The Ashford Zone Blog

So as I wrote before, Rudy is in Ukraine right now, suypposedly doing a documentary for OANN. But even Trump supporters are skeptical.

SCALISE on Giuliani’s trip to Kyiv: “I’m not sure what he’s doing in Ukraine.”

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) December 6, 2019

Rudy tweeted last night:

Giuliani is saying out loud that corruption (1) specifically means Joe Biden, and (2) Ukraine must satisfy Giuliani and Trump by investigating it in order to get “assistance” from the United States. He is literally tweeting out the quid pro quo.

And lest there be any ambiguity as to whether Giuliani is speaking on Trump’s behalf, he has dispelled it. Giuliani called his trip “work being done by a lawyer defending his client” to the Daily Beast, and tells the right-wing news network OANN: “The president of the United States, I can tell you this, is asking for this.”

The Republican argument insists that Trump held up military aid and a presidential meeting in order to vouchsafe that the new Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, was really serious about ending corruption. “The Ukrainian government considered issuing a public anti-corruption statement to convey that President Zelensky was ‘serious and different’ from previous Ukrainian regimes,” argues the report. And once Trump was assured Zelensky really had broken from Ukraine’s corrupt old ways, he released the military aid.

So … since Ukraine apparently satisfied Trump’s concerns, why is Rudy there at all now?

Then Rudy started spilling…

The Accounts Chamber in Ukraine found an alleged misuse of $5.3B in U.S. funds during the Obama administration while Biden was “Point Man.”

Obama embassy urged Ukrainian police NOT to investigate!

Stay tuned to find out why.

— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) December 6, 2019

Then this morning (sorry, you need to read in reverse order because Rudy doesn’t know how to thread)

I’m not sure what the $5.38 billion going to favored NGOs has to do with Biden. Yes, the prior administration of Ukraine was corrupt — no doubt about it. But Zelensky ran against corruption and there had been many reforms. Why was he required to investigate old corruption (including Burisma) before he got the military aid that Congress required to have sent?

Anyway, the aid was released. So … since Ukraine apparently satisfied Trump’s concerns, why is Rudy there at all now?

Indeed, at this moment, Giuliani is palling around with some of the most corrupt Ukrainians from the old regime. Giuliani held a confab yesterday with pro-Russian Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach, a former member of the Party of Regions, which was deposed in a popular uprising against its extravagant corruption:

Giuliani is also meeting with Kostyantyn Kulyk, Yuriy Lutsenko, and Viktor Shokin, three notoriously corrupt Ukrainian officials.

It’s long been perfectly obvious that Trump has not only no interest in reducing Ukrainian corruption, but an active interest in reviving it. Still, Giuliani seems intent on snatching away whatever fig leaf Trump’s allies have tried to maintain. That Zelensky is serious and different from previous regimes is exactly what Trump and Giuliani are afraid of.

And finally, the House Republican report takes great pains to insist Giuliani’s contacts with Ukraine were specifically requested by the latter, not foisted upon it. “President Zelensky did not express any concern about Mayor Giuliani’s engagement — in fact, President Zelensky, not President Trump, first referenced Mayor Giuliani in the conversation,” argues the report, “Evidence shows that the Ukrainian government, and specifically Zelensky adviser Andrey Yermak, initiated contact with Mayor Giuliani — and not the other way around.” Therefore, Republicans suggest, Giuliani (and his shady Russian partners, Parnas and Fruman) provided a welcome service to Zelensky, rather than shaking him down for political favors.

And yet here we have the Ukrainian government openly saying they do not want Giuliani in their country. “An official in Zelensky’s office said the president was caught off guard by Giuliani’s arrival, learning about it from the media,” reports BuzzFeed, “The official emphasized that there are ‘no official meetings’ planned with him.”

The headline on ABC’s report on the trip reads, “Giuliani in Ukraine with conservative news outlet in effort to discredit impeachment probe.” The only impeachment report Giuliani is discrediting is the Republican one. He’s vindicating the Democratic impeachment report.

