Looks like a somber Friday, testimony has been postponed. Any bombshells today will be coming from another camp.
The Trump Impeachment Inquiry: Latest Updates
The House has postponed testimony in the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, but fallout might be coming from the acting White House chief of staff’s on-again, off-again quid pro quo admission.
RIGHT NOW
The House completed its final votes of the week. The Senate has left Washington.
Here’s what you need to know:
THIS is the testimony we are awaiting - Bill Taylor, the ex Diplomat in Ukraine who demonstrated some major pushback to the Administration, when he write Amb of the EU Sondland various texts saying - my phrasing “It sure seems like there is some quid pro quo going on - holding back military fund, for political dirt.” It is on TUES, Oct 22nd.
(SIDE NOTE - I will be in DC for a tourist-type visit for a few days and it falls on this date, even have a scheduled walking tour of Congress and WH that day!!..so I am going to keep my eyes peeled for the press conferences, sightings and buzz about his testimony. This was long in the planned trip and just falls within this crazy time. 
)
WASHINGTON — The top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine who questioned why military aid for Kyiv had been held up by the White House has hired a veteran Republican attorney to help him navigate a request from House Democrats to testify in their impeachment inquiry, according to a letter obtained by NBC News and what sources familiar with the matter told NBC News.
Bill Taylor, who came out of retirement to serve as charge d’affaires in Kyiv in June, will be represented by John Bellinger, who served as a senior official in President George W. Bush’s administration, including stints at the National Security Council and as the State Department’s top lawyer, the sources said.
Taylor is expected to testify Tuesday.
Bellinger is also representing P. Michael McKinley, the former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who testified Wednesday, the sources said. Bellinger accompanied McKinley as he arrived on Capitol Hill for the deposition, which was held behind closed doors.
Bellinger, partner with the Arnold and Porter law firm, was one of a number of prominent “Never Trump” Republicans in the foreign policy establishment who publicly opposed Donald Trump’s candidacy in 2016. He drafted an August 2016 letter signed by 50 senior officials, many of them Republicans, warning of the dangers of electing Trump as president, and predicting he would be the “most reckless President in American history.”
Bellinger has since said that every word of the letter “has turned out to be true, and worse.”
Ambassador William Taylor in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 19, 2019.Barcroft Media / Barcroft Media via Getty Images
Colleagues of both Taylor and McKinley described Bellinger, with his experience in the White House, the State Department and national security law, as uniquely qualified to represent diplomats in the Ukraine inquiry.
Apart from Bellinger, Taylor’s legal team includes Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel during the Clinton administration with extensive experience in national security legal issues.
Taylor has emerged as a key witness based on recently released text messages between him and the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, and the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker. Taylor expressed his concern about where the administration was headed in its approach to Ukraine’s newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, warning against tying a White House meeting or U.S. military assistance to investigations meant to benefit Trump’s re-election effort.
“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor wrote to Sondland on Sept. 9, according to text messages released by the congressional committees conducting the impeachment inquiry.
The confrontation between the executive branch and Congress over the impeachment inquiry has put Taylor and other diplomats in a difficult bind.
More cracks in the dam. Now we need some sitting Republican lawmakers to step up to the plate and serve their country instead of betraying it.
Dragonfly9,
if you can take in the Propaganda part of the Holocaust Museum.
I’m in St. Louis at WW2 Air Force reunion. We toured the local Holocaust Museum here & it’s depressing that we are repeating history.
Hi Gracie,
Thanks for the suggestion…we have a couple of great spots here in Los Angeles, Museum of Tolerance which memorializes the Holocaust in a very vivid way, and needless to say an intense experience.
We also have a newer museum called Wende Museum - dedicated to Eastern European countries and life during the Cold War. Their entire library is in Russian…and they have really amazing shows - showing what the propaganda machine produced - an ad campaign drumming up a ton of fear on onset of Nuclear destruction…politicized campaigns, oversized electronic equipment, spying equipment, and fearless leader bronze heads…Here is the web presence - http://www.wendemuseum.org/
I am going to try to get to the National Museum of African American History which is sort of an impossible ticket to get…and have strategized ways to get in, with online efforts and standing in line for it…
If there is some commotion, and I expect there will be over at Capital Hill, I am definitely going there to stake that out…There is a nightly protest in front of the WH as well.
Thanks for the suggestion…I need to check out things that I had not ever seen…including the Newseum, which is closing it’s doors Dec 31st - dedicated to journalists, newspapers and print. Like all of communications…it’s now found in the ether. The Vietnam Wall, WWII tribute, MLK statue…Arlington, etc.
I will take pix…and send any breaking news if I am in the middle of it. Otherwise, I hope to catch all breaking news HERE.
WTFJHT IS THE PLACE for it.
Cross-posting this over here:
The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) is a dense section of law, codified in Title 48 of the U.S. Code. The prohibition against self-dealing in this space is not one of those ephemeral “norms” that Trump disregards all the time. The self-dealing prohibition is codified right in the statute:
48 CFR § 3.601 – Policy.
(a) Except as specified in 3.602, a contracting officer shall not knowingly award a contract to a Government employee or to a business concern or other organization owned or substantially owned or controlled by one or more Government employees. This policy is intended to avoid any conflict of interest that might arise between the employees’ interests and their Government duties, and to avoid the appearance of favoritism or preferential treatment by the Government toward its employees.
(b) For purposes of this subpart, special Government employees (as defined in 18 U.S.C. 202) performing services as experts, advisors, or consultants, or as members of advisory committees, are not considered Government employees unless –
(1) The contract arises directly out of the individual’s activity as a special Government employee;
(2) In the individual’s capacity as a special Government employee, the individual is in a position to influence the award of the contract; or
(3) Another conflict of interest is determined to exist.
