I was wondering when this would come up again…
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Cross-posting 
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Growing number of GOP senators consider acknowledging Trump’s quid pro quo on Ukraine
A growing number of Senate Republicans are ready to acknowledge that President Trump used U.S. military aid as leverage to force Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his family as the president repeatedly denies a quid pro quo.
In this shift in strategy to defend Trump, these Republicans are insisting that the president’s action was not illegal and does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense as the Democratic-led House moves forward with the open phase of its probe.
But the shift among Senate Republicans could complicate the message coming from Trump as he furiously fights the claim that he had withheld U.S. aid from Ukraine to pressure it to dig up dirt on a political rival, even as an increasing number of Republicans wonder how long they can continue to argue that no quid pro quo was at play in the matter.
The pivot was the main topic during a private Senate GOP lunch on Wednesday, according to multiple people familiar with the session who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the meeting. Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) argued that there may have been a quid pro quo but said that the U.S. government often attaches conditions to foreign aid and that nothing was amiss in Trump’s doing so in the case of aid to Ukraine, these individuals said.
Inside the lunch, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who ran against Trump in 2016, said a quid pro quo is not illegal unless there is “corrupt intent” and echoed Kennedy’s argument that such conditions are a tool of foreign policy.
“To me, this entire issue is gonna come down to, why did the president ask for an investigation,” Kennedy, who worked as a lawyer, said in an interview. “To me, it all turns on intent, motive. … Did the president have a culpable state of mind? … Based on the evidence that I see, that I’ve been allowed to see, the president does not have a culpable state of mind.”
Are they high?
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Top White House official tried to find out if ambassador went rogue or acted at Trump’s direction on Ukraine
A top White House official told lawmakers he tried to find out whether President Donald Trump told a key US diplomat he wanted Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, multiple sources familiar with his closed-door impeachment inquiry deposition on Capitol Hill told CNN.
His actions show concern inside the White House about the extent of the President’s role in the push for investigations that could help Trump politically.
Tim Morrison, the President’s top Russia adviser, had multiple conversations with American Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. In those discussions, the ambassador referenced talks he had with the President. Morrison became concerned that Sondland was going rogue on Ukraine.
Morrison told lawmakers he thought Sondland was a “free radical,” according to two of the sources. The term was a reference to molecules that cause cancer.
To find out whether Sondland had talked to the President, Morrison went so far as asking Trump’s executive secretary if the President had actually talked with Sondland. The ambassador’s claims about having the conversations checked out each time, Morrison said in his testimony Thursday, according to the sources. In his own opening statement, Sondland downplayed both Trump’s role and his own in the effort to pressure Ukraine – suggesting he was reluctantly working with Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal attorney, who was running a shadow diplomatic operation in Ukraine.
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UPDATE: Here’s Rachel Maddow’s take on what may have been the first time Trump extorted Ukraine. That chain of events back in 2017 is uncannily similar to his most recent extortion attempt.
Maddow closes with a clip of Rep. Gerry Connolly stepping out one of the impeachment hearings on Wednesday. He makes cryptic statement that implies the committees may already be tugging at this very thread.
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‘It’s like nothing we have come across before’: UK intelligence officials shaken by Trump regime’s requests for help with counter-impeachment inquiry aimed at discrediting Mueller’s findings that Russia interfered in 2016 election.
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It’s really heart rending the way Trump is shredding our century’s-long alliance with the UK. They are perhaps our most valuable ally, having stood by us through thick and thin. Will they be so quick to come to our aid when we need their help in the future? No. And who benefits from dividing us? Trump’s BFF, Putin.
This article offers up a host of offenses Trump has perpetrated against the UK – a sad, but crucial accounting. A couple telling passages:
Trump and Barr have also been asking other foreign governments for help in investigating the FBI, CIA and Mueller investigators. The US president has called on the Australian prime minister Scott Morrison for assistance, while the attorney general has been on similar missions to the UK and Italy.
And the information being requested has left allies astonished. One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented that “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”.