Trump has openly said he has an “absolute right” to demand any country investigate anybody he doesn’t like for any reason of his choosing. He’s not even bothering to pause briefly for impeachment to end before he resumes. If Republicans allow him to stay in office, he will simply keep doing the same thing over and over, and they will have given him permission to do so.

RELATED:

US officials said it's "guaranteed" that Russia monitored Giuliani calls with Trump/White House; Moscow may know more about Ukraine plot than impeachment investigators. https://t.co/HxaRin7ia4

— Greg Miller (@gregpmiller) December 6, 2019

UPDATE — another Rudy tweet just now:

In reviewing my notes, it seems to me that a large scale joint investigation into Ukraine and the US would uncover and recover billions stolen by crooks, from both countries, at the highest levels.

This would be the most effective way to bring our two countries together.

— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) December 6, 2019

He just thought of it? He had that planned!

These notes sure sound like something House investigators might want to get their hands on. Too bad the White House is blocking them from accessing thousands of pages of documents and records and at least a dozen witnesses.

Jennifer Rubin:

Some observers of the impeachment hearings conducted under the auspices of the House Intelligence Committee bizarrely concluded that the proceedings lacked “pizzazz.” While that is a ridiculous metric for evaluating an inquiry into gross misconduct by the president, no one will find the report on those hearings and on other evidence boring. It’s got pizzazz to spare.

First, the nuts and bolts from the executive summary:

President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign. The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election. To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations: a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.

Those facts have yet to be contradicted. We have Trump’s own words on the July 25 rough transcript (“do us a favor though”), diplomat David Holmes’s account of the president pressing Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland about “investigations,” the hold on nearly $400 million in aid, Trump’s public statements inviting China and Ukraine to weigh into the election and the testimony of multiple career civil services that Trump outsourced his scheme primarily to Rudolph W. Giuliani, who publicly bragged that he was talking about Biden with Ukrainians.

What is new are the call records showing ongoing communications between Giuliani and the Office of Management and Budget (which ordered the hold on aid) and, stunningly, between the ranking Republican member of the Intelligence Committee (and conspiracy monger) Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.) and indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas. Nunes therefore becomes a fact witness, and his efforts to disrupt the hearings and toss out one red herring after another begin to reek of self-interested obstruction of the committees work.

Constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe comments, “The evidence of those suspicious Giuliani phone calls with [Vladimir] Putin-linked thugs reinforces the overwhelming case that the American president was directing a criminal conspiracy to conscript US military aid and the august powers of his office to benefit himself and his own reelection at the expense of the national security.” He adds, “If this isn’t impeachable and removable conduct, we’re done as a constitutional republic.”

The report also makes clear that Trump’s scheme “was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of senior Administration officials, including the President’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.” The report reminds us, “In fact, at a press conference weeks after public revelations about the scheme, Mr. Mulvaney publicly acknowledged that the President directly tied the hold on military aid to his desire to get Ukraine to conduct a political investigation, telling Americans to ‘get over it.’”

Aside from the near-airtight factual case against Trump for having engaged in what amounts to bribery and extortion for political gain, the report makes crystal clear the necessity of obtaining testimony from other witnesses. “The call records the committee obtained make clear there is a treasure trove of evidence lying just beyond their grasp,” says former Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller. “Had the White House not obstructed this investigation, they could have obtained testimony about what these people discussed and almost certainly produced even more damning evidence than they already have.” Miller adds, “It also seems to show that Nunes was in the middle of this plot from the beginning, which might explain why he was so mad throughout the hearings.”

For starters, Nunes needs to appear and provide testimony under oath. None of his calls or actions implicate any privilege; he is not immune from subpoenas as a fact witness. Moreover, given the direct communication with the OMB, its senior political appointees must appear and answer questions about their contacts with Giuliani.

Moreover, in view of the conclusion that senior officials knew of the scheme, their testimony becomes all the more vital. As luck would have it, a federal district court just denied a stay on the order former White House counsel Donald McGahn must testify and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit just affirmed a lower-court ruling that Deutsche Bank and Capital One must turn over financial records to the House. Both obliterate Trump’s claims of “absolute immunity.” The report underscores that it is worth a brief pause to pursue witnesses hiding behind bogus immunity claims. The courts now seem to be moving with speed, providing some chance that vital witnesses could be corralled.