Career diplomat George Kent told congressional investigators in his closed-door testimony this week that Rudy Giuliani asked the State Department and the White House to grant a visa to the former Ukrainian official who Joe Biden had pushed to have removed when he was vice president, according to four people familiar with Kent’s testimony.
Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, testified that around January 2019 Giuliani requested a visa for former Ukrainian prosecutor-general Viktor Shokin to travel to the United States. Shokin had been pushed out of his position as Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including Biden, over concerns that he was not pursuing corruption cases.
Giuliani has previously told CNN he wanted to interview Shokin in person because the Ukrainian promised to reveal dirt on Democrats.
Many career diplomats and civil servants have been bucking the Trump regime’s orders to not testify. Much of this centers on the rampant abuse Trump, Pompeo, and their cadre have visited upon the State Department:
Trump faces furious State Dept. revolt for trashing career diplomats on Ukraine: ‘People are fed up’
A small analysis: Trump sees any sort of admission of error or apology as weakness. So he’d rather have Mulvaney blatantly lying about something he can’t possibly walk back than come up with a plausible alternative. That almost pathological position is definitely playing against him here.
The private Instagram account of Lev Parnas—one of two Rudy Giuliani associates charged with campaign-finance violations—reveals a personal note to him apparently from Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal gained access to the locked account which shows Parnas at events with Giuliani, Donald Jr., Eric, President Trump, and his ex-wife Ivana. One photograph shows a note apparently signed by Trump and first lady Melania Trump, which reads: “To Lev Parnas, Thank you for your friendship and dedication to our cause. Leaders like you in Florida are key to fulfilling our bold agenda to Make America Great Again!”
The photos also show Parnas in the leadup to the midterm elections flying around on a private jet with Giuliani. The day after Barr released a summary of the Mueller Report, he posted photos from a “celebration dinner” with Trump’s legal team. After Parnas was indicted, Trump said of him and fellow Giuliani associate Igor Fruman: “I don’t know them. I don’t know about them. I don’t know what they do.”
Shelby Holliday@shelbyholliday
· 4h
Replying to @shelbyholliday and 3 others
In August of 2015, Parnas posted four photos and a video from a Trump campaign event at Doral, including this picture with Trump and his son. https://www.wsj.com/video/private-photos-of-indicted-donor-depict-ties-to-trump-giuliani/7EED4946-5201-4D70-A8FF-0516DCC1488E.html …
Shelby Holliday
Then, his account jumps from 2015 to 2018. In Aug '18, Parnas posted a pic of a personalized thank-you note from POTUS & FLOTUS. “Lev Parnas, Thank you for your friendship and dedication to our cause,” it reads. WH didn’t respond to request for comment. https://www.wsj.com/video/private-photos-of-indicted-donor-depict-ties-to-trump-giuliani/7EED4946-5201-4D70-A8FF-0516DCC1488E.html …
Not sure if the video below is viewable without a WSJ subscription, but it provides an in-depth and fascinating look at Parnas’s leaked Instagram account that was locked – somehow WSJ must have gained access. It reveals a web of connections between Giuliani and the indicted Parnas that encompass Trump and his campaign.
For people who like pods
House Republicans are expected to push a vote on Monday on a resolution to censure House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff. Republicans are taking issue with how Schiff is conducting the impeachment investigation. The House votes at 6:30PM ET.
This will probably fail. House Republicans seem like they’re just trying to move the needle on a full House vote on the Impeachment Inquiry. 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is leading the probe, both have refused to put a specific timeframe on the investigation.
"The timeline will depend on the truth line, and that’s what we’re looking for," Pelosi told reporters late last week.
Yet Democrats involved in the investigation say that the initial hope among some in their party that the matter could be wrapped up before the end of the fall now seems overly ambitious.
"I think it’s more like between Thanksgiving and Christmas" for the end of the investigation, said one Democratic member involved in the probe. "After that, it’s a strategic decision about when to bring it to the floor."
A committee source said that "putting an artificial time limit is the wrong way to run a credible investigation."
"We are committed to moving as methodically but expeditiously as possible – but we will interview witnesses, release transcripts and hold open hearings at time appropriate given the collection of facts," the source said.
OCT. 22
CLOSED-DOOR DEPOSITION
State Department official to be deposed
Chairmen of the House Oversight, Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees requested that William “Bill” Taylor appear for a deposition on Capitol Hill on Oct. 22. In text messages provided to impeachment investigators by Kurt Volker, Taylor expressed a belief that U.S. defense aid and a meeting at the White House between Trump and Zelensky were conditioned on Ukraine’s agreeing to launch investigations that could benefit Trump politically. View the document
EXPECTED TO APPEAR
Taylor is expected to appear, despite White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s Oct. 8 letter to House leaders saying the administration would not cooperate with requests.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/politics/impeachment-calendar/
@anon95374541 called it: “This will probably fail. House Republicans seem like they’re just trying to move the needle on a full House vote on the Impeachment Inquiry. ”
… A Republican effort to censure House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) for his handling of the inquiry failed Monday…
Yeah, I never expected that to pass. It’s the GOP trying to frame this to their liking, and the Dems are having none of that.
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the office that, on Trump’s orders, withheld aid to Ukraine. Russell Vought, its Deputy Director, announced that it was “fake news” that his office would comply with the Congressional impeachment inquiry. This is significant because *it means that the OMB is helping Trump try to pull the “No Collusion” trick again.