The Trump followers’ counternarrative is that US intelligence and security services had deliberately, and wrongly, concluded that the Russians were behind the hacking. The real culprit, they allege, was a private company, Crowdstrike, which is run with an anti-Russian agenda.
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Every aspect of the Crowdstrike conspiracy tale has been disproved. But this has not stopped Trump from demanding that Zelensky looks into it, albeit in a somewhat incoherent manner, in the now infamous 25 July call to the Ukrainian president.
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It’s good to see the House Intelligence Committee pro-actively issuing subpoenas instead of waiting for a no-show. Now if the key witness, John Eisenberg, stays home on Monday, BOOM, he’s instantly in violation of a subpoena. (Eisenberg is the Trump ally who placed the incriminating phone call summary on a super secret server and asked Vindman to keep it secret as well – with no apparent reason other than to help Trump avoid accountability for his extortion attempt on Ukraine.)
The same goes for Brian McCormack, Rick Perry’s chief of staff. Interviewing him will be crucial to finding out what Perry knew and when about Trump’s extortion attempt. Perry was one of “The Three Amigos” who were allegedly carrying out the scheme on Trump’s behalf when the whistleblower blew the lid off it.
Until Friday night when these subpoenas were issued, these two witnesses had only been requested to testify. Now they will be breaking the law if they refuse to appear.
The House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed two more administration officials Friday as part of its expanding impeachment investigation into President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Investigators subpoenaed John Eisenberg, the White House National Security Counsel’s top legal adviser, to testify on Monday. The House also subpoenaed Brian McCormack, outgoing Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s chief of staff, for Monday deposition, according to a source familiar with the matter.
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Internal Mueller documents show Trump campaign chief pushed unproven theory Ukraine hacked Democrats
President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, suggested as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukrainians might have been responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign rather than Russians, a key witness told federal investigators last year.
Newly released documents show that Manafort’s protege, deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, told the FBI of Manafort’s theory during interviews conducted as part of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Gates told the FBI that Manafort had shared his theory of Ukrainian culpability with him and other campaign aides before the election.
The new information shows how early people in Trump’s orbit were pushing the unsubstantiated theory about Ukraine’s role. And it illustrates a link between Mueller’s investigation, which concluded in March, and the current House impeachment investigation of Trump. The president had pushed Ukrainians to open a probe into whether their country interfered in the election — an assertion his allies have made in an effort to discredit Mueller’s findings about Russia’s role.
The documents were released in response to lawsuits filed by BuzzFeed and CNN seeking documents related to Mueller’s investigation. BuzzFeed on Saturday published the first installment of internal Mueller records, released by the Justice Department to the news organization in response to a court order.
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A lot of newsbreaking 302’s are coming out…and Roger Stone’s trial is coming up in the next week or so…
That T was aware of the DNC emails when they were delivered to Wiki and wanted them out to hurt Hillary has got to be very important. Because T did not do any oral questioning with Mueller and he vaguely wrote answers there is bound to be some corroborating evidence in these.
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Exactly.
I guess it’s just going to get worse until it ends? I don’t know how the President can sustain his position as more details surface? And now the GOP think it’s a good idea to go out there and try to defend the “quid pro quo” thing? These members seem to have so solidly bought into Trump’s conspiratorial version of the DNC/Clinton Hack that they believe where Trump sits is still a defensible position. It’s all lies. He’s just a continuum of corruption, from begging to end.
We have evidence that President tried to cheat/cheated in the 2016 election and was trying to cheat again in 2020, using the power of US Presidency, nonetheless. There’s this massive Impeachment Inquiry, and there’s drip-drip now as more comes out. How much longer can the GOP prop up this President?
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The glaring truth, ie - that T was in on the emails, that T acknowledges and basks in (w/ GOP) in the Quid Pro Quo…which we all know is illegal.
