Today’s Atlantic: Even among the president’s closest allies, Giuliani is now the subject of scorn. When I reached him by phone this morning, following House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s release of the full whistle-blower complaint at the center of the Ukraine scandal, he was, put simply, very angry. “It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m … Read More
Crazy Day Number Three: Whistleblower Complaint Release; DNI Joseph McGuire Testifies [And Updates]
The whistleblower complaint has been released, and it alleged what we already know about (Trump’s attempt to get Ukraine to investigate Biden), plus more. It talks about how the White House handled records of the conversation and perhaps other conversations. Essentially, the complaint alleges that the White House would “lock down” words of the transcript. The whistle-blower, moreover, identified multiple … Read More
As Trump-Zelensky Call Is Released, DOJ Quietly Moves To Cover Its Ass
Around the same time, the Justice Department released three important bits of news. First, the DOJ revealed that the inspector general for the intelligence community referred the matter to the Justice Department for a possible criminal campaign violation, but the DOJ judged it was not a campaign finance violation and took no action. According the NY Times, both the Inspector General and … Read More
Document Dump: The Trump-Zelensky Phone Call
Just released by the White House. This is NOT verbatim, as the footnote in the document notes. One could argue that it is a crafty attempt to get us to overlook the ellipses by packing the actual text with completely insane and probably criminal comments. FYI: Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz reveals on @MSNBC that he and other members of Congress … Read More
Pushback
It has been an interesting experience observing the defenses of Trump and his talking heads against the whistleblower and yesterday’s announcement of a formal impeachment inquiry. Absurd almost. Trump’s first tweet about it was saying it was “fake news.” That phrase is almost reflexive now. A few made some half hearted attempts at claiming the “deep state” was involved, although … Read More
Breaking: Pelosi To Call For Impeachment Inquiry; Trump Will Release Transcript Of Zelensky Call And Whistleblower Complaint
The open to @JakeTapper‘s newscast this afternoon: “This is a historic day.” pic.twitter.com/yo7N2qvadM — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 24, 2019 Speaker Pelosi will make a statement at 5 p.m. following the House Democratic Caucus meeting. Advisory coming… — Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) September 24, 2019 Only two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton. (Nixon resigned before the House … Read More
Impeachment Murmurs Get Louder
Oh, it’s getting ugly out there. Even at Fox & Friends, they can’t mask the trouble Trump is in: Steve Doocy: “If the President said ‘I will give you the money but you’ve got to investigate Joe Biden,’ that is really off-the-rails wrong.” pic.twitter.com/2lxUPDERJM — TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 24, 2019 Jonah Goldberg, a conservative columnist, says the most noxious … Read More
What Are We Waiting For?
Basically the Democrats want a video of Trump killing a guy with his bare hands, followed by a phone call to Putin where he says,”here is my bank account where you can the deposit the ten million we agreed to.” How cut-and-dried do things have to be before Democrats finally get some balls? It seems the Democratic political ecosystem, though, … Read More
Trump-Ukraine Scandal Is Basically A Dare
This tweet is funny, but true — in the sense that we don’t really have a dispute of the facts. Over the weekend, Trump basically admitted what his personal lawyer said: that Trump urged the president of Ukraine to dig up what he believed would be damaging information about one of his leading Democratic challengers, former vice president Joe Biden. … Read More
“Your Damn Right I Ordered The Code Red!” [With Updates]
The Washington Post and The New York Times posted stories within one minute of each other last night reporting that the conversation that caught the ear of an intelligence whistleblower was between Trump and the Ukrainians. WaPo’s posted at 8:04 p.m. and NYT’s at 8:05 p.m. Now I have to go back and give tags to all the whistleblower posts … Read More
Whistleblower Issue Blows Up Bigly [With Updates]
I’ve been pointing to it the last couple days. Last night, we learned a little about what the whistleblower complaint discussed. The whistleblower complaint filed on Aug. 12 by an official in the U.S. intelligence community involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post yesterday. During the interaction, Trump made a … Read More
Mysterious Whistleblower Complaint Points To Serious Shenanigans
The whistleblower thing I mentioned yesterday gets weirder. This story is about to get a whole lot more media scrutiny, because it involves secretive back-channel maneuvering, a possible threat to national security and potential lawbreaking at the highest levels of the Trump administration, possibly at the direction of President Trump himself — all with a whole lot of cloak-and-dagger intrigue … Read More
What’s This? No Seriously, What’s This?
This is a confusing and bizarre story but I think it may be one of those escalations that could wind up being an important moment. Talking Points Memo lays out the story: What’s there to hide? That’s what a congressional panel investigating a potentially urgent whistleblower complaint from the intelligence community wants to know. On Friday, House Intelligence Committee chair … Read More