Impeachapalooza

A blog about the impeachment of Donald Trump

  • Republicans Want to Throw Giuliani and Sondland Under the Bus. Their Plan Is Ridiculous.

    November 8, 2019

    LeManna/Getty

    According to an astounding report by the Washington Post, Republicans have (yet another) brand-new strategy to defend President Donald Trump from impeachment—and it involves throwing Rudy Giuliani, Gordon Sondland, and “possibly” Mick Mulvaney under the bus. Under this new approach, Republicans would essentially acknowledge what has become obvious to everyone: that Trump’s henchmen really did demand that Ukraine investigate Democrats in return for military aide and a White House meeting. But, Republicans insist, Trump himself knew nothing about the scheme:

    All three occupy a special place in the Ukraine narrative as the people in most direct contact with Trump. As Republicans argue that most of the testimony against Trump is based on faulty secondhand information, they are sowing doubts about whether Sondland, Giuliani and Mulvaney were actually representing the president or freelancing to pursue their own agendas. The GOP is effectively offering up the three to be fall guys…The suggestion that Sondland, Giuliani and possibly Mulvaney made demands of Ukrainians without Trump’s explicit blessing has emerged among several theories that Republicans have offered in Trump’s defense, as witnesses testify that they believed Ukraine was being squeezed.

    The Post notes that this line of defense faces “several potential problems.” Indeed.

    Let’s start with Mulvaney, Trump’s acting chief of staff. He’s on record saying that Trump explicitly linked his desire for a Ukrainian investigation of Democrats to the resumption of military aide to that country. “What you just described is a quid pro quo,” one reporter noted. “It is: Funding will not flow unless the investigation into the Democratic server happens as well.”

    Then there is Giuliani, who continues to insist that his work in Ukraine was “solely” in his capacity as Trump’s attorney.

    The idea that Trump was unaware of Giuliani’s activities is pretty hard to reconcile with the reconstructed transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump repeatedly told Zelensky to speak over the phone with Giuliani and Attorney General Bill Barr about an array of topics and people Trump wanted investigated, including Joe Biden’s son. “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man,” Trump said. “I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.”

    But Zelensky wasn’t the only person Trump wanted Giuliani to speak to about Ukraine. And that brings us to Sondland, who recently admitted to Congress that he told a top Ukrainian official that the country would need to publicly announce the investigations Trump was asking for in order to unlock the desperately needed aide. The Republican strategy, according to the Post, is to argue that the president never wanted Sondland to demand such a quid pro quo. (This morning, Trump tried to distance himself from Sondland, telling reporters, “I hardly know the gentleman.”)

    But this defense is pretty tough to square with the facts. As my colleagues David Corn and Dan Friedman explained this week, when Sondland contacted Trump in an effort to secure a meeting between Trump and Zelensky, Trump directed Sondland to Giuliani. “He just kept saying: ‘Talk to Rudy, talk to Rudy,’” Sondland told Congress. Here’s what happened next:

    When Sondland checked in with Giuliani, he testified, “Giuliani emphasized that the President wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into anti-corruption issues” and “specifically mentioned the 2016 election, including the DNC server and Burisma [the company that employed Biden’s son] as two anti-corruption investigatory topics of importance for the President.” 

    Freeze the frame: Top US officials want to help Ukraine win phone and face time with Trump; Trump essentially says, you gotta talk to Rudy first; and Giuliani says no meeting without Zelensky launching an investigations to produce material that supports a crazy conspiracy theory that holds the Russians did not hack the Democrats during the 2016 election and to uncover information on a company whose board included former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.

    Giuliani, who would presumably be able to shed considerable light on what Trump was demanding, has refused to cooperate with investigators, defying a congressional subpoena for documents related to his work in Ukraine. But as Jonathan Chait notes in New York magazine, Trump himself made his desires pretty clear. In September, a reporter asked the president what he told Zelensky about the Bidens. “It’s very important to talk about corruption,” Trump responded. “If you don’t talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”

  • Someone Please Investigate Why Ukraine’s President Loves Jay Leno

    November 6, 2019

    Hey, here’s something weird: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky supposedly considers former Tonight Show host Jay Leno a “hero.” This is according to the testimony of the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. Before we get into the whole thing, let’s point out that: 1) Zelensky was a comedian before he ran for president, 2) No one for whom Jay Leno is a hero has any business being a country’s president, let alone a comedian.

    All right, here’s the supposed story, per the Washington Post. In an attempt to curry favor with Zelensky after his election, Sondland invited along his “personal friend” Leno to perform at a celebration in Brussels. The paper reported that Leno’s “US-focused patter fell flat on the ears of European officials.” Here’s how Sondland put it:

    Mother Jones reached out to Jay Leno’s publicist for comment.