The GOP’s efforts, along with FOX, combined with strange, truth-bending fabrications that DOJ, T’s conspiratorial henchmen (Reps Nunes, Gaetz, Jordan, Meadows, Sen. Graham) along with Rudi’s ideas about Crowdstrike based in Ukraine, Barr’s digging for dirt on Misfud, Pappapoulis, Steele, Ukraine’s servers, and worst of all - that GOP wants to pin it on the Intelligence services, and Obama is sheer tom-foolery. And worse.
For the other half (or less) of the country that believes in T as a leader, and who does not have a check on the truth, nor interested in it, and buys in hook-line-sinker with what Fox, T tells them, it is an alarming situation.
At some point, can some saner minds prevail???
I agree
I hope with Pelosi’s and Schiff steady hand to isolate the fact-from-fiction in the Impeachment inquiry that the public opinion gets swayed. And why wouldn’t Mitt Romney be the “Goldwater” figure who told the president to resign because he’s gonna get impeached for sure in the house, and so far not in the Senate. When does it end???
God help us all if we get attacked by any number of bad authoritarian countries…
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This is what obstruction of justice looks like. We can only hope that the committees act swiftly and vigorously by issuing subpoenas and then the courts do the right thing and enforce them quickly.
The committees are doing their best to expedite the inquiry process – if Trump wants to drag it out, I say, “so be it.” Rather than caving in and skipping these crucial witnesses, I feel the committees should dig in and refuse to move on until the court battles are resolved.
Trump & Co. will undoubtedly whine that the process is taking too long, but that’s their doing so they deserve to suffer the political consequences – I believe the repercussions of a prolonged process will be much worse for Republicans than Democrats, especially if the public can be educated to understand that the delays are being caused by the Republicans. And Democrats must ensure that this question is posed daily in the media: “Why won’t Trump allow these witnesses to testify?” The answer is simple: “Because they have evidence that shows Trump is guilty.”
A top aide to White House Chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Robert Blair, has refused to testify in the House impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump after the White House directed him not to appear for his scheduled deposition, his attorney told CNN.
The House committees investigating Trump had scheduled Blair’s deposition for Monday.
“Mr. Blair is caught between the assertions of legal duty by two coequal branches of government, a conflict which he cannot resolve,” Blair’s attorney Whit Ellerman told CNN on Saturday.
“In light of the clear direction he has been given by the executive branch, Mr. Blair has respectfully declined to appear and testify. Nevertheless, he will fulfill all his legal duties once that conflict is appropriately resolved.”
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Blair has not yet received a subpoena, but Ellerman said Blair will still refuse to testify if he is subpoenaed.
Oh, he will be subpoenaed.
And, BTW, why does CNN keep referring to “the White House”? Why not say it like it is? In the first paragraph, instead of “the White House directed him not to appear,” it should say “Trump directed him not to appear.”
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A Former Trump Campaign Aide Said The Campaign Was “Very Happy” About The Release Of Hacked DNC Emails
Rick Gates told special counsel Robert Mueller’s team that the Wikileaks release allowed the Trump campaign to deflect after a slump in the polls.
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Trump invites Republican senators for lunch and makes his case against impeachment
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Looks like a Rep Murphy (D-Conn) is trying to educate the public on the real intent of T’s desire to use Ukraine as a bargaining chip. Here’s a good explainer about what T is doing with pressuring Ukraine…and a way for the public to understand what’s at stake.
Watch video
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Polls NBC/WSJ - gives T the approximate same numbers which reflects how he won the 2016 election in the popular vote. So when we see the closeness in this polling, not much has changed as far as what stands today…but a very slight shift when the impeachment evidence is coming out.
The conservative media firewall and the R support remains…and we see a huge misinformation campaign is being waged.
Then asked if Trump should be impeached and removed from office, 49 percent answer yes, while 46 percent say no.
Those are the findings from the latest national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, which was conducted amid the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry against the president, after Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, and after the military raid that killed the leader of ISIS.
Despite those grim numbers for Trump, the poll also contains silver linings for the president, including more than 50 percent who approve of his handling of the economy and a GOP base that remains loyal to him, with nine-in-10 Republicans opposing his removal from office. That party support is a crucial factor given that an impeachment conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds vote.
