Indirectly about impeachment - Feds now have “voluminous” number of records from Lev Parnas who consider Giuliani and T his pal. But Parnas is going rogue on them with some kind of immunity deal.
https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1201581790990884868?s=19
It’s NOT surprising though when you look at his track record; Trump always thinks transactionally.
“I did something for you, you should thank me now and do something for me.”
That’s why he pushed prison reform and low unemployment: he thought it would get him the black vote.
That’s why he’s given Israel everything on its wish list; he thought it would get him the Jewish vote.
And he fails to comprehend why neither of those tactics is working, and assumes that in both cases the people are being ungrateful and offensive for not taking his narrowly-focused, racist bribes.
So he thinks if he has a great economy, well, he’s winning. He’s always heard that presidents with good economies get re-elected. So that should work for him, right? One-track thinking. He can’t comprehend why people would be concerned about little things like corruption or greed or lying or the civil rights of other people.
When you only think of yourself, you assume everybody else does as well. It’s that old adage about how crooks assume everybody else is a crook; it’s not always true, obviously, but there is some basis to it, typically when it comes to those unable to think beyond their own narrow focus.
I understand Parnas went rogue because he took offense at Trump pulling his usual “I don’t know them” schtick. I mean, let’s face it, these guys had a company called Fraud Guarantee and a club called Mafia Rave. Bright they’re not.
In other news:
Impeachment process explained and what happens next for the Senate.
Good explainer from our friends at Lawfare.
…After months of public debate, the release of the Mueller report, and witness testimony both in private depositions and in public hearings, the House Judiciary Committee will have by then passed articles of impeachment against President Trump, and the full House of Representatives will have passed them as well. The suits entering the Senate will be the House’s so-called impeachment managers, those members named by the body to prosecute the House’s case in the Senate trial of the president.
They will enter the Senate chamber under a series of theatrical stage directions, which are laid out in a document entitled, “Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate when Sitting on Impeachment Trials.” The Senate’s impeachment rules are weirdly detailed, specifying speeches and oaths that different actors must recite and the specific times of day when things must happen. Yet they offer no rules of evidence or standards of proof and allow majority votes in the Senate to decide key questions that in any normal trial proceeding would be decided by judges under law.
Following these rules, the managers—led, say, by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff—will have alerted the Senate that they’re ready to present the articles, and Julie Adams, the secretary of the Senate, will have responded that the Senate will receive them. Schiff and the others will approach the Senate bar. The Senate’s sergeant at arms, Michael C. Stenger, will proclaim: “All persons are commanded to keep silence, on pain of imprisonment, while the House of Representatives is exhibiting to the Senate of the United States articles of impeachment against Donald Trump.” Following Stenger’s proclamation, the House managers will exhibit the articles, displaying their allegations against the president.
A few blocks away, Chief Justice John Roberts will have already received a request from the Senate—the first time in more than 20 years a chief justice will have received such a summons: He must arrive at the Capitol building the next day at 1:00 p.m. to preside over the consideration of the impeachment articles. The chief justice will return to the Senate daily—except on Sundays—while the articles are being considered and throughout Trump’s trial. No one is certain how long that may take.
The following day, the chief justice will arrive at the Capitol and take an oath administered by, in all likelihood, the president pro tempore of the Senate, Chuck Grassley. Roberts will then administer a special oath required by Article I of the Constitution to the senators present: ‘‘I solemnly swear … that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.’’
Meanwhile, a writ of summons will be delivered to President Trump. The writ will recite the impeachment articles and call on Trump to appear before the Senate, to file his answer to the articles, and to abide by the orders and judgments of the Senate in its consideration of them. Trump’s derisive tweets about the Senate process will give rise to the widespread inference that he has, in fact, received the Senate’s writ.
At 12:30 p.m. on the day designated for the return of the summons, the legislative and executive business of the Senate will be suspended, and the secretary of the Senate will administer an oath to the returning officer, testifying that he or she did indeed deliver the writ to Trump. Assuming that Trump declines to appear in person to deliver his answer, he will be defended by counsel of his choice, working in conjunction with the White House counsel’s office.
