The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

Keaton_James · November 3, 2019, 6:23pm

The Trump administration has blocked or refused to comply with 82 House Committee requests for testimony and/or documents.

Adrienne Cobb is well known for her work tracking who has left Trump’s administration and for her in-depth investigative reports on Forensic News. She has now also turned her talents to chronicling Trump’s unprecedented stonewalling as he attempts to cover up the truth about his administration.

Cobb has sliced and diced the numbers several ways and has provided a detailed who-what-when-where analysis. Here’s a sample:

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With news reports of the Trump administration’s refusal to cooperate with Congressional probes piling up, I set out to find the true breadth of the stonewalling, digging through media reports and congressional press releases going back to the beginning of 2019, when the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives. I chose to focus on the House instead of the Senate because the Democrats have conducted significantly more oversight of this administration – or, at least, they have tried to.

As you will see, the Trump administration has blocked or refused to comply with 82 House Committee requests for testimony and/or documents.

Keaton_James · November 3, 2019, 6:35pm

It’s tough for Trump and his supporters to deny his extortion attempt when the evidence is right out in the open. Here are 5 public confirmations.

Your good news reading for a quiet Sunday…

White House official Alexander Vindman on Tuesday becomes the latest high-ranking government official to give an account of an incident that confirms a quid pro quo between the Trump team and Ukraine — something the White House previously dismissed entirely.

But not all of the confirming statements we’ve seen or heard are created equal. Below, we explain each one, along with how serious it is.

1) Alexander Vindman

The lieutenant colonel and National Security Council aide on Tuesday testified that European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland said that Ukraine’s long-sought meeting between its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and President Trump was conditioned on specific investigations — including ones involving the Bidens and a conspiracy theory about the origins of the Russia investigation.

Vindman said Sondland’s admission came after a meeting with a top Ukrainian official, Oleksandr Danylyuk.

The key quotes: “Amb. Sondland started to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations to secure the meeting with the president, at which time [national security adviser John] Bolton cut the meeting short. Following this meeting, there was a scheduled debriefing during which Amb. Sondland emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma [Holdings, which employed Hunter Biden].

“I stated to Amb. Sondland that his statements were inappropriate, that the request to investigate Biden and his son had nothing to do with national security, and that such investigations were not something the NSC was going to get involved in or push. [Fellow NSC aide Fiona] Hill then entered the room and asserted to Amb. Sondland that his statements were inappropriate. Following the debriefing meeting, I reported my concerns to the NSC’s lead counsel."

Why it’s big: Vindman asserts that the looming request was so inappropriate that Bolton shut a meeting down and that two NSC aides formally raised concerns, including with Sondland personally.

The article continues with 4 more public confirmations of Trump’s quid pro quo – or, as I feel it should be termed, his extortion attempt.

Windthin · November 3, 2019, 8:51pm

This article is incredible and I am sharing it all over. Putting numbers to how much they’re stonewalling obliterates their claims of “transparency”.

Also this:

He also made a demand on twitter and continues to push for this.

Windthin · November 3, 2019, 9:13pm

I have a headache.

When Trump says “we’ll see what happens”, that is never a good sign.

Pet_Proletariat · November 4, 2019, 2:03am

Mulvaney allies to try to stonewall Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, officials say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/11/03/mulvaney-allies-lead-stonewall-against-democrats-impeachment-inquiry/

Russell Vought, a Mulvaney protege who leads the White House Office of Management and Budget, intends a concerted defiance of congressional subpoenas in coming days, and two of his subordinates will follow suit — simultaneously proving their loyalty to the president and a creating a potentially critical firewall regarding the alleged use of foreign aid to elicit political favors from a U.S. ally.

The OMB is at the nexus of the impeachment inquiry because Democrats are pressing for details about why the White House budget office effectively froze the Ukraine funds that Congress had already appropriated.

