October 3, 2019: Trump Will Take Help from China or Ukraine to Win Next Election

 

10/3/19: Today we consider some of the fast-breaking developments in the investigation of President Trump.  

 

____________________ 

“I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” 

Ambassador Taylor

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That is, the latest investigation, the one involving his shakedown call to Ukraine. Not the one involving the meeting with Russians and top campaign guys in Trump Tower in June 2016. Or the one where he paid off a porn star and a Playboy Bunny. And not the one about his taxes. Or the one where two dozen women accused him of sexual harassment and Summer Zervos is suing his ass. 

At this point it seems safe to say someone needs to explain the rule of law to Donald J. Trump.

 

We learn that awful truth again this morning when the president strides across the White House lawn and stops to inform reporters that he wants China to investigate a political opponent and his son. 

Yes, Trump fans. Your fat, orange boy just said he’d like a commie government to get the goods on American citizens. 

The president, of course, has been in meltdown mode for more than a week, ever since it dawned on him that his blunders were likely to lead to impeachment. So the rule of law looms larger in import with each passing day. 

Trump would really like this guy to help him win the next election:

President Xi Jinping.

 

A few examples: 

In his latest fury, Trump has suggested that the whistleblower may be guilty of treason. 

He wants to go back to the way it used to be – when the punishment for such a crime was hanging. 

The president has said he wants to know who gave the whistleblower information and says those people are like “spies.” 

Okay, we’ll need more rope. 

The president has called the whistleblower’s complaint a “total fiction” and insists it has no resemblance to the “perfect” call he made to the president of Ukraine. And he has, naturally, squirreled the transcripts of that call away, where only his aides and maybe FLOTUS can see them. 

Unfortunately, if we’re trying to explain reality to the American people, it doesn’t help that only 40% of Republicans think Trump mentioned Joe Biden and his son during the Ukrainian call. Here, we can definitively say, that if Republicans would read the call memorandum released by the White House, that number would shoot up to 92%, assuming the rest had crippling comprehension problems.

Six out of ten Republicans are woefully ill-informed.

 

* 

Mike Pompeo “forgets” he was on the July 25 call. 

IN THE MEANTIME, our tangerine-tinted leader has been on a roll. He fumed that Chairman Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee (now nicknamed “Shifty Schiff”) should also be booked for “treason” because he misquoted Trump’s words in the call to President Zelensky. 

Again, the penalty for treason would be death. Or as Trump might call it, “Bringing jobs back to the rope factory.” 

He also told reporters “a whistleblower should be protected, if the whistleblower is legitimate.” But the whistleblower who lodged a complaint against him is “a so-called whistleblower,” “biased” and “a political hack.” 

So: No protection for him or her! 

(Death by hanging again?)

 

In a snippet of positive news, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) pushed back on that idea – that only a whistleblower with the seal of approval from Trump should expect protection and anonymity. In a statement he released on his U.S. Senate website, Sen. Grassley explained: 

This person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected [emphasis added]. We should always work to respect whistleblowers’ requests for confidentiality. Any further media reports on the whistleblower’s identity don’t serve the public interest – even if the conflict sells more papers or attracts clicks….

 

When it comes to whether someone qualifies as a whistleblower, the distinctions being drawn between first- and second-hand knowledge aren’t legal ones. It’s just not part of whistleblower protection law or any agency policy. Complaints based on second-hand information should not be rejected out of hand, but they do require additional leg work to get at the facts and evaluate the claim’s credibility.

 

In not-so-good “rule of law” news, President Trump clearly missed what Sen. Grassley said. Today, he stated publicly, without there having been a trial, that a U.S. citizen, Hunter Biden, received “a payoff” from the Chinese. He said that former Vice President Biden and his son were guilty of corruption in Ukraine. “Nobody has any doubt,” he added. He said – again without evidence – that the whistleblower complaint was no good, because Chairman Schiff “helped him write it.” Ukraine, he told reporters – all but begging a foreign nation to help him out in the 2020 election – should “launch a major investigation” into Joe and his son.

