Front page of NYT…11.14.19
Setting the tone…
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Hilarious take.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1194736333828153344
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1194737366394474496
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Ambassador’s cellphone call to Trump from Kyiv restaurant was a stunning breach of security, former officials say
Calling a president from a cellphone violates protocols set up to protect senior administration officials’ communications. “It’s indicative of a lack of concern for operational security,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being accused of making statements motivated by political bias. Senior officials, he said, “are routinely briefed on the threats to their communications. You could assume that talking on an unencrypted line from a foreign country would be on that list.”
It is also dangerous for a president to take an off-the-books call like that, Pfeiffer said. That is why call logs are kept, he said. Without them, someone could assert that the president said something on a call, and a log “protects the president’s ability to deny something happened,” he said. “Good bureaucratic record-keeping is a protection for someone in the position of the president.”
This is not the first time questions have arisen over Trump’s unorthodox phone use. He has been known to give his personal cellphone number to other world leaders, despite aides’ warnings that his cellphone calls are not secure. Russia and China in particular have targeted his personal cellphone calls, the New York Times reported.
President Trump breaking national security protocol to bribe Ukraine for his personal interest but don’t worry guys, it’s not as outlandish as it could be. 
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This overheard conversation with Ambassador Sondland and T was a big revelation tying T ever closer to being the source of the Impeachment scandal - T, who only wanted to kick up some dirt on Biden. That personal motive on T’s part in order to win the 2020 is not in the national interest, and therefore an impeachable offense. End of story.
Whether the new ‘witness,’ David Holmes, an aide to Taylor will be able to testify remains to be seen, the constant of this impeachment process is the R’s throwing up roadblocks to getting any first-hand testimony.
And the other constant for the R’s is deny, refute and offer the ‘so what’ strategy…saying it really was nothing is what they will die by. Each new witness, particularly Amb Sondland has to weigh what his liability is in telling the truth whether it be jail time, or serious damage to their future careers.
The R’s keep a tight lock on their ‘loyalty’ chain…and let’s hope some might be willing to break with this mob technique. How low will they go…so far, it’s pretty darn low.
…
“The member of my staff could hear President Trump on the phone, asking
Ambassador Sondland about ‘the investigations,’ ” Taylor told lawmakers, adding that he understood that they were following up on the matter a day after Trump spoke with Ukraine’s new leader, Volodymyr Zelensky. “Ambassador Sondland told President Trump that the Ukrainians were ready to move forward.” Taylor said that at the conclusion of the call, his aide asked Sondland what Trump thought of Ukraine and Sondland responded that “President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden.”
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White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham echoed the GOP attempt to play down the diplomats’ testimony as mere hearsay.
“The latest ‘evidence’ is an anonymous staffer who told someone he overheard someone else talking to POTUS on the phone,” she said in a statement Wednesday. “All the ‘evidence’ in this case is 2nd and 3rd hand hearsay.”
Democrats pushed back against that argument, pointing out that the White House has blocked testimony from key witnesses with firsthand information, including Mulvaney and former national security adviser John Bolton.
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Whatever the GOP counsel is doing, it’s not working. I don’t under[s]tand where he’s going,” wrote Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary for President George W. Bush.
At one point, Castor sought to play down conversations with Ukraine that took place outside the normal State Department channels of communication, saying that they could have been even more abnormal.
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Democrats have scheduled testimony from several additional witnesses, many of whom have already testified privately that they were bewildered and concerned by Trump’s decision to withhold the aid over the summer. Marie Yovanovitch, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who Kent said was targeted by a Giuliani-led “smear campaign,” is scheduled to testify Friday.
Sondland, who is slated to testify on Wednesday, has previously amended his closed-door testimony to confirm that he told Ukrainian officials that military aid and an Oval Office meeting were conditioned on a public announcement of corruption investigations.
Taylor’s testimony raises the stakes for Sondland, who will certainly be asked about the July 26 phone call in which Trump allegedly inquired about “investigations.”
And a whole lot of “nothing to see here.” from R’s
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Nevermind that Russia has those cell phone networks compromised, DINERS could have overheard that!
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Ex-Simpsons writer accuses Republicans of ‘Sideshow Bob defense’ in WaPo op-ed
In a 1994 episode of “The Simpsons,” a character complains that Sideshow Bob shouldn’t be in prison for attempted murder, rhetorically asking, “Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?”
A former writer of the show said Republicans use the same defense for Trump when they argue that even if he did seek a quid pro quo with Ukraine, there was no wrongdoing because it was unsuccessful.
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A second U.S. Embassy staffer in Kyiv overheard a cellphone call between President Donald Trump and his ambassador to the European Union discussing a need for Ukrainian officials to pursue “investigations,” The Associated Press has learned.
The July 26 call between Trump and Gordon Sondland was first described during testimony Wednesday by William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Taylor said one of his staffers overhead the call while Sondland was in a Kyiv restaurant the day after Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that triggered the House impeachment inquiry.
The second diplomatic staffer also at the table was Suriya Jayanti, a foreign service officer based in Kyiv. A person briefed on what Jayanti overheard spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter currently under investigation.
Trump on Wednesday said he did not recall the July 26 call.
“No, not at all, not even a little bit,” Trump said.
The White House did not respond to questions Thursday about the second witness to the call with Sondland.
The staffer Taylor testified about is David Holmes, the political counselor at the embassy in Kyiv, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Holmes is scheduled to testify Friday before House investigators in a closed session.
