Before I head out to shovel again, commenter Dorothy A. Winsor posted the 8-page resolution and I thought it would be good to front page it. You can find the entire document here.
Here’s the one-page fact sheet:
Open thread
by TaMara| 77 Comments
This post is in: Impeach the Motherfucker!, Impeachment Inquiry
Before I head out to shovel again, commenter Dorothy A. Winsor posted the 8-page resolution and I thought it would be good to front page it. You can find the entire document here.
Here’s the one-page fact sheet:
Open thread
by Betty Cracker| 199 Comments
This post is in: Impeach the Motherfucker!, Open Threads, Politics
Here’s a video of Nancy Pelosi talking impeachment with Jane Mayer earlier this month at the New Yorker Festival (sorry about the pre-roll commercial; I couldn’t find an ad-free version).
[ETA: Replaced embedded video with THIS LINK to video since the original was autoplaying on some platforms. Attention, New Yorker: AUTOPLAY SUCKS!]I’d missed this somehow, but it’s a wonderful account of the impeachment decision, and it contains details I hadn’t heard before about Pelosi’s phone call with Trump on the day she announced the decision to formally open an impeachment inquiry several weeks ago.
Trump was definitely trying to wheedle his way out of trouble over the whistleblower complaint when he called Pelosi. She says he called her ostensibly to discuss gun control legislation, then turned the conversation to his “perfect” call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. Pelosi understood immediately what Trump was trying to do, then told him “what we’re kind of observing here,” i.e., that Trump had violated his oath of office, undermined national security and jeopardized the integrity of U.S. elections. At that point, Trump complained that Pelosi was laying all of that on him right before he had to go do a speech at the U.N. General Assembly. So on brand!
Anyhoo, I thought it was a fascinating insight into the origins of the impeachment drama. Pelosi is under no illusions about what the Senate will do, but she says her job, should impeachment move forward, is to make an “iron clad” case so that the public can see the courage of the House in upholding its oath to protect and defend the Constitution and the cowardice of the Senate, which will almost certainly choose to prop up Trump instead.
As I mentioned in a comment to one of our weekend threads, I think Pelosi’s description of what she was saying to Trump when asked about the now-iconic photo of her confrontation with him at the White House — “all roads lead to Putin” — is significant. Notice that when House leaders commented on Trump’s cutting them out of advance notice of the al Baghdadi raid, they noted that Trump informed Russia before informing Congressional leaders.
Smart lady, our Madam Speaker. Open thread!
Courage of the House vs. Cowardice of the SenatePost + Comments (199)
This post is in: Impeachment
Every day brings new evidence of Donald Trump’s crimes, or his commiting a new one in front of the television cameras. The scene changes rapidly, but the House Democrats are starting to focus on how to impeach Trump.
Although it is not official, the strategy that has been mentioned is to concentrate on Trump’s abuses of power in his attempts to force the President of Ukraine to comply with his desires to absolve Russia of interference in the 2016 election and to manufacture a scandal against the Bidens that would serve the same purpose as Hillary’s emails. The investigation and current depositions are consistent with this strategy.
It’s a good strategy because an airtight case is necessary, and only one or a few of Trump’s high crimes and misdemeanors can be investigated to that point, because of the limitations of time. Impeachment does not require that all crimes be addressed in this way, just enough to make a persuasive case. Presumably a list of uninvestigated probable high crimes and misdemeanors could be part of the bill of impeachment.
It also helps to focus the public’s attention and make credible Trump’s lawlessness. After the closed-door depositions now taking place, the House committees intend to hold open hearings. The purpose of the depositions is to learn the extent of this set of crimes, gather evidence, and focus the open hearings.
The attempts at influencing President Volodymyr Zelensky contain multiple probable high crimes and misdemeanors. Some may be statutory crimes. Others may amount to abuse of power or obstruction of justice. All seem to be against the interests of the United States. Here’s a list:
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are connected to both Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash and seem to have been passing money through to Republican campaigns, although it is not clear whether they are connected with the scheme to influence Zelensky. Beyond this immediate crime cluster, other crimes associated with Ukraine may become apparent.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s attorney now in prison, was a connection to Ukrainian organized crime in the United States. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry tried to influence Ukrainian officials to put people of his choosing on the board of Naftogaz, a Ukrainian natural gas company. Kashyap Patel, a congressional aide, supplied President Trump with information on Ukraine.