 

Fresh revelations continued to dent the president’s defenses. On September 22, we know Martha Raddatz asked Secretary of State Pompeo what he might know about the July 25 call. Pompeo acted like she had hit him on the head with a croquet mallet and said the call was news to him. 

Apparently, it was quite a whack to the noggin.’ Ten days passed before Pompeo admitted yesterday, Oh, yeah. That call. 

He was listening on that call.

 

At the same time, Rudy Giuliani’s name popped up all over the news. First, he admitted that he had compiled a dossier of material, garnered from Ukrainian sources, “proving” that VP Biden and his son had been up to no good. One impeccable source was Paul Manafort, currently lodged in federal prison. Rudy and Paul communicated through Paul’s lawyer. 

Let’s pause a moment and allow that to sink in. 

We should also throw in some old news to spice up our story. Don’t forget, President Trump said he could pardon himself! And don’t forget, Trump always admitted a pardon remained on the table for Manafort, assuming that Manafort kept his mouth shut about Trump. 

(He did.)

 

* 

Volker cautioned the Ukrainians not to get involved. 

ON THURSDAY, the former U.S. special envoy to the Ukraine testified for hours behind closed doors. Not much information has leaked; but it has been reported that Ambassador Kurt Volker had specifically warned Giuliani that his sources in Ukraine were no good. 

Volker also told lawmakers he cautioned the Ukrainians not to get involved with meddling in the next U.S. election. That supports the whistleblower’s allegation that Volker had “provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the President made.” 

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), clearly in need of hearing aids, emerged after several hours of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. He informed reporters that he had not heard a syllable to support the idea that Trump withheld military aid to an allied nation to leverage help in the 2020 election. This, despite the fact Volker supplied text messages involving communications with Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in the Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union. Sondland, who made a fortune in the hotel business, but had never been a diplomat, got the job by donating $1 million to Trump’s 2016 inaugural committee. 

(That’s fairly standard practice when it comes to awarding ambassadorships to plumb positions: like France or England. Career diplomats get to be ambassadors to countries like Mali or Tuvalu. Or Iraq.)

 

The context of the emails is not entirely clear. But if what ABC is reporting is correct, what Taylor was worried about is obvious: 

(Volker comes in late on the three-way talk.) 

TAYLOR: The nightmare is they give the interview [Team Trump is pressuring Zelensky to go on CNN and mention an investigation into the Bidens] and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.)

 

(A bit of cross talk takes place.)

 

TAYLOR: The message to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security assistance is key. With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us. Thus my nightmare scenario.

 

…

 

TAYLOR (three minutes later): Counting on you to be right about this interview, Gordon.

 

SONDLAND: Bill, I never said I was “right”. I said we are where we are and believe we have identified the best pathway forward. Let’s hope it works.

 

TAYLOR: As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.

 

SONDLAND: Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign. I suggest we stop this back and forth by text. If you still have concerns, I recommend you give Lisa Kenna or S a call to discuss them directly. Thanks.

 

TAYLOR: I agree.

 

In other words, Taylor, the professional, thinks it’s clear military aid is being withheld in return for Ukrainian help in a U.S. political campaign. That’s what the whistleblower alleged.

 

Taylor was serving as charge d’affaires to the Ukraine, having taken over that post in June. The previous U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, had been recalled in May, several months early. Giuliani admitted on Thursday, that Yovanovitch was dumped after he told the president she was blocking his attempts to investigate Democrats like former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. 

BIDEN!

Is this difficult to grasp????

 

* 

FINALLY, we learn that a second whistleblower complaint is in the works. This one involves a person working for the I.R.S., who alleges political appointees have interfered with the normal auditing process of Trump’s tax returns.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: In the email exchanged noted above, Ambassador Sondland states quite clearly that he believes there is “no quid pro quo” involved in the hold on military aid to Ukraine. Republicans will latch onto this statement like barnacles. 

Later, Sondland will say, having heard other witness accounts, that he realizes there was a quid pro quo.