In this article, we attempt to imagine a Senate trial of Donald Trump given the rules under which such a trial will take place and given what we know or can reasonably infer about the ambient political environment in which the trial will happen. The goal is to think through the question of how House impeachment managers and lawyers for the president are likely to strategize litigation under the highly unusual rules that will govern it. Can Republicans dismiss the case quickly? Can Democrats force John Bolton and Mick Mulvaney to give the testimony both refused to give when asked by the House? Can Republicans move to turn the whole affair into a trial of Hunter Biden and his father? These questions, and others like them, involve the complex interplay of politics and quasi-legal proceedings in which Democrats will want to prove an actual case under a skeletal framework of rules that offers many degrees of freedom.
More…next
The Rules.
The Senate impeachment rules, as the imagined account above describes, choreograph the opening of the trial in some detail. They require that when the Senate receives notice from the House that it has appointed its managers to prosecute the impeachment trial, the secretary of the Senate must “immediately” inform the House that the Senate is “ready to receive” them (Rule 1). When the managers are introduced at the Senate bar and signify that they are ready to exhibit the impeachment articles, the sergeant at arms, at the direction of the Senate’s presiding officer, must issue the proclamation quoted above. Following the proclamation, the articles are to be exhibited, and the presiding officer of the Senate must inform the House managers that the Senate “will take proper order on the subject of the impeachment” (Rule 2). Following the presentation, the Senate must proceed to consider the articles no later than 1 p.m. the following day. The Senate shall “continue in session from day to day,” after the trial commences, unless the Senate decides otherwise, until a final decision is made (Rule 3). That decision can either be a final vote or a vote to adjourn the trial at any time along the way.
More…
And now we’re at that moment where Trump just suggested using the Supreme Court he packed with partisans to overturn Congress’s Constitutional right to impeach.
Cross-posting, thanks.
Prosecutors could bring more charges in the case of two Soviet-born associates of Rudy Giuliani — although it wasn’t precisely clear when, what or who else might be involved after a conference in New York City on Monday.
Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman face charges of conspiracy, false statements and falsification of records in connection with two alleged schemes to violate U.S. election laws. But it’s their work helping Giuliani dig up dirt in Ukraine that has put the pair under intense public scrutiny.
And a superseding indictment — which could add to or modify the existing charges — is likely, prosecutors said on Monday, but also adding that they’re continuing to evaluate the case.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and FBI investigators are making their way through what prosecutor Douglas Zolkind called a “voluminous” amount of evidence in the case — around 9 gigabytes’ worth.
Clearing their way through that material — which includes electronic devices, phone records, bank records and more — would set the stage for the next steps.
That could include a superseding indictment that changes or adds charges or defendants. It also could be a milestone for Parnas, who has said that he wants to try to cooperate with Congress’ investigation of the Ukraine affair.
The U.S. attorney’s office would need to produce evidence to Parnas, who could then provide it to congressional investigators in response to a subpoena issued in October.
It isn’t clear when that might fit into the House impeachment process.
The House Intelligence Committee is expected to release its report about President Trump and Ukraine early this week; the House Judiciary Committee has scheduled an open hearing about impeachment for Wednesday.
The Ukraine affair
Giuliani and his Ukraine efforts have been front and center in the House impeachment inquiry into Trump. Democrats say Trump abused his power in an effort to pressure the Ukrainian government to open investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden and Democrats.
Witnesses have described Giuliani as a major figure in that effort. He has refused to cooperate with the Democratic-led House inquiry — but the former New York City mayor is facing scrutiny in connection with the investigation into Parnas and Fruman.
Investigators have issued subpoenas to a range of companies and individuals who had dealings with the two men.
One of those companies is Ballard Partners, a Florida-based lobbying firm that reportedly made large payments to Parnas. An attorney for the company, William W. Taylor III, said the firm is complying with the subpoena.
Former Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican, also is cooperating with prosecutors after receiving a subpoena for records and other information related to his interactions with Parnas, Fruman and Giuliani.