“There’s a real difference in hearing the story witness by witness and seeing it all laid out on a timeline,” observes former prosecutor Joyce White Vance. “It’s like watching the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. As Schiff says, the country now has to decide whether what happened is impeachable or whether the country has to ‘get over it’ as Trump’s chief of staff said, and let presidents use the power of their office to cheat in elections.”

The Intelligence Committee’s report is a triumph of clarity and thoroughness. Now to make the best possible case, the House should press to hear from newly revealed witnesses who have knowledge of Trump’s action and potentially participated in wrongdoing. If current Cabinet members such as Pompeo do not appear, the House should consider impeaching them as well. The stonewalling must end.

In addition to summing up the findings from weeks of testimony in the House impeachment inquiry, Intelligence Committee Democrats’ new report has a surprising inclusion — the phone records of several major players involved in the scandal, including President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a member of the committee, confirmed on CNN that investigators subpoenaed these phone records. And while the records can’t reveal what was actually said during these phone calls, they make clear that Giuliani was in close contact with the White House at key moments.

Giuliani also exchanged several calls with an unknown number identified in the report as “-1” — and though this isn’t confirmed, the report certainly seems to imply that this number is President Trump.

The records also raise further questions about the potential involvement of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the Intelligence Committee’s top Republican, in the Ukraine affair. He has been accused of participating in the push for Ukrainian investigations into Trump’s rivals, and the records show he exchanged calls with Giuliani and his “fixer” Lev Parnas (who was arrested in October for campaign finance violations).

Overall, though, the records serve to remind us that, despite all the text messages and witness testimony we’ve seen so far in the inquiry, there’s a circle of people at the center of this scandal whose actions, and communications, remain mysterious. And more broadly, it’s just rather remarkable that impeachment investigators managed to obtain the phone records of the president’s personal lawyer.

The records shed light on the campaign against Ambassador Yovanovitch

The Democrats’ report refers many times to a “scheme” carried out by President Trump and his allies to try and get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. And in their telling, this scheme began with an effort to oust the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who was standing in the way of these demands.

The outlines will be familiar to those who watched Yovanovitch’s testimony: Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, spoke with Giuliani and Giuliani’s fixer Lev Parnas, making false accusations against Yovanovitch and claiming there were scandals involving the Bidens. John Solomon, a conservative journalist, then wrote up Lutsenko’s claims for the Hill beginning in March. Then, in late April, Yovanovitch suddenly got word she was being recalled from her post, at the White House’s instruction.

The new phone records in the report add further detail to this story, and document contacts between the key players at important moments. For instance, Democrats say:

• In the 48 hours before Solomon published his first article based on Lutsenko’s claims, Parnas spoke with Solomon at least six times. They spoke another time after the article, which attacked Yovanovitch, went live.
• Between April 1 and April 7, Parnas exchanged about 16 calls with Giuliani and about 10 with Solomon. On April 7, Solomon published another article attacking Yovanovitch.
• On April 10, Giuliani or Parnas exchanged calls with Solomon and with two other key players here — conservative lawyer Victoria Toensing, who was reportedly working with Giuliani on the Ukraine dirt-digging operation, and Rep. Devin Nunes.

Then, on April 12, there are a series of calls, each involving either Giuliani or Parnas, and the following other people or numbers:

• a “White House phone number”
• an “OMB phone number” (potentially acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who is still the OMB director)
• “-1” (an unknown number, which may, from context, be President Trump)
• Victoria Toensing
• John Solomon
• Devin Nunes
• Jay Sekulow, another lawyer for Trump

On April 21, however, outsider reformer Volodymyr Zelensky won the Ukrainian presidential election. In the days after that, Giuliani and his allies moved against Yovanovitch. The phone records for April 23 and 24 show the following:

• Multiple calls between Giuliani and Parnas
• A call between Parnas and Solomon
• Several short Giuliani calls to the White House, followed quickly by a call back for him from an unknown “-1” number
• A call from Giuliani to a phone associated with then-National Security Adviser John Bolton
• Three calls from Giuliani to an OMB number (which again, could be Mulvaney), and eight with a White House number

Finally, on the night of April 24, a State Department official called Yovanovitch and told her she had to return to Washington, due to White House “concerns.” Those concerns, another State official later explained to her, were coming from President Trump.