December 17, 2019: Two Important Documents Released Regarding Impeachment

 

12/17/19: Two important documents are released today. One is a warning to all Americans. The other is – well, frankly, another inadvertent warning to all of us – that the President of the United States is kind of a loon. The first is a scathing editorial written by William Webster, 96, the only man ever to serve as both director of the F.B.I. and later director of the C.I.A. Webster outlines the threat posed to the rule of law by Trump and his Trumplican enablers. The second warning comes in the form of a letter Trump pens himself.

Webster, 96, felt compelled to speak out.

 

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“The rule of law, something so precious it is greater than any man or administration.” 

Former F.B.I. Director William Webster

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In an opinion piece titled, “I Headed the F.B.I. and C.I.A. There’s a Dire Threat to the Country I Love,” Webster calls on all of us to awake. He was originally chosen by President Jimmy Carter to head the F.B.I. – because he was a Republican and the F.B.I. had fallen into disrepute during the Watergate years. Later, Webster served under President Reagan, a man he says he “revered.” 

Now he says he considers it his duty, 

to speak out about a dire threat to the rule of law in the country I love. Order protects liberty, and liberty protects order. Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order are, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.

 

Webster finds President Trump’s attacks on the current F.B.I Director deeply troubling. A ten-year tenure granted to F.B.I. directors is meant to insulate them from political pressure. The “president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block, disturbs me greatly.” 

“The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director are critical,” he continues, “and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.” 

During his years at the F.B.I. helm, 

I reported to four honorable attorneys general. Each clearly understood the importance of the rule of law in our democracy and the critical role the F.B.I. plays in the enforcement of our laws. They fought to protect both, knowing how important it was that our F.B.I. remain independent of political influence of any kind.

 

Attorney General William Barr’s “charges of bias within the F.B.I., made without providing any evidence and in direct dispute of the findings of the nonpartisan inspector general,” also trouble him. Such attacks “risk inflicting enduring damage on this critically important institution.” 

Barr has said that the F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was based on a “totally bogus narrative.” 

Webster vehemently disagrees. 

In fact, the report conclusively found that the evidence to initiate the Russia investigation was unassailable. There were more than 100 contacts between members of the Trump campaign and Russian agents [emphasis added throughout, unless noted otherwise] during the 2016 campaign, and Russian efforts to undermine our democracy continue to this day. 

 

He also expresses “profound” disappointment with Rudy Giuliani, a man he once considered a friend. “I hope he, like all of us, will redirect to our North Star, the rule of law, something so precious it is greater than any man or administration.” 

Webster discusses challenges he has seen the nation overcome during a long and eventful life. This current challenge is as dangerous as any heretofore. “This is not about politics,” he warns. “This is about the rule of law. Republicans and Democrats alike should defend it above all else.”

 

* 

There was a quid pro quo. 

WITH the House of Representatives poised to vote on articles of impeachment the next day, President Trump fires off a six-page letter meant to offer a defense from what he considers a scurrilous attack. That letter bolsters the case that Trump has lost whatever few marbles he had left. 

First, you have to wonder what possessed the President of the United States to sit down and start haranguing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the recipient of the original copy of his bizarre missive. 

And what were the main points Trump hoped to make? Mainly, he wanted to scream about all the horrible people out to get him. There was Chairman Adam Schiff, who “cheated and lied.” There was “a ranting and raving Congresswoman, Rashida Tlaib,” who called him a “mother****r.” Plus, Pelosi! She was the worst! “You do not know, nor do you care, the great damage and hurt you have inflicted upon wonderful and loving members of my family,” Trump cries. Hillary! She was terrible too. So was the F.B.I., which spied on his campaign (an inspector general’s report just said that that charge was unfounded). And James Comey. What a lowlife. Firing him was “one of the country’s greatest decisions.” Trump made that decision. One of the greatest decisions! Of course. Many Democratic lawmakers were “deranged and radical representatives of the far left.” In other words, forget Ukraine. Forget military aid to an ally. Forget U.S. national security – which would be harmed by a delay in the aid. Anyone who voted to impeach the next day, the president howled, was really showing they “revile the voters” and “detest America’s Constitutional order.”

