the donation had come from the Blavatnik Family Foundation — and was specifically facilitated by CFR member Len Blavatnik.
Blavatnik may not be a household name in the United States and has not been sanctioned by any Western governments, but the involvement of Blavatnik, born in the USSR in what is now southern Ukraine, has already sparked a firestorm of internal controversy at CFR.
CFR’s willingness to accept the donation from Blavatnik’s foundation has been a case study in the “soft enabling of kleptocracy,” Sarah Chayes, one of the leading anti-corruption voices in the U.S., told Bellingcat. It also fits into Blavatnik’s previous history of working with what she described as “image launderers,” all of whom have helped Blavatnik — who has worked closely over the years with figures now sanctioned specifically by the U.S. for their role in spreading the Kremlin’s kleptocracy — in shaping the reputation of someone who accrued substantial wealth in the mad scramble for post-Soviet resource and industry.
The pushback over the previous weeks has culminated in an unprecedented protest against CFR’s move to accept and publicize the donation from Blavatnik’s foundation. One letter, addressed to Haass and signed by dozens of the most prominent anti-corruption activists in the U.S. and Ukraine, leading experts on post-Soviet kleptocracy, and former members of the Treasury Department, State Department, and National Security Council, condemned the move as a means of helping “Blavatnik [export] Russian kleptocratic practices to the West.”
Haass and CFR, however, haven’t expressed any concern about the donation, nor about the fact that the U.S.’s leading anti-kleptocracy voices have condemned the move. There’s no indication that CFR will walk back the donation, despite the unprecedented pushback they’ve received.
Three Riders in red, blue and black 1911, woodblock, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. (Wassily Kandinsky)
Blavatnik’s donations to US institutions run a lot deeper than you’d think and the article is worth your time to read. Follow this author. He’s part of the Kleptocracy Initiative and keeps track of these sorts of things.
Along the way, Blavatnik kept a relatively low profile politically, and made efforts — both personal and financial in nature — to retain friends all across the political spectrum, especially in the U.S. Having gained U.S. citizenship, Blavatnik has made a concerted effort to financially back both Democratic and Republican candidates over the years. In 2016, though, Blavatnik split with his prior precedent, and poured some $6 million into Republican coffers, as well as donating $1 million directly to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee. Over the past year, Blavatnik has returned to his old habits, and begun donating across the aisle, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.
But in the aftermath of Russia’s 2016 interference efforts, new questions began to swirl about Blavatnik’s funding. Not only did the U.S. sanction individuals like Vekselberg, figures with whom Blavatnik had previously been close, but last year it emerged that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office had specifically investigated Blavatnik’s donations to Trump’s inauguration. Vekselberg also told the Financial Times that he attended Trump’s inauguration at a table Blavatnik paid for, although Blavatnik’s spokesperson denied this.
Mikhail Vrubel. Pearl.
1904. Cardboard, pastel, gouache, coal.
Kenneth Vogel–writing for the NYT–has the byline for this important read “Giuliani’s Ukraine Team: In Search of Influence, Dirt and MoneyThe president’s lawyer was paid by Lev Parnas, who with Igor Fruman worked on behalf of President Trump in Ukraine.”
When Rudolph W. Giuliani set out to dredge up damaging information on President Trump’s rivals in Ukraine, he turned to a native of the former Soviet republic with whom he already had a lucrative business relationship.
Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian-American businessman with a trail of debts and lawsuits, had known Mr. Giuliani casually for years through Republican political circles. Last year, their relationship deepened when a company he helped found retained Mr. Giuliani — associates of Mr. Parnas said he told them he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars — for what Mr. Giuliani said on Thursday was business and legal advice.
Even as he worked with Mr. Parnas’s company, Fraud Guarantee, Mr. Giuliani increasingly relied on Mr. Parnas to carry out Mr. Trump’s quest for evidence in Ukraine that would undercut the legitimacy of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference on his behalf in the 2016 election and help him heading into his 2020 re-election campaign.
Mr. Giuliani dispatched Mr. Parnas and an associate, Igor Fruman, a Belarusian-American businessman, to Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, where, despite fending off creditors at home, BuzzFeed reported, they ran up big charges at a strip club and the Hilton International hotel. Their mission was to find people and information that could be used to undermine the special counsel’s investigation, and also to damage former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a prospective Democratic challenger to Mr. Trump.
Girl with Red Ribbon Alexej von Jawlensy
Here’s a brief take of the Josh Chafetz piece from Common Dreams: “Law Professor’s Advice to House Democrats: Arrest Rudy Giuliani.”
Faced with an intransigent White House unwilling to cooperate with an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s pressuring of the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rival former Vice President Joe Biden, the House should take aggressive action including arresting Rudy Giuliani, a law professor argues in a column for The New York Times Thursday.