  • First, He Said the Quid Pro Quo Didn’t Happen. Now, Lindsey Graham Admits He’s Not Bothering to Look for One.

    November 5, 2019

    Andrew Harnik/AP

    Even in the face of damning testimony and an arguably even more damning reversal from Gordon Sondland, leading Senate Republicans are still in denial: None of what is happening in the impeachment investigation means anything, how dare you ask such a dumb question, and even if it did, they wouldn’t know because they don’t know what you’re talking about.

    This line of alternate-reality thinking is happening more and more frequently as things look increasingly dire for the president.

    On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) bluntly told reporters that the president would be acquitted if an impeachment trial took place today. (So, what happened to due process?)

    And while that’s not exactly shocking from McConnell, this one is a bit more fun: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he has simply “written the whole process off” and admits he’s refused to read any of the testimonies that have been publicly released this week—testimony that pretty clearly seems to back the idea that administration officials indeed engaged in a quid pro quo. He called it a “bunch of B.S.”

    On Twitter, folks were quick to point out that, just a couple of weeks ago, Graham opted for the idea that evidence of a quid pro quo by the president simply didn’t exist. 

  • Democrats Ask Mulvaney to Testify on Quid Pro Quo Allegations

    November 5, 2019

    Chris Kleponis/Zuma

    Update, 5:15 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 5: Mulvaney has reportedly declined to testify, with a White House spokesperson calling the impeachment investigation a “ridiculous, partisan, illegitimate proceeding.”

    Impeachment investigators have asked acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney to submit to a deposition later this week, suggesting that he may have been “directly involved” in the alleged quid pro quos that led to the impeachment investigation against President Donald Trump.

    In a letter asking Mulvaney to appear before House investigators on November 9, the chairs of three congressional committees cited Mulvaney’s potentially “substantial first-hand knowledge and information relevant to the House’s impeachment inquiry.”

    House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Foreign Affairs Committee chair Eliot Engel (D-NY), and Oversight and Reform Committee chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) wrote, “The investigation has revealed that you may have been directly involved in an effort orchestrated by President Trump, his personal agent, Rudolph Giuliani, and others to withhold a coveted White House meeting and nearly $400 million in security assistance in order to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to pursue investigations that would benefit President Trump’s personal political interests, and jeopardized our national security in attempting to do so.”

    Mulvaney recently told reporters that Trump had indeed withheld military aide in part to pressure Ukraine to launch investigations into Democrats. He later attempted to retract that admission.

  • “Read the Transcript,” Trump Berates Reporter Who Is Quoting Transcript

    November 4, 2019

    Oliver Contreras/Zuma

    After casually encouraging the media to release the name of the whistleblower who spurred the impeachment investigation against him, President Donald Trump engaged in a bizarre back-and-forth with a reporter Sunday. Trump repeatedly told the reporter to “read the transcript” of Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—even as the reporter quoted the phone call.

    “Mr. President, you said ‘no quid pro quo,'” the reporter said, according to a transcript of the president’s remarks on Sunday. “The thing is, is that, in the transcript, it says—,” 

    “Read the transcript,” Trump interrupted. (No full transcript of the call has been released, but Trump was referring to a memo detailing the call that was released by the White House.)

    “—’I have a favor to ask you though,'” the reporter continued, quoting the memo.

    “Read the transcript,” Trump repeated, pointing a menacing index finger at the reporter.

    “But it says, ‘I have no—I have a favor to ask you though,'” the reporter said.

    “Read the transcript,” Trump said once more, before turning to another reporter.

    Watch the interaction at 11:10 below.

  • Republicans Keep Saying They Want to Question the Whistleblower. Now May Be Their Chance.

    November 3, 2019

    adrian825/Getty

    On Sunday morning, the lawyer for the whistleblower whose complaint is at the center of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump said he has offered Republicans the chance to submit written questions directly to his client:

    The lawyer, Mark Zaid, also blasted repeated GOP efforts to unmask the whistleblower’s identity: 

    As CBS News reported Sunday:

    Attorney Mark Zaid told CBS News he contacted Representative Devin Nunes, the committee’s ranking member, on Saturday to say his client is willing to answer Republicans’ questions under oath and penalty of perjury if lawmakers submitted written questions to the whistleblower’s legal team. The inspector general of the intelligence community, a Trump appointee, could verify the whistleblower’s identity in order to satisfy the committee’s minority members while protecting the individual’s anonymity.

    …

    Previously, the whistleblower had offered to answer questions under oath and in writing if submitted by the House Intelligence Committee as a whole. This new offer would be a direct channel of communication with the Republicans who are in the minority on that committee. Republican leadership has complained that the process is unfair and overly restrictive on their ability to question witnesses.

