MOSCOW — Ukrainian authorities announced a probe Thursday into possible surveillance of U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch before she was dismissed from her post by the Trump administration.
The statement by Ukraine’s Interior Ministry followed the disclosure of new documents in the impeachment case against President Trump. The material included exchanges between Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, and others about the need to push Yovanovitch from her post.
Some douchebags decided that they were going to start a surveillance project on one of our ambassadors, perhaps in preparation for an assassination attempt, and we’re not the first country to launch an investigation? Jesus, how can the he-man Republican superhawks, ready to launch a fucking war at the drop of a god damned hat, live with themselves? If a Democrat had done this, the emasculation rhetoric would make spring castration on a Dakota ranch seem like a kiddie rodeo. But not these disgusting, compromised, subservient, traitorous fucks in the Trump administration — they just bend the knee.
(If there’s been any statement from the State Department at all on the latest Yovanovitch revelations, I haven’t seen it.)
Hoodie
Some world-class trolling by the Ukrainians.
Baud
Edited to include action item.
ET
While I am not sure what they will find or how serious it is, it isn’t like Pompeo will care to have this investigated in any way. That would be tacitly acknowledging that hinkey things were going on and that would undermine tRump.
MattF
Ukraine doesn’t want to be seen as abetting corruption. HAHAHA. [pause to catch breath]. HAHAHA.
germy
Kay
It implicates their officials in corruption along with our officials. It’s just that ours are (now) so corrupt they block investigations.
It remains shocking to me how fast it collapsed, the “rule of law”. I would have predicted it would be more resilient. It’s sad to watch.
MattF
Dahlia Lithwick has a useful corrective for anyone who imagines that there will be a fair trial in the Senate. The best we can hope for is a circus. The Parnas interview is a good start.
Zzyzx
Be very careful with this Parnas stuff. I don’t trust sketchy sources who keep giving huge bombshells. Listen but disclaim it instead of assuming it’s true.
Kay
@germy:
I love how Nunnes compounded his first lie with a second lie- that he didn’t “recognize the name”
They think they’re untouchable. Let’s hope that’s not true.
Jamie
@Kay: Yep. Collapse of the rule of law is the thing that pisses me off most over this whole administration shitshow. And there’s a lot to be pissed off about.
Jinchi
They just canceled a Congressional briefing on embassy security yesterday, so I don’t expect to hear much unless it’s on Laura Ingraham’s show.
jeffreyw
@Hoodie:
Especially the little filip at the end of one story about it that I saw this morning – they invited the FBI to help out, if they had a mind to.
Fair Economist
@Zzyzx: Check out this twitter cross-referencing Parnas’ claims with call records. On multiple occasions conspirators make calls to other conspirators immediately after Parnas claims to have told them something damning.
There is definitely a lot of truth in Parnas’ claims.
Kay
@Jamie:
We weren’t good enough. Strong enough. The thing was tested and it failed, and “the thing” is just a collection of people.
I think it can perhaps be rebuilt but not without a recognition that when we most needed it, it failed. We’re not supposed to be in a position where we’re relying completely on a little more than half of the US House for all oversight and law enforcement. How did it come to this? Who had to fail and how did they fail? If we get thru this we need a very honest appraisal of all of the entities that had to fail to get us to this point.
Zzyzx
@Fair Economist: good. I’m not saying it’s false. I’m saying do the work. I’m glad to see that people are.
Jamie
@Kay: Yep. Fuck bygones and water under the bridge. We will need a reckoning. I hope we get the chance.
germy
hells littlest angel
Has Trump yet taken credit for pressuring Ukraine into cracking down on corruption?
Baud
@germy:
LOL! LOL! LOL! You’re a traitor to your country.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
That’s probably true. Zelensky was elected on an anti-corruption program, and it was only severe arm twisting by Trump that got him to the point of considering announcing a Biden investigation. Regardless of whether he’s actually clean- and I willingly admit I don’t know enough about Ukrainian politics to know how clean he is- he has good reasons to want to look clean.
JGabriel
WaPo via mistermix @ Top:
So, Trump tried to get the Ukraine gov’t to publically announce an investigation into the Bidens, and now Ukraine has publically announced an investigation into Trump?
I wonder if Fox, NYT, Politico, etc., will give this the same hysterical level of credulous over-reporting they gave and would have continued giving to any such accusations against the Bidens (or any other Democratic nominee)?