“The answer is unlikely to be found in a courtroom,” writes law professor Josh Chafetz.
The White House has repeatedly refused to answer subpoenas and on Tuesday afternoon, as Common Dreams reported, announced in an eight page letter that the administration will flatly refuse to cooperate in the inquiry, a move that could set up a constitutional crisis.
“There is no legal basis for Trump’s position,” NBC analyst Katie Phang said on Twitter Tuesday. “Hard stop.”
House Democrats need to think outside the box, Chafetz argues.
“The House should instead put back on the table the option of using its sergeant-at-arms to arrest contemnors—as the person in violation of the order is called—especially when an individual, like Rudy Giuliani, is not an executive branch official,” Chaftez writes.
Chafetz acknowledges that the move was extreme, but said that the net benefits of taking things to that level would outweigh the possible negatives of such an action and allow for the House to open the door to other punitive actions seen as less radical.
“The House arresting someone would be explosive and clearly should not be undertaken lightly,” says Chafetz. “But the very explosiveness of it would be a way for the House to signal the seriousness of White House obstructionism to the public.”
The Demon Seated, Mikhail Vrubel 1890
The State Department is getting into the spotlight more and more on the entire Ukrainian situation as a Senior Advisor to Pompeo resigns. This is from WAPO. And an Ambassador removed by Trump speaks out.
Michael McKinley, a career diplomat and senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has resigned his position amid rising dissatisfaction and plummeting morale inside the State Department over what is seen as Pompeo’s failure to support personnel ensnared in the Ukraine controversy.
A senior officer who has held a range of diplomatic posts, including ambassador to Afghanistan, Colombia and Peru, McKinley was serving as ambassador to Brazil last year when Pompeo recruited him as a policy adviser and a conduit between his office and the career service.
Pompeo was expected to issue a statement Friday announcing the departure.
McKinley declined to comment Thursday evening.
Among the many issues in which he played a role, McKinley has been closely involved in administration policy on Venezuela, Mexico, Southeast Asia and Afghanistan, where last month President Trump abruptly canceled U.S. peace negotiations with the Taliban that both sides had said were near an agreement.
There seems to be a large number of career professionals in various departments ready to testify and go to Congress as well as the press. And it’s about time.
Which also means that Trump needed a hit from a Hatefest Bong. This time the Orange Plague went to Minneapolis home of Minnesota Nice.
Musicians from Queen to Prince’s estate are suing Trumpto quit using their music. It probably will do as much good as trying to bill the campaign for the public safety issues surrounding every Trump Rally where attendees are none to bully press and public alike and fights frequently break out with encouragement of the Orange Snot Blob. More people protested the visit than attended the rally.
And, as usual Trump lied his fat ass off as well as spewed the usual racist, misogynistic, bigoted crap. He made a point of attacking Somali Refugees in a place where they are an integral part of the community and recently sent Congresswoman Ilhan Abdullahi Omar to serve as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district in 2019. The district includes all of Minneapolis and some of its suburbs.
Safe places from Trumpists in any place will always be bookstores, universities, and libraries were no Trumper dares go. Facts and knowledge are to them what garlic and wooden stakes are to Vampires.
Portrait of the Dancer Alexander Sakharov, 1909
Here’s a look at his claims at a Minneapolis rally, his first since Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry of Trump’s actions as president:
TRUMP: “If our opponent had won that election, you know what would have happened? Right now, China would be the No. 1 economy anywhere in the world. And right now, I can tell you, they’re not even close.”
THE FACTS: No matter who got elected in 2016 — Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton — China’s economy could not have caught up to America’s.
Even if the U.S. economy had not grown at all since 2016, China’s gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — would have had to have surged a fantastical 79% in three years to pull even with America’s. That comes to growth of more than 21% a year — something even China’s super-charged economy has never approached.
The Chinese economy continues to slowly narrow the gap because every year it grows much faster than America’s. In 2019, for example, the International Monetary Fund expects Chinese GDP to increase 6.2%, more than double the 2.6% growth it expects for the United States. But it’s got a long way to go to surpass the U.S.
___
TRUMP: “We have totally defeated the ISIS caliphate.”
THE FACTS: His claim of a 100% defeat is misleading as the Islamic State still poses a threat.
IS was defeated in Iraq in 2017, then lost the last of its land holdings in Syria in March, marking the end of the extremists’ self-declared caliphate.
Still, extremist sleeper cells have continued to launch attacks in Iraq and Syria and are believed to be responsible for targeted killings against local officials and members of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
IS controlled large swaths of northern and eastern Syria, where they declared a caliphate in 2014 along with large parts of neighboring Iraq.
U.N. experts warned in August that IS leaders are aiming to consolidate and create conditions for an “eventual resurgence in its Iraqi and Syrian heartlands.”