    It’s still unclear if Republicans will take Zaid and the whistleblower up on their offer; Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the top Republican on the committee, did not respond to CBS’ request for a comment. Meanwhile, the Democrats have cooled on the possibility of having the whistleblower testify. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee chair, said last month that despite Democrats’ initial interest in speaking to the whistleblower while safeguarding their identity, the party is less eager to do so since Trump and the Republicans started attacking the whistleblower’s anonymity and calling for them to be unmasked. “Given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower, who wasn’t on the call, to tell us what took place during the call,” Schiff said last month. 

  • It Turns Out Team Trump Has Spent Years Falsely Claiming Ukraine—Not Russia—Was Behind DNC Hack

    November 3, 2019

    Michael Brochstein//ZUMA Wire

    On the famous July phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump pressed the Ukrainian president to look into the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee. The belief that Ukraine, not Russia, was actually behind the hack is a pretty confusing but persistent conspiracy theory on the right, despite being thoroughly debunked. And now new documents reveal just how deep the theory runs in Trump world: Former campaign chair Paul Manafort was suggesting Ukraine was involved in the stealing of Democratic emails as far back as 2016.

    On Saturday, BuzzFeed released reams of previously secret memos from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. BuzzFeed reports that the documents show that Rick Gates, Manafort’s number 2, told investigators in April 2018 that “after the campaign learned in June 2016 that WikiLeaks had the hacked DNC emails, Manafort had said that the hack was ‘likely carried by the Ukrainians, not the Russians,’ according to FBI notes.” 

    Gates also reportedly revealed that the theory was shared by one of Manafort’s associates with alleged ties to Russian intelligence, Konstantin Kilimnik—another key player in the Russia-election saga, who we’ve written about frequently in the past—as well as former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. 

    Hoo boy.

    Read more about the memos at BuzzFeed.

  • Please Let Trump’s “Fireside Chat” Happen

    November 1, 2019

    Andrew Harrer/ZUMA

    President Donald Trump has tweeted seven times in the past month that Americans should “READ THE TRANSCRIPT!”

    It’s an odd demand considering many people did, in fact, read the White House’s reconstruction of his now-infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it was widely viewed as highly damaging for the president. The document also featured several curious ellipses, which a top Ukraine expert with firsthand knowledge of the conversation told investigators this week marked the omission of key details related to Trump’s demands for an investigation into his political enemies. According to the New York Times, that revelation didn’t “fundamentally change lawmakers’ understanding of the call,” but it does further undermine Trump’s insistence that the document somehow exonerates him.

    Still, “read the transcript” has emerged as Trump’s go-to, shorthand defense, a kind of catchall rejoinder against impeachment. Now, with allegations of multiple quid pro quos piling up, “read the transcript” appears ready for primetime. Trump told the Washington Examiner on Thursday:

    “This is over a phone call that is a good call. At some point, I’m going to sit down, perhaps as a fireside chat on live television, and I will read the transcript of the call because people have to hear it.

    “When you read it, it’s a straight call.”

    In the same interview, Trump floated the idea of selling t-shirts emblazoned with the line. 

    I personally endorse the roaring, fireside chat. I just ask that Trump wears the t-shirt when he does it.

  • What on Earth Is This Statement From the Fraternal Order of Police?

    October 31, 2019

    President Donald Trump signs an executive order during the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Conference and Exposition, at the McCormick Place Convention Center Chicago, Monday, Oct. 28, 2019, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)Evan Vucci / Associated Press

    Here’s something to keep in mind the next time you see someone get tackled by a dozen cops for fare evasion:

    Did you catch that? “…not just for police officers, but for all citizens at every level, from the indigent living on the street to the President living in the White House“? That’s the National Fraternal Order of Police very unsubtly rebuking congressional Democrats for their investigation into President Donald Trump’s Ukraine scandal. Trump, who has cracked jokes about police brutality and falsely accused his opponents of various capital crimes (“TREASON?”), has been warmly received by law enforcement agencies throughout his presidency, and the FOP, an organization of more than 300,000 law enforcement officers, released its statement one day after the president spoke to the International Conference of Chiefs of Police in Chicago.

    Impeachment is not a legal process; it is a constitutional process. But it is unfolding in a way that’s similar to a criminal case: The House is currently in the preliminary stages of investigating reports of a high crime and/or misdemeanor, and if it decides to move forward on impeachment—the equivalent of an indictment—there will be a public trial in the Senate, where evidence will be heard and debated and the defendant will have a chance to defend himself. Due process! FOP’s concerns about transparency are all the more phony coming, as they do, from a group of people who have spent their entire careers preparing cases for grand juries—which as a rule, take place behind closed doors, with no input from defense attorneys.

    But since they brought it up, this is what due process looks like to “the indigent living on the street.”