Kay
@Jamie:
We need worst case redundancies, apparently. This is either passive or active capture. Maybe too many of the incentives run in the direction of either allowing it to happen or actively participating in it.
It could be worse, actually. We could be in a situation where we didn’t even have the US House. Saved by a whisker. The whole point of “process” is you’re not asked to rely on the individual goodness of people, because individual people will fail. That’s the process guarantee. That’s the whole thing. We thought we were relying on process but actually we were relying on individual people not taking advantage of the weakness. There just weren’t enough good ones. We came up short.
Jinchi
One small upside to the Trump era is that he put the US to a full on stress test and it’s become pretty clear which pieces have failed (the entire Republican party), which are vulnerable (the courts and the Justice Department) and which have stood up to the challenge (the bulk of civil employees and the public at large).
Whoever takes over after Trump needs to recognize that challenge, but the roadmap for what needs fixing is already there.
MattF
@Roger Moore: I agree that Ukraine wants to combat corruption. After all, they understand the cost.
Gin & Tonic
@Kay:
By “their” I am assuming you mean Ukrainian, and what should be added is “their former officials.” Part of the reason Zelensky won and a big part of the reason the later legislative elections threw out 80% of the incumbents was an anti-corruption platform. The Prosecutor General that Parnas was talking with was the previous government’s appointee, and part of the reason he’s pissed is because he is now out of power.
I don’t mean to sanctify the Zelensky government, but Ukraine has taken a lot of steps in the right direction. It would be sweet, sweet irony indeed if Trump’s “launch an investigation” ended up burning Pompeo and Trump.
Personally I don’t think there’s much there there, but this is great news, and I hope it embarrasses the State Department which has done jack shit to stand up for Yovanovitch.
Kay
Someone should call the police. Oh, wait, they are the police. That’s where we are. The old joke about local corruption is now national.
Jinchi
It’s only funny because Nunes doesn’t realize that those are all the same scandal.
Kay
@Gin & Tonic:
That is what I meant. I’m trying not to see this as exclusively about the US. They have their own country and their own aims.
Oh, well. Maybe they’ll nab a couple of our high ranking crooks in the course of their investigation since we’re apparently incapable of policing our own.
James E Powell
@Kay:
They all certainly behave as if they believe that. The combination of McConnell’s successful nullification of the Obama administration and Trump’s election has convinced them that the press/media will never hold them accountable and that as long as they hold onto their base, they can’t lose.
Can we say they are wrong?
Jinchi
I suppose it’s too much to hope that Rudy Giuliani spends the rest of his life in a Ukrainian jail.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I think you’re not giving it enough credit. What you are seeing is not the collapse of a system that was healthy until Trump came along but the final collapse of something the Republicans have been undermining at least since Nixon. All of the biggest scandals since before I was born have involved the Republicans politicizing the justice system, either by trying to use it to shield them from the consequences of their lawlessness (Watergate, Iran/Contra) or by weaponizing it against their enemies (Nixon’s enemies list, Whitewater, Benghazi).
CaseyL
@Kay: A democracy is a reflection of its citizens. Our country failed because we did. Too many citizens are disinterested and don’t participate in the minimum of civic duties, i.e., voting.
The damage wasn’t abrupt. If you want to ignore the election in 1968 (where I think the damage really got started), then you can focus on the 2000 election, where Gore was “too establishment” (his wife wanted labels on music records! Censorship!!). Or 2010 mid-year elections, when too many voters agreed that “Obama Let Us Down!” and didn’t vote, and let the Senate fall to the GOP, and have let it stay there ever since.
And of course there’s always 2016, when the ratfuckers won everything.
The failure only seemed abrupt. It wasn’t. The failure was more like a solution that has become saturated and finally crystallizes.
Jamie
@Kay:
In particular, the amount of power and discretion the Attorney General has is appalling. “Why, thank you for the referral, Congress, but I’ll decline to prosecute myself for contempt at this time.” It’s all individual, no process. A process failure you can drive a truck through—and all it required is someone shameless enough to do it.
Jay
@Kay:
Enron.
The Moar You Know
@Jamie: Agreed. That an executive branch employee has direct, functional control over a large part of the judicial branch seems like a situation crying out for constitutional redress.
Also, it’s just too much damn power for one person to have.
germy
Checkmate, Libs.
Jay
@CaseyL:
Broken Windows Policing should never have been taken to the streets, other than Wall Street.
