Rudy Giuliani at Fox Business Network studios on September 23, 2019.Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Democrats responded Tuesday evening to Rudy Giuliani’s refusal to comply with a subpoena he received as part of the House’s impeachment inquiry, reiterating their claim that such stonewalling is itself evidence of impeachable wrongdoing by President Donald Trump, the former New York mayor’s client.

“Witnesses do not get to choose whether to comply with a duly-authorized subpoena, or to pick their investigators—not in the justice system, not in the Congress, and not in our democracy,” an official working on the impeachment inquiry said in an email to reporters. “If Rudy Giuliani and the President truly have nothing to hide about their actions, Giuliani will comply—otherwise, we will be forced to consider this as additional evidence of obstruction, and may infer that the evidence withheld would substantiate the accusations of President Trump’s misconduct and efforts to cover it up. Nobody is above the law, not a president, and not his shadow envoy to Ukraine.”

Since House Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump on September 24, his campaign and supporters have spent record amounts on Google and Facebook advertisements pushing back against the investigation.

According to data collected by the communications agency Bully Pulpit Interactive, spending on pro-Trump ads on the two social networks increased five-fold between September 21 to October 5 compared to the previous two weeks. The Trump campaign, pro-Trump super-PACs, and other pro-Trump groups spent slightly over $5 million in this period, the most that they’ve spent in any two-week period. The 14 Democratic presidential candidates spent a combined $3.7 million during those two weeks.

Trump’s impeachment spending spree 

Since the congressional inquiry began, Trump’s campaign committee and pro-Trump groups have spent over $1.1 million on Facebook ads directly related to impeachment. That’s more than Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has spent on all Facebook and Google ads during the same time. The only Democratic candidate who has been spending significantly on impeachment-focused ads is Tom Steyer, who has spent nearly $214,000. 

In one of the Facebook ads paid for by the president’s 2020 campaign committee, Trump calls on his supporters to stop the “fake news witch hunts” and asks them to “stand with Trump.”  

First, Rudy did it. Now, Vice President Mike Pence has refused to comply with a request for documents as part of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

“Never before in history has the speaker of the House attempted to launch an ‘impeachment inquiry’ against a president without a majority of the House of Representatives voting to authorize a constitutionally acceptable process,” his counsel, Matthew Morgan, wrote in a two-page letter on Tuesday.

Not Shocking: Pence refuses to comply with document requests from House investigators.

Letter here: pic.twitter.com/yf5XQM1RaW

— Annie Karni (@anniekarni) October 15, 2019

Mother Jones illustration

Welcome to a fun Mother Jones experiment straight out of the early aughts! We’re bringing blogs back.

The coroner’s report on blogging goes something like this: After disrupting everything and changing the world forever, blogs were professionalized and incorporated into publishing outlets, and the things that defined them—voice, analysis, obsessiveness—became standard for writing on the internet. Blogs won, and died. The epistolary back-and-forth of blogging moved largely to social media, and by the time Mother Jones removed most of our blogs from our site in 2016, they really were basically just a vestigial button in our CMS. 

But tellingly, we actually didn’t get rid of all of them. Kevin Drum’s blog remained because his readers—our most loyal—had a relationship with him that dated back to his time before joining our magazine. And that meant something and it means something still. The world has changed a lot since 2016, both the publishing world and the world at large. The way we interact with our readers, the way we interact with each other, the way we want to cover the news, has all evolved. 

Impeachapalooza, a new blog by the staff of Mother Jones about the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, was created in the spirit of those blogs of old. It will be a place where the various developments of the day are conveyed, discussed, analyzed, raged at, and laughed about by reporters and editors. There will be half-baked thoughts and over-baked thoughts and silly thoughts. There will be dumb thoughts and smart thoughts and tall thoughts and short thoughts and thoughts in the rain and thoughts on a train, and then at the end of everything, right at the last, if I wish upon a wish and hope beyond hope it will help us answer such questions as “What the hell just happened?” and “What did Giuliani just say?” and “Wait, which one’s Yovanovitch again?”

And who knows! Maybe the real impeachment is the friends we’ll make along the way.

President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani has refused to comply with a congressional subpoena he received as part of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Giuliani’s lawyer, with whom he is soon parting ways, called the impeachment inquiry “unconstitutional, baseless, and illegitimate.” Giuliani has referred to it as an “abomination of due process.”

JUST IN: Here’s the letter from GIULIANI’s (now former) attorney denying the House’s subpoena for documents. Calls the request “unduly burdensome.” pic.twitter.com/bMXkeJFtvD

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 15, 2019

Giuliani’s pals Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were arrested last week on campaign finance charges for allegedly funneling foreign money to a Republican PAC. Some believe Giuliani could be next, as his potentially criminal dealings with Ukraine have come under investigation.

