Apparently Sondland’s testimony is being very damning.

He read an opening statement saying he would be confirming the quid pro quo.

He said he and Volker didn’t want to work with Giuliani but they followed the president’s orders.

They tried to talk him out of it, but no.

In response to our persistent efforts to change his views, President Trump directed us to “talk with Rudy.” We understood that “talk with Rudy” meant talk with Mr. Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer.

Let me say again: We weren’t happy with the President’s directive to talk with Rudy. We did not want to involve Mr. Giuliani. I believed then, as I do now, that the men and

Oh is that a fact.

White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney announced during a White House press briefing that the 2020 G7 summit will be held at Trump National in Doral, Florida, from June 10-12.

That’s corrupt af, it breaks a bunch of laws, plus it’s appallingly bad manners. Florida in June??! Florida in June to put more money in the disgusting “host”‘s pocket?!!

“We used the same set of criteria that previous administrations have used,” Mulvaney said.
He said Doral was “far and away the best physical facility for this meeting.”

What shameless bullshit. If it were the best physical facility for meetings of that kind it would be famous as such. It isn’t.

House

The FBI is annoyed.

Three years ago, the FBI launched an unprecedented investigation focused on one question: Did President Donald Trump’s campaign help a foreign power interfere in the 2016 election?

Now, just months after that investigation was formally closed, FBI officials are stunned the president is openly calling for another country to intervene in another presidential election.

Well when you put it that way…

It does seem a tad brazen, doesn’t it. “NO COLLUSION!! Now, get me Ukraine on the phone.”

One special agent, who spoke with Insider on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press, said officials were “rattled” not just by the nature of Trump’s actions but also by

Oof this is one of those days when you don’t dare close all the news sources and walk away because sheeeee-it.

For instance, the fact that Barr was involved means he had a giant conflict of interest when he ruled on the whistleblower report.

Sean Patrick Maloney: We didn’t know before today that Attorney General Bill Barr was involved in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden. He’s the same AG who told Trump not to hand over the whistleblower complaint to Congress. “That’s a conflict. That’s a screaming red light.”

The whistleblower complaint must include Barr, so…yeah.

The Guardian half an hour ago (such old news now) said one of the main stories is the astonishment that the White House thought … Read the rest

Eric Swalwell yesterday:

Here’s the deal: don’t fall for the “if there was quid pro quo” trap. If @realDonaldTrump
told a foreign government to investigate his opponent that’s it. Game. Set. Match. He has committed a crime. If he’s innocent, he’ll release the tapes. #ReleaseTheTapes

But is it though? Is it Game. Set. Match? How? When, by what process, how? What new mechanism will come into play now that hasn’t before? Republicans will vote to impeach? Of course not. So, what then?

It should be, of course, but then so should a long list of other outrages (which is not to say this isn’t the worst outrage). Should be but never was, because oh what do you know, … Read the rest

The trap.

The Justice Department (part of the Executive Branch) claims Trump cannot be indicted because he is The PreSiDent. Congress can’t impeach him or inquire effectively into his crimes because he blocks them at every turn.

The end.

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post:

Trump just cheered Corey Lewandowski’s stonewalling on his behalf.

It’s important to understand what we’re seeing now as a display of *Trump’s* profound corruption, one that builds the case for impeachment:

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/17/get-ready-spectacular-display-trumps-corruption/

More filth: Trump commits crime after crime right in front of us, and his DoJ decides it can indict Andrew McCabe if it wants to.

Federal prosecutors have recommended bringing criminal charges against Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI and a frequent target of criticism by President Donald Trump, a person familiar with the decision said Thursday.

McCabe was fired from the FBI just before his retirement in March 2018 after the Justice Department’s internal watchdog concluded that he had improperly authorized a leak about a federal investigation into the Clinton Foundation in the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign. Investigators also concluded that he displayed a lack of candor when asked about the leak.

Paul Waldman at the Post on Trump’s move to have his tame AG expose classified intelligence looking for some pretext to say the investigation was dirty:

Barr’s “investigation” is nothing but a propaganda exercise, an effort to provide ballast to the lunatic idea that there should never have been any investigation at all into Russia’s attempts to help Trump get elected president. But we have to be clear about just how shocking this order from Trump is.

The executive order not only gives Barr permission to “declassify, downgrade, or direct the declassification or downgrading of information or intelligence” to whatever degree he likes, but also orders the leaders of every intelligence agency to give him whatever he wants. If he

Bang: now there’s a lede:

Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.