Mädchen mit Zopf,Alexei Jawlensky (1864-1941)
But, most importantly, Congress heard from Marie Yovanovich today. This is from WAPO “Ousted ambassador Marie Yovanovitch tells Congress Trump pressured State Dept. to remove her.”
Alexej von Jawlensky, self portrait, 1905
We’ve definitely gotten to a watershed here. I’ll end with this from Jonathan Lemire of the Associated Press: “Analysis: In impeachment fight, it’s Trump vs. Constitution ”
Donald Trump has spent his time in office trying to bend the conventions of the American presidency to his will. Now he appears to be trying to override a core principle of democracy: that no one is above the law.
Faced with an impeachment inquiry, Trump has openly defied the core constructs of the Constitution. He chafes at the idea of co-equal branches of government and rejects the House’s right to investigate him.
He has deployed a convoluted logic in which he has declared that the courts can’t investigate him because as president he cannot be charged with a crime but also that Congress cannot impeach him because its inquiry is politically illegitimate.
It’s a “heads he wins, tails you lose” formulation.
“It’s anathema to his character and his life story to be checked and balanced by anything,” said presidential historian Jon Meacham, a professor at Vanderbilt University. “The Constitution was formed to contain appetite. And we now have the president who is driven entirely by appetite.”
In a scathing eight-page letter this week, the Republican president’s lawyers served notice there will be no cooperation with the impeachment inquiry.
Trump’s White House has ignored document requests and subpoenas. It readily invokes executive privilege — going so far as to argue that the privilege extends to informal presidential advisers who never held White House jobs. And his team all but dares Democrats to hold them in contempt.
The impeachment standoff follows a pattern Trump has established throughout his presidency as he has jettisoned experienced advisers and flouted conventions.
The fact that he survived the special counsel’s Russia investigation without paying much of a political penalty left him all the more emboldened.
One day after Robert Mueller’s faltering testimony brought an end to that threat, Trump unleashed a new one by asking Ukraine’s president to investigate his political foe Joe Biden. That prompted the fast-moving impeachment inquiry that Trump now resists.
After two weeks of a listless and unfocused response to the impeachment probe, the White House letter to Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this week was a declaration of war.
While it was filled with dubious legal arguments, its intent was clear: Trump would not play ball, claiming that the game was rigged against him.
It’s time to shut the Trump Circus down and send him and the monkeys to jail.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads: Breaking News Tsunami
Posted: October 5, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, U.S. Politics 30 Comments
The Artist’s Cat, Martin Leman
Good Afternoon!!
I’m late getting going today because Windows decided to lock me out of my computer until I went along with their ridiculous new plan to control our on-line lives. They tried to get me to give up my phone number so they could link all my other devices for their own devious purposes. So far I escaped that, but who knows what will happen the next time I turn on my computer?
Anyway, the news tsunami we have been experiencing the last few weeks has continued into the weekend. There are way too many important stories again this morning. I’ll post as many as I can.
This one hit the Washington Post late last night and it’s a doozy: Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have long worried aides, leaving some ‘genuinely horrified.’
In one of his first calls with a head of state, President Trump fawned over Russian President Vladimir Putin, telling the man who ordered interference in America’s 2016 election that he was a great leader and apologizing profusely for not calling him sooner.
He pledged to Saudi officials in another call that he would help the monarchy enter the elite Group of Seven, an alliance of the world’s leading democratic economies.
Harbor Cat 1995, Martin Leman
He promised the president of Peru that he would deliver to his country a C-130 military cargo plane overnight, a logistical nightmare that set off a herculean scramble in the West Wing and Pentagon.
And in a later call with Putin, Trump asked the former KGB officer for his guidance in forging a friendship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — a fellow authoritarian hostile to the United States.
Starting long before revelations about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine’s president rocked Washington, Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders were an anxiety-ridden set of events for his aides and members of the administration, according to former and current officials. They worried that Trump would make promises he shouldn’t keep, endorse policies the United States long opposed, commit a diplomatic blunder that jeopardized a critical alliance, or simply pressure a counterpart for a personal favor.
“There was a constant undercurrent in the Trump administration of [senior staff] who were genuinely horrified by the things they saw that were happening on these calls,” said one former White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations. “Phone calls that were embarrassing, huge mistakes he made, months and months of work that were upended by one impulsive tweet.”
Can you believe this man is the “president?” A bit more on that first call with Putin:
Peaceful Evening for cats, Martin Leman
The first call Trump made that set off alarm bells came less than two weeks after his inauguration. On Jan. 28, Trump called Putin for what should have been a routine formality: accepting a foreign leader’s congratulations. Former White House officials described Trump as “obsequious” and “fawning,” but said he also rambled off into different topics without any clear point, while Putin appeared to stick to formal talking points for a first official exchange.