Update: Adam suggests that John Solomon is another backchannel. He is being represented by Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who keep popping up in this drama. I’m not including all Adam’s suspicious because I am more cautious about that, but Solomon is worth noting. Potentially diGenova and Toensing connect several of the players, but I have run out of yarn to connect all the stickies on the wall. Adam’s suggestion reminded me of another aspect to the attempts to influence Zelensky. It’s possible that once Trump had Zelensky “in a box,” he would put pressure on him in other ways. In other words, he would be able to direct Ukrainian national policy.
Further back, Paul Manafort and others in Trump’s campaign tried to exert influence relative to Ukraine in multiple ways.
Recent depositions implicate Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and Special Representative Kurt Volker. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Attorney General Bill Barr have been mentioned in the depositions.
There is much more to come.
Cross-posted at Nuclear Diner
by Adam L Silverman| 83 Comments
This post is in: America, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, All Too Normal
While Tamara and John covered Congressman Gaetz’s and his colleagues’ stupidity earlier today, I wanted to focus a little more on just why exactly this wasn’t just a stupid stunt, but was very, very, very bad in terms of Information Security (INFOSEC). It has now been reported that Congressman Gaetz gave the House Minority Leader, Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), a heads up about what he had planned.
NEW — House Minority Leader McCarthy’s office was told in advance that its rebel members would storm the SCIF today. They support it. https://t.co/hthVNifnAG
W/ @sambrodey
— Sam Stein (@samstein) October 23, 2019
We don’t know if this was done verbally face to face, by text, or by phone call. My guess is either verbally face to face or phone call. But these chuckleheads seem to be enamored of WhatsApp, which is notoriously insecure despite claiming to be a secure method of texting and calling, so they may have used that.
We also now know that this was coordinated with the President.
NEW: Trump had advance knowledge and supported a protest by Republicans who told him they planned to barge into a secure hearing room on Capitol Hill where Democrats are holding impeachment testimonies, according to four people familiar with the matter.https://t.co/FD93uj4HNW
— Kevin Whitelaw (@KevinWhitelaw1) October 23, 2019
In this case, because it was reported, we know it was done by face to face communication.
And this is where the Information Security issues really come into play. If you recall from my posts from May 2018 and September 2019 we know from reporting in Wired and Politico that the President calls, texts, and tweets from a pair of unsecured smart phones and that allied, peer competitor, and hostile foreign countries have set up mobile wireless interception devices near the White House to intercept these electronic communications. Congressman Gaetz has publicly bragged of his relationship with the President. Congressman McCarthy’s has been reported on as well, especially involving red and pink Starbursts candies. If you were an allied, partnered, peer competitor, or hostile foreign power and wanted to try to gain access to the President’s communications, one way to do it would be to try to hack either Gaetz’s or McCarthy’s cell phones. Or those of any number of the other 30 Republican members of Congress and their staffers who pulled this stupid stunt today.
These morons, in an attempt to create a spectacle that will take over the news cycle about impeachment so that the majority of the public that isn’t paying close attention at all times just throws its hands up in disgust, didn’t just force entry into the House of Representatives’ Secure Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), they brought their unsecured cell phones with them. Moreover, they then took imagery with those phones – pictures and/or videos – of classified spaces and, potentially, any classified information that had been taken out in advance of the deposition and was in public view for those members of the House, Republicans and Democrats alike, who actually had the need to know to access it today. And then they started texting and tweeting and emailing that out. On unsecured devices and unsecured and non-governmental networks! This required, as was reported, the SCIF to be closed once they finished their pizza, Chick Fil-A, their stunt and finally gave up and left, so it could be swept and resecured before the delayed deposition could finally take place. What Congressman Gaetz, Congressman Scalise who is the #2 Republican in the House/Republican House Caucus, and their 28 or so colleagues did wasn’t just a stupid stunt, it was a major security violation.
How major? Off the top of my head the number of Federal felonies committed by Gaetz and his colleagues is:
It has now been reported that Congressman Thompson (D-MS), the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee has asked the House Sergeant of Arms to take action agains Gaetz and his colleagues.
JUST IN: House Homeland Security Committee Chairman asks sergeant at arms to “take action” against Republicans who charged into the SCIF. Doesn’t explain what action he wants: pic.twitter.com/nBT5qgUOsF
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 23, 2019
I don’t know what exactly Congressman Thompson has in mind, as he doesn’t specify in his letter, but here’s what should happen at a minimum.
I expect that while Congressman Gaetz and the 29 or so other Republican members of the House that committed multiple felonies with him this morning are unlikely to face any really serious repercussions, that their staffers will not be so lucky. Those men and women, who based on the video being televised all appeared to be in their 20s and 30s, are likely to have their professional lives ruined by this as they don’t have the same protections that members of the House do. Especially, since Congressman Gaetz has already thrown the staffer that accompanied him to the wolves.