A “zero tolerance” policy for White Collar crime, would have ensured that many of the names in the news now, would not be in the news now, other than parole hearings.
zhena gogolia
GOOD POST!
zhena gogolia
@germy:
What?????
Betty Cracker
@Gin & Tonic: My guess is the Zelensky government figures this surveillance thing is bullshit (Hyde seems like an unhinged blowhard), so there’s not that much risk in investigating it. They probably do have a lot of goods on the Trump admin, but I wouldn’t expect them to burn Trump, Pompeo, etc., since Ukraine is in an existential struggle with a powerful adversary that seems to control the Trump admin. If (please FSM) a Democrat wins the presidency, a lot more will come out, but I don’t really expect it to until then. Interested in hearing your take on this if you have time.
zhena gogolia
@Zzyzx:
To open an investigation into what those strange texts about stalking the US ambassador are all about is not the same as falling for Parnas hook, line, and sinker. Investigate means “find out,” doesn’t it?
germy
@Jay:
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
Why do you think somebody called her and told her to get out of Kyiv stat?
Baud
@germy:
American Patriots beat Putin in 2018, traitor.
patrick II
Someone else is doing it too, not the administration however:
I have been back and forth over whether this was a real threat or not.
1. The phone messages from Hyde were ominous.
2. Hyde is a crackpot.
3. Parnas says he didn’t take the threats seriously, Hyde was a hanger-on who was probably drunk.
4. Involvement in threatening harm to an ambassador would be, jailwise, the most serious of Parnas’ crimes if it was real. The one he is most likely to lie about.
5. His last message in that series, however, was “LOL”, which gives some credence to the fact he wasn’t taking it seriously, or at least not taking responsibility.
6. The phone call from State telling her she was at risk and to leave Ukraine means someone at state thought she was at risk (how would they know)?
7. Maybe that phone call was just State’s way of getting her out of there.
In summary, I don’t know.
zhena gogolia
@patrick II:
Besides Parnas and the texts, there are:
germy
@Baud: Watch out, he’ll sue you.
snoey
@patrick II: Minimalist explanation
Hyde was blowing smoke
Trump admin bought it
State couldn’t trust that it was smoke
James E Powell
@Roger Moore:
@CaseyL:
Agree with everything the two of you say and add this: the ruling class alliance with white supremacists has been clawing back the 20th century since 1948. They don’t always win, but they never accept defeat.
Betty Cracker
@patrick II: Same. It must be investigated since a close associate of Trump’s corrupt shadow foreign policy arm was involved in the conversation. Yes, Hyde seems like an unhinged, drunk blowhard, but such is the quality of people the POTUS surrounds himself with, so it must be taken seriously. But I suspect it’s bullshit.
MattF
@patrick II: Hyde’s behavioral repertoire probably includes making threats now and then.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jinchi:
Sure, as long as you exclude a lot of the FBI, CIA, NSA, DoD, Joint Chiefs, …
Most of leadership has always been or nearly always leaned right. It’s a persistent thumb on the scale and it’s a big part of why we are where we are.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: What I meant was that the Hyde thing seems to be the ravings of a drunkard/drug user. I do not believe he is the sort of guy who’d have had someone on the inside of US Embassy Kyiv. He may have wanted to sound like he did, but I haven’t seem anything to indicate he speaks Ukrainian or Russian or has been to Ukraine or knows Foreign Service type people. I’m not saying Yovanovitch was at no risk there, but was it greater risk than Gregory Pyatt or William Taylor, who pursued essentially the same policies?
danielx
Very easily, and without losing a nanosecond’s sleep.
Kay
@Jay:
I agree and I’ll be a better overlord than they were because I think our prison sentences are too long, so they’ll only do 5 or something. I’m consistent. The wealthy and powerful can be rehabilitated at the same rates the poor and powerless are- maybe higher- they have more resources. I have a lot of hope for their successful return to productive lives.
Take it all back to “5 to 10” as “long”. Just reset the marker.
Immanentize
@zhena gogolia:
Why do people think Trump knew Yovanovich had left Ukraine. He may have been told, but on that call, he quite well could have thought she was still there. He is, as we constantly point out, having some difficulties in his brain pan.
Fair Economist
@Betty Cracker:
If they were smart, they’d burn the Trump admin. As you say, the Russians control Trump; in the end he’ll screw them over.