“He was like, ‘Oh my gosh, my people didn’t tell me you wanted to talk to me,’ ” said one person with direct knowledge of the call….
“We couldn’t figure out early on why he was being so nice to Russia,” one former senior administration official said. H.R. McMaster, the president’s then-national security adviser, launched an internal campaign to get Trump to be more skeptical of the Russians. Officials expressed surprise in both of his early Putin calls at why he was so friendly.
And there’s more–please read the whole thing and also check out this piece at the WaPo: Trump has spoken privately with Putin at least 16 times. Here’s what we know about the conversations.
There are several new stories this morning about the Ukraine scandal.
Politico has one on Rick Perry’s involvement: Perry pressed Ukraine on corruption, energy company changes.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry urged Ukraine’s president to root out corruption and pushed the new government for changes at its state-run oil and gas company, people familiar with his work said Friday — indications that he was more deeply involved than previously known in President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure officials in Kiev.
Rabbit Eating Lettuce, Martin Leman
The people said they have no indication that Perry explicitly called on Ukrainian officials to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, the issue that has spawned a House impeachment inquiry into Trump. But at the very least, they said , Perry played an active role in the Trump administration’s efforts to shape decisions by the newly elected government of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Among other changes, Perry pushed for Ukraine’s state-owned natural gas company Naftogaz to expand its board to include Americans, two people familiar with the matter said. Two long-time energy executives based in Perry’s home state of Texas were among those under consideration for that role, one source familiar with the administration’s dealings with the company said.
The Wall Street Journal on Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson role: Trump, in August Call With GOP Senator, Denied Official’s Claim on Ukraine Aid.
Sen. Ron Johnson said that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had described to him a quid pro quo involving a commitment by Kyiv to probe matters related to U.S. elections and the status of nearly $400 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine that the president had ordered to be held up in July.
Alarmed by that information, Mr. Johnson, who supports aid to Ukraine and is the chairman of a Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over the region, said he raised the issue with Mr. Trump the next day, Aug. 31, in a phone call, days before the senator was to meet with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. In the call, Mr. Trump flatly rejected the notion that he directed aides to make military aid to Ukraine contingent on a new probe by Kyiv, Mr. Johnson said.
Big Orange Cat, Martin Lehman
“He said, ‘Expletive deleted—No way. I would never do that. Who told you that?” the Wisconsin senator recalled in an interview Friday. Mr. Johnson said he told the president he had learned of the arrangement from Mr. Sondland.
Mr. Johnson’s account, coupled with text messages among State Department officials released Thursday, show some Trump administration officials—including Mr. Sondland and a top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv—believed there was a link between Mr. Trump’s July decision to hold up the aid to Ukraine and his interest in Kyiv’s launching new probes.
Johnson needs to explain why he didn’t report this to the FBI.
Last night NBC News reported that: CIA’s top lawyer made ‘criminal referral’ on complaint about Trump Ukraine call.
Weeks before the whistleblower’s complaint became public, the CIA’s top lawyer made what she considered to be a criminal referral to the Justice Department about the whistleblower’s allegations that President Donald Trump abused his office in pressuring the Ukrainian president, U.S. officials familiar with the matter tell NBC News.
The move by the CIA’s general counsel, Trump appointee Courtney Simmons Elwood, meant she and other senior officials had concluded a potential crime had been committed, raising more questions about why the Justice Department later declined to open an investigation.
The phone call that Elwood considered to be a criminal referral is in addition to the referral later received as a letter from the Inspector General for the Intelligence Community regarding the whistleblower complaint.
Justice Department officials said they were unclear whether Elwood was making a criminal referral and followed up with her later to seek clarification but she remained vague.
Oh really? She needs to testify to Congress and so does Bill Barr.
Bloomberg reports that in response to the whistleblower complaint, Trump is reducing the number of people who know what he’s up to: Trump Orders Cut to National Security Staff After Whistle-Blower.
Polly, Martin Leman
President Donald Trump has ordered a substantial reduction in the staff of the National Security Council, according to five people familiar with the plans, as the White House confronts an impeachment inquiry touched off by a whistle-blower complaint related to the agency’s work.
Some of the people described the staff cuts as part of a White House effort to make its foreign policy arm leaner under new National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien.
The request to limit the size of the NSC staff was conveyed to senior agency officials by acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and O’Brien this week….
Two of the people familiar with the decision to shrink the NSC insisted it was largely rooted in both the transition to O’Brien’s leadership as well as Trump’s desire to increase efficiency at the agency, which grew under former President Barack Obama. About 310 people currently work at the NSC.
Yeah, right. Why don’t I buy these explanations?
More Ukraine stories to check out:
The Washington Post: Holding Ukraine hostage: How the president and his allies, chasing 2020 ammunition, fanned a political storm.
The New York Times: What Was Gordon Sondland’s Mission to Ukraine for Trump All About?