Congressional Republicans are also predicting that Mulvaney’s deputy, Robert Blair, will refuse to show for his scheduled Monday appearance before impeachment investigators — though a White House spokesman and Blair’s attorney, Whit Ellerman, did not respond to questions about his plans. Blair was on the July 25 phone call when Trump asked Ukraine’s president for a “favor” investigating former vice president Joe Biden, a 2020 presidential contender.

Pet_Proletariat · November 4, 2019, 2:06am

Whistleblower willing to answer Republicans’ questions in impeachment probe, lawyer says

A lawyer for the whistleblower who reported concerns about the president’s dealings with Ukraine told CBS News he offered to have Republicans on the House Intelligence Community submit questions to his client directly without having to go through the committee’s Democratic majority.

Attorney Mark Zaid told CBS News he contacted Representative Devin Nunes, the committee’s ranking member, on Saturday to say his client is willing to answer Republicans’ questions under oath and penalty of perjury if lawmakers submitted written questions to the whistleblower’s legal team. The inspector general of the intelligence community, a President Trump appointee, could verify the whistleblower’s identity in order to satisfy the committee’s minority members while protecting the individual’s anonymity.

Keaton_James · November 4, 2019, 2:17am

If Republicans were OK with Trump providing written answers to Mueller rather than appearing in person then they should be OK with the same process for the whistleblower. But of course, they’re still going to whine.

Keaton_James · November 4, 2019, 2:46am

Here’s the Independent’s take:

Three words: Bring. It. On.

Trump’s 2018 government shutdown tanked his approval rating. This time it would be even worse. Remember how he became the Grinch last holiday season?

At least last year, his base could still cut him some slack because he claimed he was shutting down the government to secure their precious border wall. (BTW, how did that work out?) But despite that excuse, Trump’s approval ratings still plummeted. Imagine if he pulls another shutdown stunt this holiday and he’s doing it just to cover up his crimes?

My holiday wish is that we do not have a shut down – why should the families of government workers suffer to help Trump evade justice? But if Trump does decide to go down that road, he’d better be prepared to pay some serious political consequences. In addition to hardening public opinion against him, it could push many Republican Senators and Reps to turn on him – thus the whole gambit could backfire catastrophically. I believe that even toying with this idea is hurting him.

Keaton_James · November 4, 2019, 4:41am

And here we go. Obstructing justice on an epic scale. Trump’s base may cheer on the way Trump is trashing the rule of law, but we shall see if the 10% or so who are on the fence will tolerate his flagrant cover up.

Windthin · November 4, 2019, 6:04am

Will John Bolton show up when others refuse? Some think so…

John Bolton is now a ‘born-again Never Trumper’: Conservative expects ‘devastating insider’s indictment’

Windthin · November 4, 2019, 7:25am

I find it useful to look at what the right is saying. This article from perennial bad actor Breitbart was re-tweeted by Trump.

Look at the language. “Obama holdover.” “Rat’s nest.” “Colluded.”

They tear down career civil servants and project their own crimes onto others. It’s very short, and worth a read to know what they’re saying.

Incidentally, the Trump regime and right-wing propaganda media has decided that Eric Ciaramella, a CIA analyst and National Security Council staffer, is the whistleblower. No idea if that is true or not, but that’s what they’re pushing. A quick google search reveals a LOT of rihgt-wing articles railing about him and insistent both that he’s the whistleblower and that his complaint is wholly political.

dragonfly9 · November 4, 2019, 6:59am

A Sunday night special…story via https://currentstatus.io/

written by Cockburn

Mischief, mayhem and Washington gossip. Send tips to [email protected]