Taylor was one of the first witnesses called Wednesday during the impeachment inquiry’s initial open hearing. He testified that his staffer could hear Trump on the phone asking Sondland about “the investigations.”
The accounts of Holmes and Jayanti could tie Trump closer to alleged efforts to hold up military aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigations into political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings. …
Link courtesy currentstatus.io.
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Yes! Pelosi is shifting the terminology from “quid pro quo” to “bribery.” I’ll bet she had this planned all along – just waiting until the public hearings. 
Now the media will surely follow suit. 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi sharpened the focus of Democrats’ impeachment case against President Trump on Thursday, accusing the president of committing bribery when he withheld vital military assistance from Ukraine at the same time he was seeking its commitment to publicly investigate his political rivals.
The speaker’s explicit allegation of bribery, a misdeed identified in the Constitution as an impeachable offense, was significant. Even as Ms. Pelosi said that no final decision had been made on whether to impeach Mr. Trump, it suggested that Democrats are increasingly working to put a name to the president’s alleged wrongdoing, and moving toward a more specific set of charges that could be codified in articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.
“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry, and that the president abused his power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival — a clear attempt by the president to give himself an advantage in the 2020 election,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference in the Capitol.
Democrats have begun using the term “bribery” more freely in recent days to describe what a string of diplomats and career Trump administration officials have said was a highly unusual and inappropriate effort by Mr. Trump and a small group around him to extract a public promise from Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and a discredited theory about Democrats conspiring with Ukraine to interfere in the 2016 election.
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Is anybody here wondering who ELSE overheard all of this, given how lax they were with security?
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And there you have it!
US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland’s cell phone call to President Donald Trump from a restaurant in Ukraine this summer appears to be a shocking security breach that raises significant counterintelligence concerns, according to several former officials, who told CNN there is a high probability that intelligence agencies from numerous foreign countries, including Russia, were listening in on the conversation.
“If true, the cell phone call between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump is an egregious violation of traditional counterintelligence practices that all national security officials – to include political appointee ambassadors such as Sondland – are repeatedly made aware of,” according to Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer who oversaw operations in Europe and Russia before retiring this summer.
"I cannot remember in my career any time where an ambassador in a high counterintelligence environment like Kiev would have such an unsecure conversation with a sitting president. This just should not happen," he said.
Imagine the power of this kompromat. If the President is heard confirming his bribery scheme, releasing this tape could literally remove him from office.
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Cross-post 
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Remember the old saying: “there’s no honor among thieves.”
In a telephone interview with the Guardian, in response to a question about whether he was nervous that Trump might “throw him under a bus” in the impeachment crisis, Giuliani said, with a slight laugh: “I’m not, but I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid.”
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, who was also on the call, then interjected: “He’s joking.”
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Note to self:
09/22/19 President Trump Departure Remarks
7:22 Starts on Biden and Ukraine (no featured clip of the whole thing, only bites?)
Featured clip: Trump describes conversation with Ukraine President
Transcript
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Breaking…someone new to testify!
So they have someone from OMB to testify - Mark Sandy, and he’s someone who ostensibly signs the checks for OMB…like to Ukraine. He’s a career guy, not appointed.
A longtime career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to break ranks and testify Saturday in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, potentially filling in important details on the holdup of military aid to Ukraine.
Mark Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell T. Vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear. The White House has called the impeachment inquiry unconstitutional and ordered administration officials not to participate.
Unlike these other OMB officials, Sandy is a career employee, not one appointed by the president. He has worked at the agency off and on for over a decade, under presidents of both parties, climbing the ranks to his current role as deputy associate director for national security programs.
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Ambassador Gordon Sondland persists, despite the fact that T now says he hardly knew him, and he was widely criticized by his peers. He will not step down which would be an indicator that he’s done something wrong.
One wonders how Sondland is going to handle his day in front of the Impeachment panel with new revelations about an overheard call, now confirmed by two government workers.
The Dems know that Ambassador Sondland does not have the best credibility considering his changeroo on his testimony…a quick addendum, because he mis-remembered the facts, as detailed by other’s testimony. 
I hope he brings with him some humility and some truth. One can only hope.
Sondland’s refusal to step down also comes after his current and former colleagues heavily criticized his actions under sworn deposition.
Vindman said he “tended to go off script” and was “not a professional diplomat.” Former White House official Fiona Hill called him a walking “counterintelligence risk” and “target for foreign powers.” She said Sondland “frequently” gave foreign officials her cellphone number to “call up and demand meetings.”
“We had all kinds of officials from Europe . . . literally appearing at the gates of the White House,” Hill said. “He was . . . giving out his phone number and texting [regional officials]. . . . All of those communications could have been exfiltrated by the Russians very easily.”
Hill testified that Sondland had good intentions but that in terms of policy, “he’d just gone off the road. No guardrails, no GPS.”
Sondland’s isolation continues even inside the U.S. mission in Brussels, where some career diplomats said they had been appalled by his leadership.
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Buckle up…here co es Ex-ambassador Yovanovitch’s truth telling…
As a leading female diplomat, a political target of the president’s allies and a figure at the center of the Ukraine drama, Yovanovitch has crucial knowledge to impart when she testifies at Friday’s impeachment hearing. She also enters the spotlight as the latest woman who has refused to acquiesce to Trump in the face of personal and gender-specific attacks.
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