Parnas and Fruman made campaign donations to Sessions in 2018 and asked him for help getting the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, removed from her post. According to the indictment, Parnas and Fruman were working, at least in part, in coordination with a Ukrainian official.
After meeting Parnas and Fruman, Sessions wrote a letter to the State Department sharply criticizing Yovanovitch and her work.
Sessions lost his seat in the 2018 midterms.
Andrew Favorov, an executive with Ukraine’s state-controlled gas company, Naftogaz, has agreed to a voluntary interview with prosecutors, according to his attorney, Lanny Breuer.
Parnas and Fruman approached Favorov at an energy conference this spring in Houston with a proposal that involved removing Yovanovitch.
Yovanovitch was recalled from her post weeks later amid a smear campaign by Giuliani and others on conservative media outlets.
The pro-Trump political action committee America First Action says it, too, is cooperating with federal investigators. The group says it contacted prosecutors with the Southern District of New York and offered voluntarily to cooperate.
Not worth pursuing, nothing…but gee the GOP still says that Ukraine was interfering with the 2016 election.
The Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee looked into allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and found no evidence to support the claims, according to sources familiar with the matter.
This squares with the overall conclusion of officials who have looked into the matter. Sources tell CNN that no US intelligence agency has ever produced a product accusing the Ukrainian government of interfering in the 2016 US election.
Some Republican lawmakers continue to misleadingly say that the government of Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election on the same level as Russia, despite the GOP-led committee looking into the matter and finding little to support the allegation. The committee went so far as to interview former Democratic National Committee operative Alexandra Chalupa – a central figure in theories that say Ukraine interfered in the election – before closing that aspect of their probe, according to the sources. Politico on Monday was first to report the committee’s exploration of Ukraine’s actions in 2016.
The committee looked into any possible Ukrainian interference* because – as committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, told reporters on October 4, 2017 – the investigation was to look into a number of measures, including "any collusion by either campaign during the 2016 elections."
Twelve days after he said that, sources tell CNN, Chalupa met with staffers on the committee for a more-than-two-hour meeting covering a range of subjects, including why she was so alarmed in 2016 to learn that candidate Donald Trump had hired Paul Manafort, who worked with corrupt Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Chalupa was never called back before the committee and investigators considered the matter closed, sources say. Chalupa could not be reached for comment.
AG Barr is getting ahead of the IG Report on what the FBI did…but now Barr does not agree with it. Like the Mueller Report, Barr is putting shade on the results.
Attorney General William P. Barr has told associates he disagrees with the Justice Department’s inspector general on one of the key findings in an upcoming report — that the FBI had enough information in July 2016 to justify launching an investigation into members of the Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is due to release his long-awaited findings in a week, but behind the scenes at the Justice Department, disagreement has surfaced about one of Horowitz’s central conclusions on the origins of the Russia investigation. The discord could be the prelude to a major fissure within federal law enforcement on the controversial question of investigating a presidential campaign.
Barr has not been swayed by Horowitz’s rationale for concluding that the FBI had sufficient basis to open an investigation on July 31, 2016, these people said.
Barr’s public defenses of President Trump, including his assertion that intelligence agents spied on the Trump campaign, have led Democrats to accuse him of acting like the president’s personal attorney and eroding the independence of the Justice Department. But Trump and his Republican allies have cheered Barr’s skepticism of the Russia investigation.
…
The attorney general has privately contended that Horowitz does not have enough information to reach the conclusion the FBI had enough details in hand at the time to justify opening such a probe. He argues that other U.S. agencies, such as the CIA, may hold significant information that could alter Horowitz’s conclusion on that point, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The witnesses:
- Noah Feldman
- Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law and Director, Julis-Rabinowitz Program on Jewish and Israeli Law
- Harvard Law School
- Pamela S. Karlan
- Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic
- Stanford Law School
- Michael Gerhardt
- Burton Craige Distinguished Professor of Jurisprudence
- The University of North Carolina School of Law
- Jonathan Turley
- J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law
- The George Washington University Law School
Outrageous really how partisan AG Barr is…
Including a comment from WAPO’s comments section that sums him up.