Some we know about already. There’s the original whistleblower, the CIA officer at the White House who first reported Trump’s call to the Ukrainian president. Republicans are now pushing to ‘unmask’ him, though his name is already all over the internet. He is, supposedly, a 33-year-old graduate of Yale, a registered Democrat who had worked for both Joe Biden and John Brennan. These facts, so helpful to the White House, are in a ‘dossier’ circulated on Capitol Hill by the president’s allies. There’s also Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the senior Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, who came to the US from Ukraine — to Little Odessa in Brooklyn — as a child aged three. He arrived to give evidence to the House Intelligence Committee wearing his dark blue Army dress uniform and military ribbons. He said that the White House transcript of the call between Trump and Ukraine’s president had important gaps — and that his attempts to include ‘crucial words and phrases’ had been rebuffed. ‘I am a patriot and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country irrespective of party or politics.’ And there’s Tim Morrison, the NSC’s director for European and Russian Affairs, who was one of the small group to have listened to the call. He said that Trump’s ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland, told him that Ukraine wouldn’t get US arms unless it investigated Biden.

That’s three whistleblowers. What about the other four? Cockburn’s source says that at least one is nothing to do with Ukraine but instead was reporting a call between Trump and the Saudi ruler, Mohammed bin Salman. Specifically, the whistleblower is said to have ‘concerns’ about what was said on the call about the president’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner. Kushner himself is known to have a very close relationship with MBS. Cockburn has previously written that Kushner may have been what Cosmo would call an ‘oversharer’ when it came to MBS. Unfortunately, it’s claimed that what he was sharing was American secrets: information Kushner had requested from the CIA would (allegedly) be echoed back in US intercepts of calls between members of the Saudi royal family. Once source said this was Kushner lost his intelligence clearances for a while.

According to Cockburn’s source about the seven whistleblowers, there’s more. It is that Kushner (allegedly) gave the green light to MBS to arrest the dissident journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was later murdered and dismembered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. A second source tells Cockburn that this is true and adds a crucial twist to the story. This source claims that Turkish intelligence obtained an intercept of the call between Kushner and MBS. And President Erdogan used it to get Trump to roll over and pull American troops out of northern Syria before the Turks invaded . Cockburn hears that investigators for the House Intelligence Committee know this whole tale and the identities of some of the people telling it. Whether any of is true is another matter but Adam Schiff certainly seems to be smiling a lot these days.

Whistleblower #1- CIA officer who knew about the Ukraine Call
Whistleblower #2 - Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the senior Ukraine expert on the National Security Council
Whistleblower #3 - Tim Morrison, the NSC’s director for European and Russian Affairs
Whistleblower #4 - not identified? but re: T and MBS and concerns over Jared
being an ‘oversharer’ and may have divulged state secrets from CIA.
Whistleblower # 5 - This source claims that Turkish intelligence obtained an intercept of the call between Kushner and MBS. and Erdogan became aware of this, and used it against T by getting troops out of Syria (for Turkey)
Whistleblower # 6
Whistleblower #7

(I have to divulge that I copied this Spectator article from another source, as it immediately said I had used up my free visits…just a fyi. - Not at all sure this is part commentary, and/or Spectator article)

Windthin · November 4, 2019, 4:43pm

TWO appeals courts that have said Trump needs to hand over his tax returns, dismissing his claims that he is immune from prosecution or investigation. Rather than abide by that, Trump will take this all the way to the Supreme Court. Let that sink in. Trump is asking SCOTUS to personally protect his tax returns from being revealed.

Trump will ask Supreme Court to take New York tax returns case after losing appeal

dragonfly9 · November 4, 2019, 4:40pm

COMMITTEES RELEASE TESTIMONY OF YOVANOVITCH AND McKINLEY AS PART OF NEW PUBLIC PHASE OF IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY

Today, Rep. Adam B. Schiff, the Chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Eliot L. Engel, the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the Acting Chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform, released the transcripts of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch and former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State Ambassador P. Michael McKinley.

Both of these individuals testified before the Committees as part of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry of President Donald J. Trump. The resolution passed by the House last week authorized the Committees to make the inquiry transcripts of their recent depositions and interviews available to Members and public at the discretion at the Chairman of the Intelligence Committee in advance of open hearings.