David Ignatious at The Washington Post: For Trump, Ukraine is a story of personal resentment and political opportunism.
The New York Times: 2nd Official Is Weighing Whether to Blow the Whistle on Trump’s Ukraine Dealings.
The Daily Beast: How Rudy Giuliani’s Bid to Discredit Mueller Played Into Impeachment Probe.
The Washington Post: U.S. ambassador to European Union to give deposition to House panels in impeachment probe.
More Important Stories
Natasha Bertrand on Bill Barr’s efforts to disprove the Mueller Report: Justice Department hasn’t interviewed key Russia probe witnesses.
Cat with quilt, Martin Leman
For months, President Donald Trump’s allies have been raising expectations for prosecutor John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, predicting that he will uncover a deep state plot to stage a “coup” against the president.
Durham “is looking at putting people in jail,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity in July. Republican Rep. Jim Jordan said Durham is about to unleash “a pile of evidence” that will “debunk” everything House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has proclaimed for “the last two years.”
The omission raises questions about what, exactly, Durham—alongside Attorney General Bill Barr—has been investigating.
Slate: Here’s How We Know the Supreme Court Is Preparing to Devastate Abortion Rights.
The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear June Medical Services v. Gee, a challenge to Louisiana’s stringent abortion restrictions. There is very little doubt that the conservative majority will use this case to overrule 2016’s Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, allowing states to regulate abortion clinics out of existence. In the process, the Republican-appointed justices will set the stage for the formal reversal of Roe v. Wade. The court’s decision to hear June Medical Services came with the alarming announcement that it will also consider whether to strip doctors of their ability to contest abortion laws in court. These aggressive moves augur an impending demise ofthe constitutional right to abortion access.
By Martin Leman
Perhaps the most important thing to know about this case is that it shouldn’t be at the Supreme Court at all. It revolves around a Louisiana law that compels abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles. In Whole Woman’s Health, the justices addressed a virtually identical statute passed in Texas. It found that this requirement provided no health benefit to women. The court explained that an abortion law violates the Constitution if the burdens it imposes on patients outweigh the benefits. Because Texas’ admitting privileges law provided no benefits, the court struck it down as an “undue burden.”
But everything has changed since then. Now that Justice Kennedy has been replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, it looks like the Court has finally found a way to almost completely neuter Roe.
The New York Times: Trump Will Deny Immigrant Visas to Those Who Can’t Pay for Health Care.
The Trump administration will deny visas to immigrants who cannot prove they will have health insurance or the ability to pay for medical costs once they become permanent residents of the United States, the White House announced Friday in the latest move by President Trump to undermine legal immigration.
Mr. Trump issued a proclamation, effective Nov. 3, ordering consular officers to bar immigrants seeking to live in the United States unless they “will be covered by approved health insurance” or can prove that they have “the financial resources to pay for reasonably foreseeable medical costs.”
The president justified the move by saying that legal immigrants are three times as likely as American citizens to lack health insurance, making them a burden on hospitals and taxpayers in the United States. Officials cited a Kaiser Family Foundation study that said that among the nonelderly population, 23 percent of legal immigrants were likely to be uninsured, compared with about 8 percent of American citizens.
“The United States government is making the problem worse by admitting thousands of aliens who have not demonstrated any ability to pay for their health care costs,” Mr. Trump wrote, adding, “immigrants who enter this country should not further saddle our health care system, and subsequently American taxpayers, with higher costs.”
That’s it for me. What stories have you been following?
Monday Reads: #CivilWarPotluck and other trumpist memes
Posted: September 30, 2019 Filed under: 2020 Elections, Afternoon Reads 48 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
Well, all of you undoubtedly learned about the Shot Heard ‘Round the World that started the Battle of Concord and Revolutionary War. There was the Assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand which was the shot that started World War 1. Now, we have the Tweet made fun of around Twitter that’s suggestion they’ll be another Civil War due to monumental “presidential harassment (i.e. impeachment) doesn’t stop right now. Yeah, I bet you can guess which moron threatened that.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason’s & Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side, & superstition, ambition, & ignorance on the other.” Pres US Grant 1876 (h/t to Malcome Nance)
And a few other of the usual morons might be taking it seriously. No, seriously.
https://twitter.com/ava/status/1178694814922993664
Donald Trump is shook.
You can tell the “president” is shook because every time he is, he starts flailing on Twitter, tweeting out whatever nonsense he can think of to put up a brave front—but his words usually belie that enormous front and reveal that deep down inside, he is afraid of whatever may be coming next for him.
In this particular instance, what comes next may, in fact, be impeachment hearings that could eventually lead to his ouster from office.