Josie
According to the AP, the Ukrainians are also investigating the Russian hacking of Burisma. Good for them.
patrick II
@James E Powell:
I think of it as a one-way ratchet. We gain something we lose it the next election. They gain something, they keep it. The courts most importantly.
clay
@Gin & Tonic: I agree, but… what was Hyde’s motive? He kept it up for a week. That’s a long time to keep up a false pretense. Did he expect Parnas to take him seriously?
It’s weird.
Just Chuck
@germy: God damn it I feel left out. Why am I not being sued by Nunes yet?
Jinchi
I’d like to dismiss this, but the unanswered question is whether Hyde took the threat seriously. This is a man trying to curry favor with Trump. He’s wealthy enough to have donated tens of thousands of dollars to the Trump campaign, so he certainly has enough to run a low level surveillance operation in Ukraine and he keeps saying that his local contacts are willing to “get rid of” Yovanovich for a price.
hells littlest angel
@patrick II: Hey, Hyde was just drunk. No big deal, just like if you got drunk in an airport and made some jokes about hijacking a plane.
Betty Cracker
@Fair Economist: Maybe, but my sense is it’s more complicated than that. Trump is in thrall to Putin for whatever reason — compromising info, genuine admiration for a figure who actually is what Trump aspires to be, etc. — but he can’t act out his servile role with impunity. He and his Republican enablers have to at least pretend to recognize that Russia is a strategic threat, hence the sanctions are still in place, the U.S. still gives lip service to supporting Ukrainian independence, etc. If the Ukrainians burned the Trump admin, they’d be extremely vulnerable as long as Republicans control the executive branch.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I don’t know, I think the number of victims should act as a multiplying factor.
Number of victims: 5 million
X
Minimum sentence for said felony: 6 months
=
2 1/2 million years.
Done!
TomatoQueen
@The Moar You Know: The Justice Department is a part of the Executive Branch. It is NOT part of the Judiciary. See this org chart for details (it’s a little easier to read than some of the others)https://kottke.org/17/01/the-official-org-chart-of-the-us-government How to protect cabinet-level depts. from the predations of an executive gone stupid/crazy is a question that perhaps moving it over to Judiciary would address specifically, but it isn’t necessarily the answer for all the others.
https://kottke.org/17/01/the-official-org-chart-of-the-us-government
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Hyde wouldn’t have “somebody” inside the US Embassy in Ukraine. Somebody else in the “team” did. All that was required was that somebody gives Hyde the contact info, and vouches for Hyde to the MAGAt contact inside the Embassy.
Earlichman, McChord, Paisley, Colson, Krogh, etc, none of them “knew” the Plumbers, Liddy did, had the contacts and vouched for the team.
Management of “Special Projects” are often “handed off” to an expendable “middle manager” to run. The “middle manager” doesn’t need to have the contacts, others do. Tuttie Frutti Rudy Deleudy is up to this eyeballs in corrupt Ukrainians from his “Security Consulting”. He would know a bunch of “guys”, who would know the guys to assemble and pay to be a “ground team” in Ukraine. All that would be required is an exchange of names, money and bonafides. Firtash is up to his eyeballs in this as well, and like Rudy, “he knows a guy” or two.
So, yeah, this is not something Hyde could “put together” on his own, but it is something he could manage and run, if he were supplied with the contacts, money and vouched for.
snoey
@TomatoQueen: The brits differ from us in that they admit that they have an unwritten constitution.
An independent AG used to be part of ours.
germy
Baud
@germy:
Discovery will be epic.
Another Scott
RollCall says that Liz Cheney isn’t going to run in the open Senate seat election, but will stay in the House.
Hmmm…
Cheers,
Scott.
piratedan
I think you have to take the Hyde threats seriously when you apply a bit of context..
1) its not like political violence is unheard of in the region
2) its not as if Hyde hadn’t already identified the Ambassador as being an enemy in his eye based on his own tweets
3) he actually travelled to Ukraine to track her movements
4) claimed to have someone inside passing them her access and availability
My understanding is that kind of behavior usually gets you a restraining order
germy
@piratedan:
And he had a history of harassing people, according to court documents.
Mike in NC
They don’t just bend the knee. First they must dig a six-foot hole in which they prostrate themselves before the Orange Clown. At which point he offers a thumbs up or thumbs down. Profiles in courage all around.
Another Scott
RollCall:
Unsurprising – of course he did – but it’s good that the GAO said so clearly.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@piratedan:
Do you have a link for this? Not necessarily doubting you, just that I’ve been pretty busy the last few days and seem to have missed this/
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@Jinchi: I agree. He was a drunk loose cannon with more money than sense. This could have gone VERY wrong. Successful criminals would never have let him anywhere near their op. But this is Giuliani and Co we’re talking about. I’m surprised they didn’t have a Capuchin monkey riding a pig in a tutu in their gang.