 

Mostly, the letter was nothing more than presidential whining. This was an “invalid impeachment.” Pelosi and the Democrats were “violating” their oaths of office. His opponents were “spiteful.” And, boy, did it piss him off when Speaker Pelosi kept telling reporters that she prayed for him. “You are offending Americans of faith by making that claim. It is a terrible thing you are doing,” he wailed, “but you will have to live with it, not I!” 

(Actually, he was going to have to live with it; he was going to go down in history as one of only three presidents ever impeached.) 

The man accused of abusing his power and threatening the rule of law, did his best to turn the tables on Pelosi and her party – even though he was the one who asked a foreign power to interfere in a U.S. election (again). 

He labeled the impeachment inquiry “an unprecedented and unconstitutional abuse of power.” In other words, he still didn’t know what the U.S. Constitution said. The House of Representatives is granted “sole power” to impeach. 

Second, he said that the articles of impeachment were no good because they “include no crimes.” Again, he failed to understand what the Founding Fathers had said. 

Besides, Ambassador Sondland said there was no “quid pro quo.” He said it!!! That meant, Trump had to be innocent. 

He had to be! 

(BLOGGER’S NOTE: Sondland later testified in what some people would call “plain English.” He said there was a quid pro quo.)

 

If the Democratic standard for impeachment had been applied in the past, Trump continued to wail, “every American president would have been impeached many times over.” Obama would have been impeached probably ten times. That would be nine more times than Trump. George Washington would have been impeached at least twice. Maybe more. Bill Clinton’s penis would have been impeached – multiple times. Only William Henry Harrison would have avoided impeachment, dying after just 31 days in office, before the House could put together an impeachment case. 

Trump wanted to be clear. The Democrats couldn’t impeach him because he won in a landslide in 2016. Pelosi and her crew should back off and respect the 62 million voters who put him in office. 

Forget the 65 million who voted for Hillary. 

They weren’t good Americans.

 

Besides the whistleblower, “started this entire hoax with a false report of the phone call that bears no relationship to the actual phone call that was made,” the president claimed. Once he “presented the transcribed call” (actually a call memorandum) “and shocked the fraudsters” then “the so-called whistleblower, and the second whistleblower, disappeared because they got caught, their report was a fraud, and they were no longer going to be made available to us.” 

Anyone not too lazy to check could peruse the original whistleblower complaint and study witness testimony and see that almost every claim the whistleblower made was validated by more than one witness. Those witnesses all testified under oath. You could even find the whistleblower complaint at Fox News. 

Well, you know who the real victim was in this whole Ukraine affair? Donald J. Trump! “More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” he cried, than Democrats gave him.

 

Then – back to bitching about Nancy Pelosi. She and her party were putting on a “false display of solemnity.” “No intelligent person believes what you are saying,” he writes in his letter to the Speaker. This impeachment is a partisan “coup.” It’s a “plot.” Pelosi has transformed “the House of Representatives from a revered legislative body into a Star Chamber of partisan persecution.” 

Finally, Trump closes: 

It is time for you and the highly partisan Democrats in Congress to immediately cease this impeachment fantasy and get back to work for the American People. While I have no expectation that you will do so, I write this letter to you for the purpose of history and to put my thoughts on a permanent and indelible record.

 

One hundred years from now, when people look back at this affair, I want them to understand it, and learn from it, so that it can never happen to another President again.

 

Then he adds that giant signature of his:

 

 

* 

DEMOCRATS aren’t the only ones who believe Trump should be impeached. Former GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina tells a reporter that Trump’s conduct has been “destructive to our republic.” 

“I think it is vital,” she adds, “that he be impeached.” 

She says she voted for him in 2016, but she’d be open to voting for a Democrat in 2020, depending on who it is.

 

* 

AT A MICHIGAN TOWNHALL, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a first-term lawmaker, faces a divided crowd. Trump fans in the audience hoot and wave signs. “Impeach Slotkin,” reads one. Supporters stand and applaud. 