Sure, impeachment should have happened a long time ago, because nothing about this man says he should be sitting in the highest office in the land, but that is neither here nor there, at this point. We currently have members of the House actively calling for him to be unseated, and as the days pass it looks like the likelihood of that happening grows, so he is once again afraid and once again tweeting nonsense to try and “scare” the American people into keeping him in place.
And so, as it goes, on Sunday, Trump tweeted a quote from an evangelical Southern Baptist preacher who thinks Trump is the best thing to happen to the United States white bread—Robert Jeffress.
“If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,” Trump wrote, noting that it was a quote from a Jeffress. Jeffress made the statement during an appearance on Fox & Friends Weekend on Sunday.
Meanwhile, there’s some news from the Republicans that already left the building. First up, Jeff Flake writing in WAPO: “Fellow Republicans, there’s still time to save your souls.” What? Those things were sold a long time ago to the Orange Demon..
We have learned from a whistleblower that the president has abused the power of his office to pressure a foreign government to go after a political opponent. A rough transcript of the telephone call has removed all ambiguity about the president’s intent. In light of these revelations, the House of Representatives has launched an impeachment inquiry and will likely be forwarding to the Senate at least one article of impeachment.
Compelling arguments will be made on both sides of the impeachment question. With what we now know, the president’s actions warrant impeachment. The Constitution of course does not require it, and although Article II, Section 4 is clear about remedies for abuse of office, I have grave reservations about impeachment. I fear that, given the profound division in the country, an impeachment proceeding at such a toxic moment might actually benefit a president who thrives on chaos. Disunion is the oxygen of this presidency. He is the maestro of a brand of discord that benefits only him and ravages everything else. So although impeachment now seems inevitable, I fear it all the same. I understand others who might have similar reservations. The decision to impeach or not is a difficult one indeed.
“Now for the easy decision. If the House decides against filing articles of impeachment, or the Senate fails to convict, Senate Republicans will have to decide whether, given what we now know about the president’s actions and behavior, to support his reelection. Obviously, the answer is no.
There are also rumors of a Boltin’ Bolton from The Raw Story: “John Bolton will encourage the GOP to turn on Trump now that he’s reeling from impeachment: MSNBC panel.”
A panel discussion on the increasing fallout over Donald Trump’s Ukraine phone-call scandal led an MSNBC panel to conclude that former Trump White House insider John Bolton would likely work behind the scenes to get Republicans to turn on the president now that he is damaged goods.
Speaking with “AM Joy” host Joy Reid, journalist Gabriel Sherman noted Bolton has longtime ties to the GOP leadership who may be more sympathetic to his point of view than they are to Donald Trump’s.
“He’s a person with deep ties to the senior leadership across the Republican Party and he’s notoriously a foreign policy hawk,” Sherman explained. “The idea that Donald Trump was trading on Ukraine security to help his cause would be anathema to a person like John Bolton.”
“He has no love for this president and behind the scenes, I am certain that he is having conversations to push the Republican Party to break with Donald Trump,” he added.
Sounds like there’s a rebellion brewing in the party again but only among those who are not facing the electorate. The SIXTH Republican congress critter from Texas has followed the stampeded out the door.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-TX) announced his retirement Monday morning, saying that “the time has come for a change.”
“With over a year to go, I will continue to represent the people of the 13th District to the best of my ability,” he said in a statement. “Our nation faces many difficult challenges, and none of us can relax our efforts to meet and overcome them, whether at home or around the world.”
Thornberry is the sixth Republican congressman representing Texas to retire before 2020. However, whereas some, like Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), are abandoning increasingly blue districts, Thornberry is leaving a seat open in a ruby-red, safe Republican hold. The 13th district went for President Donald Trump in 2016 by a whopping 80 percent, per the Cook Political Report.
Timothy L O’Brien–writing for Bloomberg– shows all the problems now in the Donald’s Happy Meal; “Trump Hints at Civil War But He Launched a War on Facts. It’s not just the president’s phone calls to Ukraine that are a problem. Now there’s more.”
But it’s the opaque and overtly illicit material that we now know is hidden on that system, the use of which only became known thanks to a complaint filed by a Central Intelligence Agency whistle-blower, that is the stuff of presidential impeachment proceedings. The foundational disclosure, from the whistle-blower, was that Trump called Ukraine’s president in July and offered to connect him to his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, and Attorney General William Barr so they could jointly dig up dirt in Ukraine on a political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. That conversation, the whistle-blower said, got stashed away on the restricted NSC network – which the White House later confirmed.
On Friday night, the Washington Post disclosed that when Trump met with the Russians in the Oval Office in 2017, he went beyond slagging Comey and disclosing classified intelligence. He also told them “he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries.” That statement “alarmed White House officials” who decided a memo summarizing the meeting should be “limited to a few officials with the highest security clearances in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly.” It wasn’t clear if that memo was secreted on the NSC’s restricted network, but Congressional investigators can go ahead and find out.
