I’m not even excerpting, it’s just too damned good.
House transmittal letter with a description of the new materials: https://t.co/QxvnF1804E
Materials 1: https://t.co/DdO0AmOLSi
Materials 2: https://t.co/hEXEqjHl65— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 14, 2020
There is no doubt in my mind the Republicans will vote against impeaching Trump, but our job is to hang this shit around their necks like an anchor and never let them forget what they have done.
Baud
Infrastructure week is now an hour.
Jeffro
Don’t be so sure, Cole.
this is exactly what it sounds like just before it all rains down on trumpov and his enablers
Baud
Chris Hayes is covering.
Immanentize
You mean like any and all AUMF votes?
dmsilev
“Get rid of Lanny Davis. NICELY.”
When Lanny Davis is the good guy in the story…
ruemara
The ambassador under threat from the POTUS. Oh, fucking K.
Ken
I see Devin Nunes has betrayed the President.
(I suppose I should be careful with such jokes, lest some
Trump supporterlone madman shoot Mr. Nunes.)EDIT: I wonder if Speaker Pelosi will use this to say “Sorry, Senator McConnell, we thought we were done but as you can see more evidence just keeps turning up. Give us another two weeks, and – assuming he doesn’t commit any new felonies – we might be able to send the articles over to you.”
debbie
LOL, “do my ‘magic.'”
Immanentize
@ruemara:
@ruemara:
@ruemara:
geez, I heard you the first time!
Bill Arnold
@Ken:
Likewise. This is a pretty solid reason for further delay.
ruemara
@Immanentize: no idea why WP did that & now it’s gone.
Steeplejack
“Lev Parnas Edition,” maybe?
Kai-two
Wow, wow, wow.
I really hope this is part of a deliberate strategy by the Dems. (I don’t think that can be the case since there was a judge that had to rule on releasing these, if I recall correctly.) But in any event the timing couldn’t be better. This is going to unspool over the next 6-10 days would be my guess. Mainstream media is going to nibble on it tomorrow and then dive in Sat. and Sun.. With, in theory, the trial getting ready to start in a week or 2. Just fantastic.
Oh, and bye, bye Jay Suckandblow – you’re a witness so you won’t be trying this case. So sorry!
Kai-two
@Ken: Please, please, please be so.
Mike in DC
I see we’re skipping ahead in the corruption timeline to “assassination plots against public officials”.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Alex Cora Fired
“Holy Cow!” ~ Harry Carey
Immanentize
@ruemara: it is ever a mystery! I hope all is well with you and the beasts!
planetjanet
I had to google Robert Hyde to see why he would be texting Parnas. From this article, he is quite the classic Republican. Donated more to Trump’s campaign than he owes in child support. Escorted by police from Trump Doral in Miami for a disturbance, claiming we was being watched by the Secret Service. Posted an obscene tweet about Kamala Harris and of course, he is running for Congress. Quite a piece …. of something.
https://www.courant.com/politics/hc-pol-who-is-robert-hyde-20200114-pkrvqm2q3ngwtcrjywut4s7fzq-story.html
piratedan
I mean what President hasn’t ordered a hit on some state department diplomat? Let he who is without sin, pay the first bribe….
Matt Smith
Reading this, Hyde has plausible deniability, but it certainly reads like he was ready to order some kind of hit on Yovanovitch. I guess we should be glad she was just recalled, fucked up as that was.
oldgold
This may test Trump’s 5th Avenue hypothesis.
Bill Arnold
@oldgold:
You must be misreading it. I mean, Trump would never consider ordering somebody assassinated, right?
/s
zhena gogolia
@Matt Smith:
Oh, well, as Elise Stefanik made clear at the hearings, it was all good because Yovanovitch landed a job at Georgetown. So having her career ruined by these mafiosi was no biggie.
laura
@planetjanet: in other words, he’s a republican. I look forward to the coverage of an impeached president who’s perfect call, no pressure, transcripts, is revealed to have conspired to assassinate a US Ambassador on foreign soil. I hope that the Speaker of the House and the Committees that are still investigating continue to keep the crimes front and center and that his accomodationists have to start defending murder as a political strategy.
Another Scott
Reuters:
… gradually, and then suddenly.
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
The excerpts in Russian posted by Natasha Bertrand are chilling. “She’s not getting away.”
SiubhanDuinne
Headline is making me cranky.
zhena gogolia
Meanwhile —
Chief Oshkosh
@Another Scott: Just adding these revelations to what will be sent to the Senate, where the Democrats essentially will have no control, is weak tea. It’ll just be ignored.
zhena gogolia
@Chief Oshkosh:
So what exactly do you suggest they do?
Dan B
Some prominent conservative pundits like Bill Kristol and David Frum have been shocked by the Parnas cache. It will be interesting to see if any other conservative media figures weigh in.
zhena gogolia
@Dan B:
You can add George Conway and Tom Nichols to that list.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: If only George Conway knew someone in the White House…
MisterForkbeard
Oh, FFS. Mike Flynn is trying to withdraw his guilty plea now. ETA: “because of the government’s bad faith, vindictiveness, and breach of the plea agreement,”
Publicly fishing for a pardon.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/mike-flynn-seeks-to-withdraw-guilty-plea
grumbles
I’m… pretty sure Bill and Dave have been around long enough that they’re “shocked” rather than shocked.
Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray
@zhena gogolia: Somehow they sound more threatening in Russian.
MisterForkbeard
I don’t think the media is going to call this an assassination plot, because I don’t think they ever explicitly talk about killing her. But they track her movements, talk about paying money for people to ‘take care of it’, etc. It SOUNDS an awful lot like assassination.
Reporters are currently waiting for a Bernie/Warren explosion at the debates are aren’t paying a ton of attention, from what I can tell.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray:
Yeah. “Она никуда не денется.”
Keith P
@MisterForkbeard: Didn’t Manafort try that and fail miserably? Something along the lines of “Once you make a deal with the court, it’s ovah” IIRC (but my R is not too great)
Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray
@zhena gogolia:
Yup.
ETA : And where the fuck is her boss Pompeo in this? Asshole doesn’t have word one in defense of the US’s highest-ranking female Foreign Service Officer. Makes my blood boil.
Roger Moore
@Dan B:
Kristol and Frum have both been anti-Trump from the moment he declared his candidacy, so it should be unsurprising they’re making a big deal out of this. The question is whether it will make anyone who was previously favorable toward Trump change their mind.
Bill Arnold
@MisterForkbeard:
Trump (according to the “memorandum”) “Well, she’s going to go through some things.”
So it could be that they were just talking about having her roughed up, maybe legs broken or whatever sub-lethal things one does in that part of the world.
ETA and to be clear, there are more benign interpretations, but I’m not feeling charitable towards Trump in my interpretations today. He showed some ghoulish glee in the (startlingly impaired) teleprompter reading after the recent overt political assassination of Soleimani.
catclub
We have STILL not yet seen an official transcript of the perfect call.
Bill Arnold
@catclub:
Same for the earlier call with Z.
No transcript. Just a reconstruction, clearly using cleaned-up language.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
@MisterForkbeard: Well as far as fishing for a pardon, you would think that the lacks of pardons for people like Rodger Stone or Paul Manafort might make other cultists pause a bit.
Also, I don’t think you can rescind a guilty plea, I remember where a ’00 Islamist crazy person pleaded guilty a year or two after 9/11 hoping to be martyred, and tried to rescind his guilty plea after the verdict of life in supermax. IANAL though
EDIT: Tricks like that at the end of a trial tend to make the judges angry and into a “Throw ALL the books at him mood”. Much better to try things like that on the appeal, but Trumkins don’t really hire the smartest lawyers.
Jay C
@Matt Smith:
Though I really can’t believe he’s left it up, this link (assuming it is still going to work) goes to Hyde’s official(?) campaign Twitter.
Some …ummm.. interesting opinions about Amb. Yovanovitch….
(h/t Little Green Footballs)
Quinerly
@Jay C: this guy is vile. I just glanced at his Twitter. He loves calling folks “POS” and he calls Mayor Pete, “ButtGig.”
Bill Arnold
Video:
Trump said he doesn’t know them. CNN tracked down 10 interactions (2019/11/12/)
Some revenge by Lev Parnas for being dissed by Donald J. Trump.
That was a stupid move, DJT. :-)
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic, Duke of Tanqueray:
I think he’s complicit.
Bill Arnold
@Ken:
Ah, another reason for doing this is that it would definitely get this info-dump to dominate a few news cycles.
bmoak
“She’s going to go through some things.”- Our President on “perfect” phone call to Ukranian Prime Minister.
Would those “things” be an upper story window or perhaps a woodchipper?
JoyceH
@Bill Arnold: “Some revenge by Lev Parnas for being dissed by Donald J. Trump.
That was a stupid move, DJT. :-)”
I know! And I think the media really misses the mark when they keep calling Parnas a Giuliani associate. Seems to me that instead he’s a TRUMP associate. We’ve only seen the pix with Giuliani going back about a year, but the pix with Trump go back for years and years. I don’t think he had much to do with Giuliani until Trump put them together onto Team Ukraine. Parnas was really chuffed about the assignment and felt very important, so when Trump said he didn’t know him – WELL!
And you know what? I think the Senate GOP is inching close to their Goldwater moment, the moment when they go to Trump and tell him ‘you’ve got to resign because if we hold this trial, you’re out anyway’. Not because I sense any honor in them, but that they’re worried for their own hides.
Remember what Parnas is charged with – laundering foreign money into Republican campaigns! And what does the House do? They release this absolutely bombshell stuff from the Parnas cellphones and made sure we all know ‘and that’s not all of it.’ So they have to wonder if their campaign coffers received any of that foreign money. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few of them who have pictures of them out there with Parnas. They’re going to have to be thinking that they need to get Trump out of office for their own survival and the survival of the party.
Aleta
Not the first time some of these wack jobs in power have thought about this, looked into it …talked of or promised it. Mobsters r us.
Aleta
take mug shot, w/o the hair (nicely) … lock them up (nicely)