Barr is a political operative who uses big words and hides behind Catholic piety to cover his partisan worldview. He’s a Republican first. Play the film back. Sessions recuses himself for the Russia thing. Trump cries for his Roy Cohn. Barr writes an audition piece proclaiming absolute executive power. Trump hires Barr. Mueller issues a report. 24 hours later Barr says the report exonerates Trump, swaying the national narrative. At Trump’s behest Barr chases conspiracy rabbits down a hole, mainly Russian memes. And today we find that Republican voters re-elected men who’d been indicted for crimes. That tribe needs to be soundly defeated.
READ: Installment II here 
News:
Donald Trump’s Republican congressional allies are throwing up different defenses against impeachment and hoping that something may sell. They say that he didn’t seek a corrupt political bargain with Ukraine, but that if he did, he failed, and the mere attempt is not impeachable. Or that it is not clear that he did it, because the evidence against him is unreliable “hearsay.”
It’s all been very confusing. But the larger story — the crucial constitutional story — is not the incoherence of the president’s defense. It is more that he and his party are exposing limits of impeachment as a response to the presidency of a demagogue.
The founders feared the demagogue, who figures prominently in the Federalist Papers as the politician who, possessing “perverted ambition,” pursues relentless self-aggrandizement “by the confusions of their country.” The last of the papers, Federalist No. 85, linked demagogy to its threat to the constitutional order — to the “despotism” that may be expected from the “victorious demagogue.” This “despotism” is achieved through systematic lying to the public, vilification of the opposition and, as James Fenimore Cooper wrote in an essay on demagogues, a claimed right to disregard “the Constitution and the laws” in pursuing what the demagogue judges to be the “interests of the people.”
Should the demagogue succeed in winning the presidency, impeachment in theory provides the fail-safe protection. And yet the demagogue’s political tool kit, it turns out, may be his most effective defense. It is a constitutional paradox: The very behaviors that necessitate impeachment supply the means for the demagogue to escape it.
As the self-proclaimed embodiment of the American popular will, the demagogue portrays impeachment deliberations as necessarily a threat to democracy, a facade for powerful interests arrayed against the people that only he represents. Critics and congressional opponents are traitors. Norms and standing institutional interests are fraudulent.
President Trump has made full use of the demagogic playbook. He has refused all cooperation with the House. He lies repeatedly about the facts, holds public rallies to spread these falsehoods and attacks the credibility, motives and even patriotism of witnesses. His mode of “argument” is purely assaultive. This is the crux of the Trump defense, and not an argument built on facts in support of a constitutional theory of the case.
Of course, all the presidents who have faced impeachment mounted a political defense, to go with their legal and constitutional case. And it is not unusual that they — and, even more vociferously, their allies — will attack the process as a means of undoing an election.
The difference in Mr. Trump’s case is not merely one of degree. Richard Nixon despised his opposition, convinced of their bad faith and implacable hatred for him. But it is hard to imagine Mr. Trump choosing (and actually meaning) these words to conclude, as Nixon did, a letter to the chair of Judiciary Committee: “[If] the committee desires further information from me … I stand ready to answer, under oath, pertinent written interrogatories, and to be interviewed under oath by you and the ranking minority member at the White House.”
Mr. Trump has instead described Adam Schiff, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, as a “corrupt” politician who shares with other “human scum” the objective of running the “most unfair hearings in American history.”
These remarks are not merely one more instance of Mr. Trump’s failure to curb his impulses. This is his constitutional defense strategy. Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, informing the House of the president’s refusal to cooperate, declared that the impeachment process is unconstitutional and invalid — a “naked political strategy” — and advised that the president would not participate. It matters that the president’s lawyer, in a formal communication with the House, used rhetoric that might have been expected from the hardest-core political supporters. Once again, contrasts with past impeachments are illuminating. Bill Clinton’s White House counsel Charles Ruff testified before the House Judiciary Committee, pledging to “assist you in performing your constitutional duties.”