CNN reported on Friday night that transcripts of sensitive calls between Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia were also limited to a select group in the Trump administration. CNN said it wasn’t clear if those transcripts were placed on the restricted network; the New York Times reported that they were. The Kremlin, unsurprisingly, said over the weekend that it would rather not see those transcripts made public. Congressional investigators should try to get a look at those conversations, too.
Apart from Trump’s staggering abuse of presidential power, one of the more troubling and pivotal disclosures from the whistle-blower’s complaint is that the White House systematically used the NSC network to hide his misdeeds. Doing so immediately turned that system into a Pandora’s Box of current and future woes for Trump and his White House. It also made those who managed the system, or who passed judgment on or had knowledge of the material that went into it – including witnesses and possible co-conspirators – into more than fair game for the Democrats running impeachment proceedings.
Meanwhile … what coulda shoulda been …
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: September 28, 2019 Filed under: Afternoon Reads, Foreign Affairs, U.S. Politics | Tags: Beatrix Potter, caturday, China, Donald Trump, election interference, impeachment, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky 18 Comments
Good Afternoon!!
I hope you’ll forgive a little childhood nostalgia from me this morning. Yesterday I came down with a cold and sought a little comfort by recalling the Beatrix Potter stories my parents read to me as a child. I googled Potter and came across this wonderful story about her life at The Guardian: The strange life of Beatrix Potter — how rabbits (and mushrooms) set her free, by Matthew Dennison. Dennison wrote a brief biography of Potter, Over the Hills and Far Away: The Life of Beatrix Potter. Here’s the Amazon blurb of the book:
Inspired by the twenty-three “tales,” Matthew Dennison takes a selection of quotations from Potter’s stories and uses them to explore her multi-faceted life and character: repressed Victorian daughter; thwarted lover; artistic genius; formidable countrywoman. They chart her transformation from a young girl with a love of animals and fairy tales into a bestselling author and canny businesswoman, so deeply unusual for the Victorian era in which she grew up. Embellished with photographs of Potter’s life and her own illustrations, this biography will delight anyone who has been touched by Beatrix Potter’s work.
At The Guardian, Dennison writes that at 25, Potter was:
Unmarried, cripplingly shy, plagued by poor health, she passed empty days in the nursery of her childhood home in South Kensington, at the beck and call of her irritable parents. She would remain there until her unexpected marriage at the age of 45.
In place of friends, she had a “noisy cheerful” pet rabbit called Benjamin H Bouncer. On good days, she noted, he was “amiably sentimental to the point of silliness”; on bad days, he ate the insides of her paintbox. Beatrix even dreamt about him: “Bunny came to my bedside in a white cotton nightcap and tickled me with his whiskers.” Inspired by Pepys, she wrote her diary in a complicated code of her own invention, sometimes framing her entries as letters to an imaginary friend called Esther. In these diaries, she vented frustration at her comfortable, pointless existence. As young as 10, she recorded an intention to “do something”.
It took quite awhile, but Potter eventually broke away from her restrictive parents by studying nature and painting. Of course she was best known for her illustrations of rabbits, but she also wrote illustrated stories about cats. I’ve used some of those illustrations in this post.
Now to the latest news.
We’re moving rapidly toward impeachment and maybe we’ll actually be able to rid ourselves of the monster in the White House. The revelations about Trump administration corruption are coming out at warp speed. You’ve probably been following every twist and turn, just as I have.
The latest: Last night we learned that Trump’s meeting with Russian officials in the Oval Office was even worse than previously reported. The Washington Post: Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election.
President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted alarmed White House officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter.
The comments, which have not been previously reported, were part of a now-infamous meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, in which Trump revealed highly classified information that exposed a source of intelligence on the Islamic State. He also said during the meeting that firing FBI Director James B. Comey the previous day had relieved “great pressure” on him.
A memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to a few officials with the highest security clearances in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly, according to the former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
A bit more:
White House officials were particularly distressed by Trump’s election remarks because it appeared the president was forgiving Russia for an attack that had been designed to help elect him, the three former officials said. Trump also seemed to invite Russia to interfere in other countries’ elections, they said.
The previous day, Trump had fired Comey amid the FBI’s investigation into whether the Trump campaign had coordinated with Russia. White House aides worried about the political ramifications if Trump’s comments to the Russian officials became public.
Trump had publicly ridiculed the Russia investigation as politically motivated and said he doubted Moscow had intervened in the election. By the time he met with Lavrov and Kislyak, Trump had been briefed by the most senior U.S. intelligence officials about the Russian operation, which was directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and included the theft and publication of Democratic emails and the seeding of propaganda in social media, according to the findings of the U.S. intelligence community.
Apparently, no one told Robert Mueller about these remarks–unless they were redacted by Cover-Up General Bill Barr.