None of this is surprising, exactly — but in filling out the story of what happened, it’s useful to show that Giuliani was calling the White House right before Yovanovitch was recalled.

Giuliani responded by tweeting, “The mere fact I had numerous calls with the White House does not establish any specific topic. Remember, I’m the President’s attorney.” That is true. But the Democrats’ report also cited Giuliani’s tweets and media appearances to establish what may have been on his mind around the time of these calls — and, usually, it was Ukraine.

Why “-1” often appears to be President Trump

While the Democrats’ report doesn’t outright say that the calls coming from the unknown “-1” number are from President Trump, they certainly imply it — and the context shows that’s with good reason.

The key is what happens before the “-1” calls. Take, for instance, these records from on August 8.

In them:

• Giuliani initially texts the White House
• A little over an hour later, Giuliani gets a flurry of calls from “-1” to two different cell phones (the calls have very short durations so he appears not to have picked up).
• But minutes later, Giuliani then calls three numbers in succession — one listed as an “OMB number” (for the White House Office of Management and Budget), one for the Situation Room’s White House Switchboard, and one for the White House Switchboard. On the third, he connects.
• Then, in a call highlighted in the report, a “-1” unknown number calls Giuliani back and they speak for over four minutes.

So this certainly seems like a series of efforts from Trump and Giuliani to get in touch with each other, eventually succeeding. (The “OMB number” could be for acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who is still technically the director of OMB.)

Obviously, we’d expect Trump to be talking to his lawyer on the phone. That’s not scandalous in and of itself. But the placement and timing of these calls involving “-1” may be informative.

For instance, the series of calls on August 8 happened shortly after Giuliani met an aide to Zelensky in Madrid, and shortly before Giuliani, Gordon Sondland, and Kurt Volker started trying to dictate a statement for Zelensky in which he would commit to the investigations. So a phone call here could suggest that Trump was in the loop — and that Giuliani was speaking for him. (Though, theoretically, it could have been about another topic.)

Finally, one other reason why the “-1” number may be Trump is that we actually know he’s used a blocked number that shows up in other phone records this way. During the recent trial of Trump’s longtime adviser Roger Stone, prosecutors revealed that Trump’s phone had a blocked number in 2016, and showed up on Stone’s phone records as “-1.”

The role of Devin Nunes

Finally, the phone records have also focused renewed attention on the possible role of Nunes, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, in this whole saga.

As mentioned above, Nunes and Giuliani exchanged a series of brief calls on April 10. Theoretically, they could have been talking about any number of matters.

So it’s even more interesting that Nunes was also in contact with Giuliani’s fixer for Ukraine, Lev Parnas. On April 12 — amidst Parnas’s calls with Giuliani, Victoria Toensing, and John Solomon — Parnas also traded calls with Nunes, eventually speaking with him for about eight-and-half minutes.

Giuliani also had a series of contacts with Nunes or people close to Nunes around the time of his aborted trip to Ukraine this May.

• For instance, on May 8, according to the report, Giuliani separately spoke on the phone with someone at the White House, with Solomon, with Parnas — and Nunes staffer Derek Harvey.
• Then, on May 9, the New York Times revealed that Giuliani was planning a trip to Kyiv, to urge the Ukrainians to investigate the Bidens. “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Giuliani told the paper.
• The next day, May 10, Giuliani traded calls with and eventually spoke with Kashyap “Kash” Patel — a former Nunes aide who is now an NSC staffer. A call from the “-1” number went to Giuliani shortly afterward.
• Shortly afterward, Giuliani spoke with Parnas. And that night, on Fox News, Giuliani announced he was calling off his trip to Ukraine.

Parnas’s attorney has previously claimed Nunes was in the loop for the Ukrainian dirt-digging effort, and these call records could well corroborate that statement. Nunes, of course, did not disclose any of this during the House Intelligence Committee’s hearings on the impeachment inquiry, during which he has argued the president has done nothing wrong with respect to Ukraine.