“At this very early stage of the impeachment inquiry the data suggest a path for victory for Trump with the judges in the Senate,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff at Public Opinion Strategies.
“But there’s a much more challenging road ahead come next November with the judges at the ballot box,” Horwitt added.
In the poll, 53 percent of Americans say they approve of the impeachment inquiry regarding Trump’s actions with Ukraine’s president, while 44 percent disapprove.
Then asked if Trump should be impeached and removed from office, 49 percent answer yes, while 46 percent say no.
That’s a reversal from a month ago, when the survey found the numbers essentially flipped — 43 percent yes, 49 percent no.
Views of Trump and Ukraine
Based on what you have seen, read or heard about President Trump’s call and actions related to his discussion with the Ukranian president, which best describes what you think?
There is enough evidence for Congress to impeach Mr. Trump and remove him from office now 24%
Congress should hold an impeachment inquiry to determine if there is enough evidence to remove Mr. Trump from office 31%
There isn’t enough evidence for Congress to hold an impeachment inquiry of Mr. Trump and he should finish the term 39%
Not sure 6%
Source: WSJ/NBC News telephone poll of 800 adults conducted Oct. 4–6; margin of error 3.46 pct. pts.
Those results represented an increased call for congressional action compared with the period when then-special counsel Robert Mueller was looking into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Throughout that time, about 50% had said impeachment hearings against Mr. Trump were unwarranted.
Presented in a separate question with just two options—impeaching Mr. Trump and removing him from office, or doing neither—some 43% said lawmakers should push Mr. Trump from office, while 49% said they shouldn’t do so, based on what the public knows now.
Pollsters who conducted the Journal/NBC News survey said it showed that Americans want to learn more about Mr. Trump’s actions, but they disagreed over how the public viewed the matter so far. The poll was conducted Friday and through the weekend, while Americans were hearing new details, including the publication of text messages between State Department officials that showed them using the prospect of a White House meeting with Mr. Trump as leverage to persuade Ukraine’s president to launch investigations the U.S. leader wanted.
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Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, noted that Mr. Trump’s job approval rating remained stable. In the new survey, 43% of Americans approved of the president’s overall job performance, in line with the trend throughout his time in office.
“What’s powerful about this poll is what has not changed… At this time, this is not a story that has fundamentally reset American politics,” he said.
Jeff Horwitt, a Democrat who conducted the survey with Mr. McInturff, found it meaningful that more Americans support an impeachment inquiry or impeachment itself now than during the course of the Mueller investigation. “It shows more openness to hearing this out,” Mr. Horwitt said.
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Republicans are intractable…staying steady in their support of T. But I believe the total numbers reflected, ie number of R’s by population…there are more Dems/Independents. *
Trump’s approval rating among Republicans has never dipped below 79%
Gallup polling has found that an average of 86% of Republicans have approved of President Trump during his time in office and that his GOP approval rating has not dropped below 79% in any individual poll, according to AP.
The big picture: Those figures strike a stark contrast with the 7% of Democrats who have approved of Trump’s presidency on average, including no more than 12% in any individual poll. In the history of public opinion polling, no president has faced such “deep and consistent partisan polarization” as Trump has, according to AP. And though partisan divisions existed before Trump, his presidency has exacerbated them.
- Gallup poll (via WIki)
populations numbers
31% Democrats
29% Republicans
38% Independents
Gallup
As of September 2019, Gallup polling found that 31% of Americans identified as Democrat, 29% identified as Republican, and 38% as Independent.[3] Additionally, polling showed that 49% are either “Democrats or Democratic leaners” and 44% are either “Republicans or Republican leaners” when Independents are asked “do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?”[3]
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You have to keep in mind too that many who oppose him have either left the party or aren’t voting in these polls out of disdain or disgust. It winds up artificially inflating the number of his supporters.
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Yes, a poll is an estimated average…
Some are more credible than others…but an average reflects a bit of a trend.
(worked in research b4) 
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