Another scoop from The New York Times: White House Classified Computer System Is Used to Hold Transcripts of Sensitive Calls.
The White House concealed some reconstructed transcripts of delicate calls between President Trump and foreign officials, including President Vladimir V. Putin and the Saudi royal family, in a highly classified computer system after embarrassing leaks of his conversations, according to current and former officials.
The handling of Mr. Trump’s calls with world leaders has come under scrutiny after questions over whether a transcript of a July 25 call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was improperly placed into this computer system.
The latest revelations show the focus that White House officials put o safeguarding not only classified information but also delicate calls with Mr. Trump, the details of which the administration did not want leaked.
In the case of the calls with the Saudi royal family, the restrictions were set beforehand, and the number of people allowed to listen was sharply restricted. The Saudi calls placed in the restricted system were with King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Prince Khalid bin Salman, who at the time was the Saudi ambassador to the United States….
The practice began after details of Mr. Trump’s Oval Office discussion with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, leaked to the news media, leading to questions of whether the president had released classified information, according to multiple current and former officials. The White House was particularly upset when the news media reported that Mr. Trump had called James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, a “nut job” during that same meeting, according to current and former officials.
The White House had begun restricting access to information after initial leaks of Mr. Trump’s calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. But the conversation with Mr. Lavrov and Sergey I. Kislyak, then the Russian ambassador to the United States, prompted tighter restrictions.
From The Guardian this morning: Trump’s Ukraine call sparks new questions over intelligence chief’s firing.
Three days after his now infamous phone conversation with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Donald Trump abruptly fired his director of national intelligence in favour of an inexperienced political loyalist.
According to a New York Times report, the White House learned within days that the unorthodox call on 25 July with Zelenskiy had raised red flags among intelligence professionals and was likely to trigger an official complaint.
That timeline has raised new questions over the timing of the Trump’s dismissal by tweet of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Dan Coats, on 28 July and his insistence that the deputy DNI, Sue Gordon, a career intelligence professional, did not step into the role, even in an acting capacity.
Instead, Trump tried to install a Republican congressman, John Ratcliffe, who had minimal national security credentials but had been a fierce defender of the president in Congress. Trump had to drop the nomination after it emerged that Ratcliffe had exaggerated his national security credentials in his biography, wrongly claiming he had conducted prosecutions in terrorist financing cases.
Despite the collapse of the Ratcliffe nomination, Gordon was forced out. She was reported to have been holding a meeting on election security on 8 August when Coats interrupted to convinceher that she would have to resign.
According to The New York Times, Trump knew about the whistleblower complaint “Soon After Trump’s Call” with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, so it appears that Trump fired Coats and Gordon to keep them from getting involved in the situation.
The Washington Post reports that Trump may have been trying to get China to investigate Hunter Biden’s activities there: Trump says he raised Hunter Biden allegations with his China go-between.
President Trump, who has alleged that Hunter Biden got the Chinese to put $1.5 billion into an investment fund, said during private remarks this week that he raised the matter with a U.S. executive who has served as his intermediary on trade talks with Beijing….
In remarks to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations on Thursday morning, Trump said he discussed Biden’s China work with Stephen Schwarzman, the chief executive of the investment company Blackstone.
“I was with the head of Blackstone . . . Steve Schwarzman,” Trump said, according to a video of the remarks obtained by The Washington Post. After alleging that Hunter Biden got $1.5 billion from the Chinese, Trump said he asked Schwarzman, “Steve, is that possible?” Trump said Schwarzman asked, “Who got that?” and Trump responded, “Biden’s son.”
Trump said he asked Schwarzman how that could happen, and the executive responded: “Maybe I shouldn’t get involved, you know it’s very political.”
I wonder how many other countries Trump has tried to solicit for help with the 2020 election?
More stories to check out, links only:
Gary Kasparov at The New York Daily News: The dam is breaking: Trump’s true character is revealed, more fully than ever.
Michael Cohen at The Boston Globe: Forget impeachment. Donald Trump needs to resign.
Jonathan Chait at New York Magazine: The Ukraine Scandal Is a Fitting Symbol of Trump’s Presidency. It May Finally Be His Downfall.
Anne Applebaum at The Washington Post: Americans spent decades discussing rule of law. Why would anyone believe us now?
The Washington Post: Deep Throat’s identity was a mystery for decades because no one believed this woman.
CNN: Democrats say White House stonewalling won’t drag out inquiry and will boost case for impeachment.
HuffPost: Now One Of Trump’s Court Picks Is Tied Up In This Ukraine Scandal.
The Washington Post: Amateur pro-Trump ‘sleuths’ scramble to unmask whistleblower: ‘Your president has asked for your help.’
The Daily Beast: Pompeo Grapples for Ways to Outlast Hurricane Rudy.
Have a great Caturday, Sky Dancers!!
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