Slotkin, a former C.I.A. officer, understands that her announcement, that she will vote to impeach may bring a speedy end to her political career. “In the national security world that I come from,” she tells the crowd, “we are trained to make hard calls on things, even if they are unpopular, if we believe the security of the country is at stake. There are some decisions in life that have to be made based on what you know in your bones is right. And this is one of those times.” 

“On September 19, the President’s lawyer announced proudly on live TV that he had encouraged Ukraine to investigate the Bidens,” she says. 

“On September 22, in response to a reporter’s question, the President affirmed it,” she adds. She tells her audience she was appalled when Trump encouraged China to jump into the fray and investigate a political rival. 

“As a former C.I.A. officer, I believe this lies at the very heart of impeachable conduct,” she concludes. 

She’ll stand on principle, and if it means her time in Congress comes to an end, principles mean more to her in the end.

 

* 

SLOTKIN PROVES not to be alone in her thinking. We already know nearly 900 legal scholars agree. 

Trump should be impeached. 

 

“The mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.” 

Today, 750 historians sign a letter outlining their nearly identical conclusion: 

President Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president….The President’s offenses, including his dereliction in protecting the integrity of the 2020 election from Russian disinformation and renewed interference, arouse once again the Framers’ most profound fears that powerful members of government would become, in Hamilton’s words, “the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.”

 

Signatories include Pulitzer Prize winners Robert Caro and Ron Chernow and documentary film maker Ken Burns.

January 30, 2020: Call Me Maybe - Will Senate Call Witnesses in Trump Impeachment?

 

1/30/20: We should probably be covering the questioning in the impeachment “trial” of President Donald John Trump. But Democrats have already made the case and GOP senators are preparing to ignore it. Multiple witnesses told House committees that they believed the President of the United States put U.S. national security at risk when he delayed military aid to Ukraine. Trump’s own people in key diplomatic posts, Gordon Sondland and Bill Taylor, said they believed there was a quid pro quo. Sondland said so in no uncertain terms. Taylor couldn’t be sure there was a quid pro quo, but did say he believed there was. He said he had threatened to quit in protest over the matter. Dr. Fiona Hill, who served on Trump’s National Security Council, said she believed there was a crooked deal in the works.

 

VIDEO: CALL ME MAYBE

 

The one man who could have tied up most of their testimony, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, has said he’s ready to testify if the Senate calls. He is reported to be ready to say that Trump did tell him, specifically, to hold military aid until Ukraine investigated the Biden family. 

Dr. Hill said Bolton told her that some of Trump’s White House aides were cooking up “a drug deal.” 

Senate Leader Milksop Mitch McConnell and his boys have already decided they don’t want to hear from Bolton. 

Not even under oath.

 

* 

IN VIEW of what we already knew, almost all “questioning” by Republican senators, on Wednesday and Thursday, boiled down to hard-hitting gems something like these: 

1.     Can the Trump defense team please comment on why they think the president is totally innocent? 

2.     Can you tell us why Hunter Biden, a private citizen, who had nothing to do with holding up military aid, is the real threat to America? 

3.     Please tell us why all true patriots should hate Rep. Adam Schiff, who led the impeachment inquiry in the House. 

4.     Please explain how Democrats who did the investigation in the House of Representatives were unfair, calling witnesses to testify under oath, and are, for that reason, a danger to the republic. 

5.     And, while you are at it, could you couch your responses in layers of BS to confuse Trump supporters?

  

POSTSCRIPT: In a recent poll 57% of all Americans say they want Chief Justice John Roberts, presiding over the “trial,” to rule that witnesses be called. Only 25% oppose. That quarter of Americans includes the president, Rudy, Lev and Igor, Lou Dobbs, Michael Duffey, who almost surely broke the law in holding up aid, and  as many as 51 cowardly GOP senators who possess the votes to decide. 

While voters might disagree over which witnesses to call, in another poll 75% say they want witnesses.