Oh really. Then what happened?

The transactions, some of which involved Mr. Trump’s now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to five current and former bank employees. Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes.

But executives at Deutsche Bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump

Jennifer Rubin says Trump has taken an impeachment-level lunge into abuse of power territory.

The abusing asylum-seekers as retaliation against sanctuary cities and Democrats in general was bad enough, but he didn’t stop there.

Making matters worse, we learned he allegedly told Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to close the border despite concerns about the legality of doing so. He allegedly told McAleenan, who is now also acting secretary of homeland security, that he — Trump — would pardon him later if need be.

What?!? That’s the only sensible reaction for someone minimally conversant in the Constitution and the rule of law. This is the conduct of a movie mob boss, not a president. Trump is so

Okay so this is interesting – BuzzFeed reports that (Mueller has found that) Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress.

Oops.

Chris Cillizza at CNN:

For much of the past 20 months, President Donald Trump and his administration have insisted that, for all of the smoke surrounding his 2016 campaign, there was no fire. A lot of people in Trump’s orbit engaging in conversations and relationships with Russian officials, but no evidence of collusion and certainly nothing that linked Donald Trump to any wrongdoing.

That very well might have changed Thursday night, with this report from BuzzFeed:

“President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in

Paul Waldman at the Post says Mueller is closing in on Trump.

When he spoke to reporters about this Thursday, Trump stressed over and over that it would have been perfectly fine for him to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, as he had long sought to do. Legally speaking, that’s true. But given the controversy around Trump’s solicitousness toward Vladimir Putin and the growing realization that Russia was intervening in the campaign on his behalf, through 2016 it was important for him to distance himself publicly from Russia, which he did many times by stressing that he had no investments there.

But also there’s a thing Neal Katyal said:

Folks need to remember when Michael Cohen was negotiating

Trump ups his obstruction of justice game:

President Trump on Monday ordered the Justice Department to declassify significant materials from the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, including portions of a secret court order to surveil one of his former campaign advisers and the text messages of several former high-level FBI officials, including former FBI director James B. Comey and deputy director Andrew McCabe.

The White House said in a statement the move came at the request of “a number of committees of Congress, and for reasons of transparency.” Conservative lawmakers critical of the Russia probe had been agitating for the materials to be made public.

He’s interfering with investigations that he has a direct personal … Read the rest

Well golly gee. Trump artlessly told the Wall Street Journal that he went after Brennan in order to obstruct justice in the Mueller inquiry.

President Trump drew a direct connection between the special counsel investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and his decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan and review the clearances of several other former officials.

In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Brennan as among those he held responsible for the investigation, which also is looking into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Mr. Trump has denied collusion, and Russia has denied interfering.

Much as a mob bus might tell a lieutenant that … Read the rest

Talk about leaving a trail…

A mere 72 hours after the Chinese government agreed to put a half-billion dollars into an Indonesian project that will personally enrich Donald Trump, the president ordered a bailout for a Chinese-government-owned cellphone maker.

“President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast,” Trump announced on Twitter Sunday morning. “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

To think that was only two days ago. I wondered about it at the time but thought it was a brain fart via talking to someone; I didn’t consider the bribery possibility (or I … Read the rest

NBC reports that Trump has A Plan.

Sources say that Trump has adopted a two-track strategy to deal with the Mueller investigation.

One is an un-Trumpian passivity and trust. He keeps telling some in his circle that Mueller — any day now — will tell him he is off the hook for any charge of collusion with the Russians or obstruction of justice.

But Trump — who trusts no one, or at least no one for long — has now decided that he must have an alternative strategy that does not involve having Justice Department officials fire Mueller.

“I think he’s been convinced that firing Mueller would not only create a firestorm, it would play right into Mueller’s hands,”

The next item in the ongoing constitutional collapse here in the US is the Trump administration’s refusal to implement legislation that Congress passed by a massive majority.

The Trump administration has announced it will not impose additional sanctions on Russia, despite Congress passing a law allowing the President to do so.

With Monday the deadline for the White House to impose any new measures, the US State Department insisted the threat of sanctions was already acting as a deterrent.

The new sanctions would have required the US Treasury Department to penalise foreign governments and companies doing business with Russia’s defence and intelligence sectors.

The Trump admin says oh foreign governments and companies are already put off by the very … Read the rest