TomatoQueen
@snoey: Independent? Really? That is not how it works, nor has it ever.
tps://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/08/04/index-details-contents-robert-kennedy-papers/5ALBdGqsDSR1LKTzjEfTgN/story.html
germy
This will be the GOP’s 2024 nominee. He’ll sweep the republican primaries.
Once in office, he’ll be handed a list of judges to nominate and mainstream conservatives will nod in approval.
MattF
Slate item on how RW lies get propagated. No surprises, but one should note how routine this is, down to getting a tweet from Uday.
Jay C
@Another Scott:
Yeah: unlikely to flip, though: with or without Liz Cheney.
From what I’ve read over the years, Liz has been angling for that Senate seat for quite a while: but the WY GOP machine has always had other ideas. And Wyoming is basically a one-party state: like Cuba or Vietnam…..
Jay
MattF
@germy: Everyone loves the circus. Except maybe the guy with the shovel.
Jay
@piratedan:
Hyde can add that restraining order to his collection of restraining orders.
patrick II
@hells littlest angel:
I didn’t question that it’s a serious threat that should be investigated, but whether it was a real threat, which we only will only find out after the investigation.
Of course, Barr said no more campaign relatated investigations without his permission. So maybe we’ll never know, or not until 2021.
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@germy: One could argue that the monkey on a pig is already in office…..
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic:
All I’m saying is that the State Department needed to look into this formally and officially. But Pompeo doesn’t care.
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
Yeah. That sentence has not gotten anywhere near the attention it should have.
TomatoQueen
Complete edit failure including every error known to man, for the last 20 minutes. IE is bad enough (there is nothing I can do about this, IE is the only browser permitted on the work computer), but this is making me scream.
Gin & Tonic
@zhena gogolia: I fully agree.
Duane
@Fair Economist: It’s better for the Ukrainian government to bring down Trumpov than being hostage to the crook for four more years. They need an honest US ally.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
The GOP’s 2024 nominee will be whoever is the most openly racist. Republican voters have had it up to here with polite aristocrats promising respectable racism. When Romney failed to put Obama in his place, that was the last straw.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@germy:
Mooooo
Citizen Alan
@CaseyL:
I have said repeatedly that every problem facing this nation can be traced to the fact that LBJ, Hubert Humphrey, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton were not “pure enough” to satisfy the pampered and ideologically-obsessed left wing of the Democratic Party.
West of the Rockies
@germy:
Hairy little Devin is making so much noise because the story is turning to him. His behavior is quite a tell.
zhena gogolia
@Citizen Alan:
You’re absolutely right. And I lived through it all.
joel hanes
@germy:
Ted Lieu rocketh in the free world, and gets far too little attention/credit for so rocking.
joel hanes
@Kay:
Who had to fail and how did they fail?
Thirty years of deliberate sabotage by Rupert Murdoch is a salient factor.
pacem appellant
We have no equivalent of Devin Nunes in the House or Senate who will scream “Benghazi!” into any microphone or camera continuously. And if we did, we don’t have a media that would pay attention. I have no solution to this, I’m just cynically pointing out that if Adam Schiff yelled “Parnas!” and held hearing after hearing on Ukraine collusion, the tradmed would label him “shrill” and/or ignore him.
joel hanes
@snoey:
[maybe] Hyde was blowing smoke
All the threats against abortion providers are the threateners blowing smoke, until one day one of them isn’t
joel hanes
@TomatoQueen:
The judiciary never gets to see cases that the AG declines to pursue.
See how that works?
J R in WV
@Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ:
You don’t think this was Rudy Colluddi’s role in the gang? I do!
Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ
@J R in WV: LOL, good point! Now I can’t picture Rudy without one of those little pillbox hats that Capuchin monkeys wear….
Josie
@zhena gogolia:
It just dawned on me that this is why we agree so vehemently on the subject. We lived it and saw it happening over and over again. I was hoping it would not take over the discussion this time, but it seems to have been a vain hope.
TomatoQueen
@joel hanes: Please save your sarcasm for someone who hasn’t worked in the fed for nearly 20 years, mostly at the nexus of judiciary and executive branches. And in answer to your question, no court sees a case not properly before it.