Engel has hinted at as much and he’s the only one home still authorized by HRes. 660.
01/19/20 House Democrats may call new impeachment witnesses if Senate doesn’t
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I haven’t perused this in depth yet. It looks like the most important takeaway here will be further confirmation that Trump is outright lying when he says he “doesn’t know the guy.”
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Analysis of first recording released by Parnas shows significant engagement between Parnas and the President. Parnas has 79 exchanges with Trump.
Now that Parnas has released another recording of him speaking with Trump, it’s a good time to look again at that first recording. One thing I’m surprised about is that the media did not fully convey (IMO), how substantive Parnas’s conversation with the President was. This wasn’t just a passing remark or two shouted across the room; Parnas and the President engaged in a meaningful way – and surely Trump had to remember that (after all, in his own words, “nobody has a better memory than me”).
In addition, there will be records of the fact that Parnas was at these dinners. All Trump’s team had to do was check the lists of donors that have attended these events. I can speak from experience – I attended similar events for Mike Levin (Rep., D), here in CA-49 and received thank you letters and emails and, of course, follow up requests for more contributions.
And, because this is the President, there would have been security records, too.
So, Trump and his team knew for certain that it was more than just selfies that Parnas had with the President. It was actual sit-down conversations.
But back to that first recording. Here again is a link to the audio, which admittedly is tedious to listen to, so I don’t think you should feel you need to slog through the whole thing. Fortunately, there’s a transcript which is also below. You can easily search on “Parnas” and scroll to the parts of the dinner conversation in which Parnas was having a one-on-one with the President.
I’m not focusing here on what was said (which is certainly important), but just the fact that these exchanges were substantive enough that we can say for certain the President is lying when he claims he doesn’t know Parnas. He may not have known him by name, but he would have recalled once he saw Parnas’s photo, and once an aide reminded him, “remember that guy at the Trump Hotel dinner who wanted you to legalize pot and who bad mouthed Yovanovitch, prompting you to have her fired on the spot?” Yeah, that guy, Mr. President.
Here are a couple screen shots of a search on “Parnas” – he makes remarks to the president 79 times – many of those are just “chiming in,” but many are parts of significant one-on-one engagements. You can scroll through yourself to reach the same conclusion. (Again, I’m only focusing here on the extent of their engagement, not the content.)
Note: The search count reflects 4 mentions of Parnas in the introduction to the transcript and 79 instances of Parnas speaking to Trump.
The yellow ticks down the right margin indicate the times Parnas spoke with the President. You can see how he and Trump basically dominated the conversation throughout the middle portion of the dinner.
At the time this recording was released, I had an incorrect perception of the degree of Trump and Parnas’s interaction at the dinner, as I believe many other people did. Although the press referred to this as an “intimate dinner,” I still assumed (for some reason, I don’t know why) that Parnas just made a couple remarks to the President – so I still thought there was some wiggle room for Trump to “plausibly deny” he knew Parnas. However, looking more closely at the conversation from the first dinner (and now with a recording from a another dinner thrown in as well), we can only conclude that Trump outright lied when he said he didn’t know Parnas – and that leaves the door open for wondering why would he lie? What is he hiding? Could it be that in the subsequent months Trump spoke often with Giuliani about the work that Parnas was doing for both of them in furthering their corrupt extortion scheme?
Conclusion: Giuliani must testify about his conversations with Trump and if they included discussions about Parnas’s activies in Ukraine.
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Cross-posting 
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This sounds worse at first than it is, but it will come up, I am sure. It might almost be a fair thing he said, back when he had some modicum of integrity.
Claim: Alan Dershowitz once said he was “not happy seeing Nixon’s gang being tried by blacks and liberals” in D.C.
Snopes Rating: Correct Attribution
The jury now hearing the Watergate coverup trial is confined where news of the trial cannot reach it and possibly affect its deliberations.
Nonetheless, U.S. District Court Judge John Sirica should have moved the trial from Washington to insure an impartial jury, Bailey and Dershowitz said.
“I’m not happy seeing Richad Nixon’s gang being tried by blacks and liberals in the Disrict of Columbia,” said Dershowitz.
He thought it would have been “a lot fairer” to have moved the trial to “a district of Maryland where [the 1972 election] was very close, and where you had a mixture of whites and blacks.”
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For the Question
“If Bolton were to testify in the light most favorable to the articles of impeachment, wouldn’t the allegations still not rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and therefore his testimony would add nothing to this case?”
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David Corn is quite an apt “assholes to Americans” translator.
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4 takeaways from the second day of questions in Trump’s impeachment trial
Senators are in the second and last day of questions in President Trump’s impeachment trial. They are expected to take votes Friday on whether to extend the trial by calling witnesses or to end it by voting to acquit or convict.
Below are four key takeaways from the second day of the Q&A portion of the trial so far. Here are the takeaways from the first day of questions.
The short version
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Trump’s defense still hasn’t answered key questions about his intent
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The fallout over the Trump team’s foreign interference argument [from Dershowitz]
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Rand Paul’s attempt to publicly out the whistleblower
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Democrats are increasingly pessimistic about winning the fight over witnesses
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Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said late Thursday that he would vote against considering new evidence in President Trump’s impeachment trial, a strong indication that Republicans have lined up the votes to block a call for more witnesses and documents.
His opposition is a significant victory for Republican leaders. Though not all senators have announced their intentions, the vast majority of Republicans are expected to vote on Friday against allowing new evidence, and Mr. Alexander was a critical swing vote.
His announcement indicated that Republicans had fallen in line to push the trial into its final phase — reaching a verdict that is all but certain to be Mr. Trump’s acquittal — without delay.
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Lamar Alexander has opted for cowardice. It is the new GOP way. We will remember. And I will never again call him "Senator. He had abdicated that title.
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Speaking at a private event in Austin Thursday, Former National Security Advisor John Bolton defended government officials who testified in front of the U.S. House impeachment inquiry.
The United States Senate could soon decide whether to call Bolton to testify himself in the President’s impeachment trial.
Sources tell KXAN Bolton defended former diplomatic and state department officials Fiona Hill, Tim Morrison, Alex Vindman, Bill Taylor, and Marie Yovanovitch.
“All of them acted in the best interest of the country as they saw it and consistent to what they thought our policies were,” said Bolton, during the question-and-answer time after his keynote speech.
He went on to say members of the Trump Administration should “feel they’re able to speak their minds without retribution.”
“The idea that somehow testifying to what you think is true is destructive to the system of government we have — I think, is very nearly the reverse — the exact reverse of the truth,” said Bolton.
The audience applauded after his answer.
Bolton was in Austin at the invitation of Luther King Capitol Management, a Texas company that provides “investment management services to high net worth individuals,” according to its website.
Bolton was the keynote speaker for a private client luncheon Thursday morning at the Hyatt Regency on Barton Springs Road. The program was titled “Foreign Challenges Facing the Trump Administration.”
Bolton briefly mentioned his new book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” which reportedly supports accusations President Trump tied foreign aid to Ukraine for an investigation into the family of his political rival, Joe Biden. This week, the Trump Administration issued a letter to Bolton to keep him from publishing his new book, claiming it includes classified information.
Democratic Senators have called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to support calling Bolton to testify. Bolton said he would testify if subpoenaed.
Well, Mr. Bolton, put your money where your mouth is and make a detailed public statement now – tonight – telling us everything you know that is relevant to the impeachment proceeding. If you fail to do so, an acquittal in a sham trial will be as much on your head as on any of the Senators who vote for it.
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