Getty

One of the unspoken rules and grammatically grotesque assumptions of news reporting in the Trump era is that DONALD TRUMP writes EVERYONE’S capitalization style guides, and that the ticktock of impeachment and political campaigns isn’t enough to keep READERS reading. Scandal fatigue? Get the smelling salts. The strong stuff. The CAPS LOCK. How else to inform READERS than by INTREPID JOURNALISTS capping people’s names—or random words—in otherwise fine tweets? Reporters everywhere, keep up the (periodically) good work, but keep down the damn caps. Desperate times do not call for desperate capitalization. Save it for a truly shattering headline.

NEW: GEORGE KENT, a career @StateDept official who is now testifying on the Hill, warned colleagues as far back as March about RUDY GIULIANI's role in what he called a “disinformation” campaign using a Ukrainian prosecutor to smear BIDEN, YOVANOVITCH, etc. https://t.co/KvMLoN2AoY

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) October 15, 2019

It's UP! @POLITICO CA Playbook: NEWSOM demands PG&E pay $100 to blackout victims — ZUCKERBERG meeting with conservative pundits — Landmark bills, vetoes in big week for GOVERNOR — DEBATE day for Dem 2020 candidates https://t.co/lVrJuhI5Ap via @politico pic.twitter.com/YCmtwx9cAY

— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) October 15, 2019

Immediate update: The DNC has informed campaigns this AM that this poll DOES count for the November debate. So YANG now has two polls for the November debate, STEYER now has one poll and BIDEN, WARREN, SANDERS, HARRIS and BUTTIGIEG are all QUALIFIED https://t.co/RKRRj3Glu9

— Zach Montellaro (@ZachMontellaro) September 24, 2019

JUST IN: Here’s the letter from GIULIANI’s (now former) attorney denying the House’s subpoena for documents. Calls the request “unduly burdensome.” pic.twitter.com/bMXkeJFtvD

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 15, 2019

GAETZ emerges from the impeachment deposition. He was blocked from participating because he’s not on any of the three committees conducting the investigation.

“Mr. Schiff told me I had to leave,” he said. Parliamentarian confirmed he had to go.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) October 14, 2019

Have we learned nothing from history? Scream at readers long enough in caps and it becomes the register from which a higher register must be measured. We need to keep naming names and taking names. Not all-capsing them.

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House on October 10, 2019. Caroline Brehman/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA

It appears there was yet another bombshell in former White House adviser Fiona Hill’s testimony Monday about the Ukraine scandal.

Hill has reportedly informed investigators that Gordon Sondland—the GOP megadonor who serves as US ambassador to the European Union—told Ukrainian officials that they should investigate the Bidens in order to secure an in-person meeting between President Donald Trump with Ukraine’s new leader. Sondland is expected to testify on Thursday.

This latest drip came from Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

🚨Fiona Hill describes this scene:

In a White House meeting, Sondland tells Ukrainians they will get a Trump meeting if they open the investigations Trump wants. Then, Sondland follows the Ukrainians out of the meeting to privately make clear he's talking about Hunter Biden.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 15, 2019

The Trump administration appears to have been holding two things over the head of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as it demanded investigations into both the Bidens and the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation. One was military aid, which Trump held up until late summer. The other was a potential face-to-face meeting between Trump and Zelensky, something the new Ukrainian government seemed to want badly in order to showcase its close relationship with the United States.

Sondland became a central figure in the scandal when text messages turned over to Congress showed him discussing relations with Ukraine, including efforts to get the Ukrainians to pursue politically motivated investigations in exchange for favors from Washington. In one exchange, diplomat Bill Taylor texted, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” After speaking with Trump, Sondland responded that Trump had made clear that there were “no quid pro quo’s of any kind.” According to Hill’s testimony, Sondland may have known that wasn’t true.

Paolo Aguila/ZUMA

One of the major revelations from Fiona Hill’s testimony before House investigators on Monday reportedly centered on former national security adviser John Bolton and his increasing alarm over the aggressive efforts of Rudy Giuliani and EU ambassador Gordon Sondland to pressure Ukraine into investigating President Donald Trump’s domestic political enemies. Hill, who was formerly Trump’s top Russia adviser, told lawmakers that Bolton eventually became so disturbed with the back-channel policymaking that he instructed her to notify White House lawyers.

“Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” Hill quoted Bolton, the infamous warmonger, telling her one day.

That colorful description is apparently not sitting well with Giuliani. The two men are now engaging in a name-calling war of words over who is more destructive:

.@RudyGiuliani on Bolton calling him a “hand grenade.” RG: “I’m very disappointed that his bitterness drives him to attack a friend falsely…It’s really ironic that John Bolton is calling anyone else a hand grenade. When John is described by many as an atomic bomb . “

— Kristen Welker (@kwelkernbc) October 15, 2019

I asked Rudy Giuliani, “If you had to describe yourself as a weapon other than a hand grenade what weapon would you be?” Giuliani responded, “I’m disappointed in John it’s almost like projection.”

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) October 15, 2019

It’s a tough choice. But between Bolton, who historically believed that war is the answer to every international squabble, and Giuliani, the president’s unhinged personal lawyer who is reportedly now under investigation in connection to the Ukraine scandal, we’ll give a momentary victory to the person who has suddenly emerged as a potential key witness in Democrats’ push to bring down Donald Trump.