The three Chairs issued the following statement announcing today’s releases:

“As we move towards this new public phase of the impeachment inquiry, the American public will begin to see for themselves the evidence that the committees have collected. With each new interview, we learn more about the President’s attempt to manipulate the levers of power to his personal political benefit.

“The transcripts of interviews with Ambassadors Yovanovitch and McKinley demonstrate clearly how President Trump approved the removal of a highly respected and effective diplomat based on public falsehoods and smears against Ambassador Yovanovitch’s character and her work in support of long-held U.S. foreign policy anticorruption goals.

“Ambassadors Yovanovitch and McKinley’s testimony also demonstrates the contamination of U.S. foreign policy by an irregular back channel that sought to advance the President’s personal and political interests, and the serious concerns that this activity elicited across our government.

“Unfortunately, despite those concerns, the transcripts also show clearly that efforts to secure public support for Ambassador Yovanovitch from the senior-most levels of the State Department were never realized, thanks to worry among those leaders that such support would be directly undermined by presidential attacks.”

The testimony of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch from October 11, 2019 can be found here. Key excerpts from Yovanovitch’s testimony can be found here.

The testimony of former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State Ambassador P. Michael McKinley from October 16, 2019 can be found here. Key excerpts from McKinley’s testimony can be found here.

Pet_Proletariat · November 4, 2019, 5:23pm

All four White House officials scheduled for House inquiry depositions Monday won’t testify

All four White House officials who are scheduled to give depositions on Monday during the House’s impeachment inquiry won’t show up, as a source with knowledge of the situation tells CNN that National Security Council lawyers John Eisenberg and Michael Ellis will not testify.

The two officials will join Robert Blair, assistant to the President and senior adviser to the acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and Brian McCormack, associate director for natural resources, energy & science at the Office of Management and Budget, in not testifying on Monday, CNN reported earlier. Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who was scheduled to appear Wednesday, will not participate in a closed door deposition, an Energy Department spokesperson said Friday.

An administration official says Eisenberg isn’t showing up due to executive privilege while Blair, Ellis and McCormack aren’t going to appear because they won’t be able to have an administration lawyer present.

On Sunday night, the House Intelligence Committee issued subpoenas to Blair and Ellis, according to an official working on the impeachment inquiry.

Blair’s attorney, Whit Ellerman, told CNN Saturday that "Blair is caught between the assertions of legal duty by two coequal branches of government, a conflict which he cannot resolve."

Two other OMB officials, Michael Duffey and Russell Vought, also won’t show up to their depositions later this week, a source with knowledge of the situation tells CNN.

Pet_Proletariat · November 4, 2019, 5:39pm

House Democrats Release Transcripts of Yovanovitch, McKinley Impeachment Testimony

The former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine testified to impeachment investigators last month that she was shocked when she learned that President Trump had described her as “bad news” in a July 25 call with his Ukrainian counterpart, according to a transcript of her deposition released by House committees.

Marie Yovanovitch, whom Mr. Trump ordered removed from her ambassador post this spring, told investigators: “I was very surprised that President Trump would—first of all, that I would feature repeatedly in a presidential phone call, but secondly, that the President would speak about me or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart.”

The transcript of Ms. Yovanovitch’s testimony was one of two released Monday by House committees running the impeachment inquiry. The committees also released a transcript of testimony by Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who resigned from his post last month.

[…]

Ms. Yovanovitch also testified that she felt threatened by Mr. Trump’s assertion in that call that she would “go through some things.” She said: “I didn’t know what it meant. I was very concerned. I still am.”

The former ambassador also testified that there was a “concerted campaign” against her by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. Mr. Trump ordered her removal this spring after hearing from Mr. Giuliani and others that Ms. Yovanovitch was allegedly undermining him abroad, including obstructing investigations Mr. Giuliani was pursuing into Democrat Joe Biden and election interference.