**Tweet from Staff**
— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) October 23, 2019
Lest Congressman Gaetz get away with that, here’s the picture of him taking video on his unsecured smart phone when he illegally entered the House’s SCIF. Kind of hard to miss the sign!
I would like to think that Speaker Pelosi has had a long, serious talk with Congressman McCarthy about the behavior of his caucus members, what is and is not appropriate behavior, and what will and will not be tolerated going forward. If she is as good as reported and as many of us believe she is, then nuts will be cut over this, even if public examples are not made.
Regardless, if you were a foreign actor – allied, partner, peer competitor, or hostile – and you’ve been trying to collect Signals Intelligence on what the US is doing, what Congressman Gaetz and his Republican colleagues and their staffers did today was unearned profit.
Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 155 Comments
This post is in: Impeach the Motherfucker!, Open Threads
Intriguing tidbits about State Department Ukraine envoy Bill Taylor’s testimony, courtesy of Politico reporter Andrew Desiderio’s Twitter feed:
Bill Taylor gave a very lengthy opening statement behind closed doors, per multiple lawmakers.
New: Per source in the room, Bill Taylor’s opening statement was 15 pages long and prompted “a lot of sighs and gasps.”
MORE >> Another source says the sighs & gasps were in reaction to Taylor describing “how pervasive the efforts were to tie an investigation of Burisma and 2016 election ‘interference’ to a White House meeting and aid being released.”
Sounds like Republicans are going to have to go with “yes, subverting U.S. foreign policy for personal political advantage is bad, but it’s not impeachable.”
by Betty Cracker| 199 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Foreign Affairs, Impeach the Motherfucker!, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, General Stupidity
Damn, is Nancy Pelosi a 13-dimensional chess playing, time-traveling, ninja Jedi master or what? Talk about “self-impeaching”!
He ran out of room, but what Scammy McFraudface was trying to say is that you can’t impeach a president when the economy is good. My recollection of the Clinton impeachment is hazy because I had a new baby at home back then, but I’m pretty sure the economy was roaring along, and the Republicans impeached ol’ Bill for a consensual blow job anyway.
In other news, Ronna ROMNEY McDaniel viewed the Hunter Biden interview and is troubled by the specter of nepotism:
Let me get this straight…
Hunter Biden got $50K a month from a Ukrainian energy company, despite having ZERO experience in energy.
His justification?
That he was also on the board of Amtrak – more obvious nepotism.
If that’s not the swamp, I don’t know what is!
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) October 15, 2019
The gargantuan gonads on these people! They’re going to try to just brazen it out. That’s all they’ve got:
?Fiona Hill describes this scene:
In a White House meeting, Sondland tells Ukrainians they will get a Trump meeting if they open the investigations Trump wants. Then, Sondland follows the Ukrainians out of the meeting to privately make clear he's talking about Hunter Biden.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 15, 2019
What will Sondland tell the committee under oath, I wonder? NBC News says he’ll tell them U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was “great” and that he was unaware of any issues that led to her ouster. And this:
Sondland will also testify that after he attended Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May, he met with Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former U.S. special envoy Kurt Volker in the Oval Office. In that meeting, Sondland will say, Trump told them that any in-person meeting between Trump and Zelenskiy would have to be approved by Rudy Giuliani.
Sondland will testify that it was only later that he became aware that a public commitment by Ukraine’s new government to address corruption – including Burisma Holdings – was a prerequisite for a Trump-Zelenskiy meeting. Sondland will also say that at the time that he learned that, he did not know that Burisma was linked to former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
If that’s accurate, it sounds like maybe Sondland is ready to cut his losses? Anyhoo, we’ll find out on Thursday.
Open thread.