The demagogue may be boundlessly confident in his own skills and force of political personality, but he cannot succeed on those alone. He can thrive only in political conditions conducive to the effective practice of these dark arts, such as widespread distrust of institutions, a polarized polity and a fractured media environment in which it is possible to construct alternative pictures of social realities. Weak political parties now fall quickly into line with a demagogue who can bring intense pressure to bear on party officials and officeholders through his hold on “the base.” As we have seen with Mr. Trump, the demagogue can bully his party into being an instrument of his will, silencing or driving out dissenters. Republican officeholders know that Mr. Trump can take to Twitter or to Fox News or to the podium at rallies — or all of the above — to excoriate them for a weak will or disloyalty.
This is how the Republican Party has become Mr. Trump’s party. It is also why that party will not conceive of its role in impeachment as entailing a constitutional responsibility independent of the president’s political and personal interests. It has come to see those interests as indistinguishable from its own. In this way the constitutional defense of the case against Mr. Trump and the defense of his own interests become one and the same. As another fabled demagogue, Huey Long of Louisiana, famously announced: “I’m the Constitution around here now.”
The implications for the constitutional impeachment process are dire. Until Mr. Trump, modern impeachment has ended with some generally positive assessment of its legacy. Nixon’s resignation appeared to indicate that serious charges could bring the parties together in defense of the rule of law. “The system worked” was a popular refrain, even if this was a somewhat idealized and oversimplified version of events. The Clinton impeachment suggested that the standards for an impeachable offense required a distinction between public misconduct and private morality, and Congress reclaimed its responsibility for impeachment from an independent counsel statute that was allowed to lapse.
The Trump impeachment is headed toward a very different summation. A demagogue can claim that Congress has forfeited the right to recognition of its impeachment power, then proceed to unleash a barrage of falsehoods and personal attacks to confuse the public, cow legislators and intimidate witnesses. So long as the demagogue’s party controls one of the two chambers of Congress, this strategy seems a sure bet.
When this is all over, we will not hear warm bipartisan praise for how “the system worked.” The lesson will be that, in the politics of the time, a demagogue who gets into the Oval Office is hard to get out.
Ok…another loss for T…
Key Points
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Deutsche Bank and Capital One can hand over years of President Donald Trump’s financial records in compliance with House Democrats’ subpoenas.
The ruling offers another loss in the courts for Trump, who has fought attempts to obtain his financial records through multiple lawsuits.
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Deutsche Bank and Capital One can hand over years of President Donald Trump’s financial records in compliance with House Democrats’ subpoenas.
The ruling in the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals offers another loss in the courts for Trump, who has fought attempts to obtain his financial records, including his tax returns, through multiple lawsuits.
Neither the White House nor a lawyer for Trump immediately responded to CNBC’s request for comment on the ruling.
The case is likely destined for the Supreme Court, where the president has already appealed two other lower court decisions requiring the disclosure of his financial records.
The House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released a report documenting the impeachment case against President Trump, laying out the conclusions of its inquiry into allegations that he abused his power by pressuring Ukraine to help him in the 2020 presidential election and then impeded attempts by Congress to investigate.
The report is based on two months of public and private testimony from diplomats and other administration officials who described a campaign by the president and his allies to get Ukraine to announce investigations of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and other Democrats, while withholding nearly $400 million in military assistance and a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president.
The report’s approval, expected on Tuesday evening, will set in motion the next phase in the impeachment of Mr. Trump, accelerating a constitutional clash that has happened only three times in the nation’s history. Both parties are poised for a fierce, partisan debate in the House Judiciary Committee over whether to draft articles of impeachment — most likely based on the evidence in the report — that could go to the House for a vote before Christmas.
If a majority of the House voted to approve articles of impeachment, the president would be impeached. The proceedings would then move to the Senate for a trial.
The calls listed on the Trump Impeachment report are damning for Nunes pertaining to speaking with Lev Parnas. A lot of back and forth, and a lot of questions as to why Nunes did not recuse.
https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1201947160348123136?s=20
and a pithy statement from Ari Melber MSNBC