Ms. Yovanovitch said she learned in late 2018 from Ukrainian officials that Mr. Giuliani was planning to target her. One official told her he was “very concerned” about Mr. Giuliani and “told me I really needed to watch my back.”

Bad news, watch your back, she’s going to go through some things?

Pet_Proletariat · November 4, 2019, 6:01pm

Ousted Ukraine ambassador Yovanovitch says she was told to tweet praise of Trump to save her job

Marie Yovanovitch, the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, told House impeachment investigators last month that U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told her she should tweet out support or praise for President Donald Trump if she wanted to save her job, according to a transcript of her testimony made public Monday.

Pet_Proletariat · November 4, 2019, 6:07pm

Trump signals alarm as Democrats’ public impeachment push accelerates

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/11/04/politics/donald-trump-impeachment-democrats-witnesses-republicans-hearings/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fcurrentstatus.io%2F

Democrats have launched a critical new phase of their impeachment investigation by releasing first transcripts of witness depositions as they seek to build a public case that President Donald Trump abused his power in a rogue foreign policy operation in Ukraine.

Three committees investigating the scandal released transcripts and summaries of closed-door interviews with the former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and Michael McKinley, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The move signals the start of a shift from closed-doors investigation of Trump’s covert Ukraine policy into an attempt to convince Americans that he should be removed from office in dramatic televised hearings.

Signs that the release of testimony was imminent prompted Trump to issue a torrent of personal abuse against House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, that was extraordinarily personal even by his own standards.

I love this paragraph.

“Signs that the release of testimony was imminent prompted Trump to issue a torrent of personal abuse against House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff, that was extraordinarily personal even by his own standards”

Perfect.

Pet_Proletariat · November 4, 2019, 6:21pm

Amid impeachment drive, the pro-Trump search for dirt on Ukraine and the Bidens goes on

Those working in common cause with the president’s and Giuliani’s campaign to get Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political opponents are moving ahead.

While Congress heard closed-door testimony last week about President Donald Trump pushing Ukraine to investigate his opponents, Rudy Giuliani was holding his own private Ukraine meeting in his Manhattan office.

Giuliani, the Trump personal lawyer at the center of the firestorm as Trump faces likely impeachment, met with former Ukrainian diplomat Andriy Telizhenko, who alleges that Ukraine’s government conspired with the Democratic National Committee to hurt Trump in 2016.

"We discussed what’s happening in Ukraine, political updates, what the new (Ukrainian presidential) team is up to, what are the reforms going to be," Telizhenko said in an interview with NBC News. Giuliani has interviewed him for hours about his Ukraine allegations, although Telizhenko said their most recent meeting wasn’t focused on investigations. "We’re friends now. He respects our country."

Far from keeping their heads down, those working in common cause with the president’s and Giuliani’s campaign to get Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political opponents are moving ahead unabated, interviews in Kyiv and Washington with several of those involved reveal.

Their efforts come despite intense scrutiny from Congress, law enforcement and the media. Under oath, a parade of current and former U.S. officials have testified that Trump and his envoys leveraged a coveted White House meeting and military aid to Ukraine to pressure new President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to commit publicly to investigations into both the 2016 election and the Biden family.

In Ukraine, a group of parliamentarians are even working to stand up a new investigative commission — the Ukrainian analogue to a congressional select committee — to probe what they say was a Ukrainian government campaign to smear former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort in a bid to take down Trump in 2016. They also want to investigate the Bidens.

"Ukraine was involved in like the biggest scandal in recent U.S. political history, let alone Ukrainian. Definitely most of my colleagues here pretend it doesn’t exist," said Oleg Voloshin, a lawmaker and Manafort associate, in an interview just outside the Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament. "It started here, and it should finish here."

So Trump and Giuliani never stopped trying to get Ukraine to investigate VP Joe Biden? Democrats need to move even faster. This is a clear threat to our national security! Fuck!