“Impeach the Motherfucker” (signed, “The Motherfucker”)Post + Comments (199)
by Adam L Silverman| 170 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Election 2016, Foreign Affairs, Impeachment, Mueller Report, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, The Trump Doctrine
On Friday I wrote the following in an email explaining what is actually going on with the Ukraine mess that the President has made:
I amazed that all of this current brouhaha is just a really bad Russian mob shakedown. The play here is to get Parnas’s and Fruman’s boss in the Russian mob, Dmitri Firtash, off of house arrest and out from under the extradition warrant to the US so he can go back to Kyiv and take over the Ukrainian natural gas industry, strip it of every last penny, then crash it on behalf of Putin and the Russian mob. This then forces Ukraine to buy natural gas from Russia, which allows Putin to then further knuckle Ukraine by sucking resources out of Ukraine to create leverage to force Ukraine back into his orbit. As was reported last night, Giuliani is on Parnas’s payroll and has been for a while. Parnas is on DiGenova’s and Toensing’s payroll, who are working pro bono with Giuliani on behalf of the President, though they’re using him as their translator for their legal work for Firtash. Parnas and Fruman report to Firtash in regard to Russian organized crime activities. Firtash works for the Kyiv born Semion Mogilevich, who is the titular head of the Bratva. Mogolivech works for Putin who is the functional krysha/roof/protector of the Bratva. The Biden stuff is simply disinformation recycled from the Russians from 2014 as part of the maskirovka.
Earlier this evening, Andrew Weiss, who is the Vice President for Studies of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is in their Russia and Eurasia Program, tweeted the following explainer that really delineates all the parts of the network I was describing in my email from last Friday. (I’m going to put the first half above the jump and the second half below it).
Bear with me as I lay out some facts. They exceed the unreality of a Gary @Shteyngart novel. Yet based on my reading of these facts, several questions readily jump out. I don’t have all of the answers to these questions but think it’s worth asking them. 2/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
The other point of comparison that immediately comes to mind is an ongoing Federal criminal investigation of Elliot Broidy, a former top Trump fundraiser and the former vice chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign. More on him in a second. 4/ pic.twitter.com/DWADspZ8sI
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
That’s a curiously menial role for Parnas who presented himself as a high roller and whose campaign contributions gave him access to Trump and other GOP leaders. (Lawyer John Dowd says they had a similar role for Giuliani on behalf of President Trump) https://t.co/3MYZlQcVc3 6/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
In reality ties betw Parnas/Fruman and Firtash run much deeper. They were “working for Firtash" before "Parnas joined [Firtash’s] legal team…Firtash has paid their expenses in the past [including] private jet charters..& foreign travel to Vienna.” https://t.co/1PYZ6oj9eN
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
Arguably the single biggest set of toes belongs to Firtash. He was arrested immediately after the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine and has been stuck in Vienna fighting extradition to the U.S. after being charged by the Feds with FCPA violations. 10/ pic.twitter.com/gNAOcwdo8F
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
It’s also good to think of the gas trade as Exhibit #1 for the comingling of the Russian govt/organized crime. Firtash served as the top gas trade intermediary for the Kremlin & a Russian mob figure Semyon Mogilevich who’s on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List & helped control it 12/ pic.twitter.com/LdTWKGpc2h
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
It’s been all too easy to get a chuckle out of Parnas and Fruman’s bumbling hijinks after they joined the ranks of top GOP/Trump donors, despite having such a long trail of bad debts, evictions, and sketchy relationships back in Ukraine. https://t.co/vYeGu25kYf 14/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
What then to make of the revelation that Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles last Thursday while en route to Vienna? Or that Giuliani planned to leave for Vienna, Firtash’s home base, the following day? https://t.co/TmhXrjmhNn @elainaplott 16/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
Bloomberg's @nwadhams broke a story about Trump and Giuliani seeking special favors from DOJ/State Dept for one of the latter’s clients, a convicted Turkish gold trader who had violated Iran sanctions. Rex Tillerson thought these requests were illegal https://t.co/OFJn5fWC1m 18/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
That brings us back to where I started. Does this scandal echo the circumstances that led to the naming of Robert Mueller? Was Giuliani ever involved in seeking special favors for Firtash? Did he or anyone else ( DiGenova? Toensing?) raise this case with Trump or others? 20/
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
What is AG William Barr’s involvement in the search for dirt on the Bidens and conspiracy theories about the 2016 election? Remember: Trump told Zelenskyy to contact Barr. Does Barr have a conflict of interest or at least the appearance of one? Does he need to recuse himself? 22/ pic.twitter.com/3nYNsF64B4
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
ADDENDUM The Reuters team which broke the story about Firtash’s ties to Giuliani’s associates deserves a major shoutout @AramRoston @karen_freifeld @polinaivanovva
— Andrew S. Weiss (@andrewsweiss) October 15, 2019
Weiss’s thread, however, goes beyond just making explicitly clear the different key nodes in the network behind this poorly executed mob shakedown. Weiss’s thread makes it very clear that the Republican Party has been bought by Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs and incorporated into their influence network, including the Russian mob. And as was the case with the cost of Putin’s information warfare and active measures campaign against the US, they did it for pennies on the dollar.
Open thread!