There is also the first page of Trump’s notes, the one where Sondland sets up the context of Trump’s I WANT NOTHiNG.
Wtf is going on over there? Was he sitting in bed transcribing the testimony himself, by hand?
He read all that to the reporters on the lawn. He read it twice, shifting into a more scratchy shouty voice for his own part of the dialogue. When he read the “HE WAS NOT iN A GOOD MOOD” part he said as an aside that [shouting] “I’M ALWAYS IN A GOOD MOOD, I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.”
The Guardian pauses to take a breath and sum up:
With each line of his testimony, Sondland has blown another hole in Donald Trump’s defenses. To describe the testimony as a bombshell is perhaps to underestimate its potential for damage to Trump. To attempt to describe the shock that it is Sondland delivering this message is to come up short for words.
Since the impeachment inquiry began, Trump has ranted that there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine, no conditions placed on a White House meeting, no strings on US military aid, only a desire to fight corruption in Ukraine and to pursue the truth about 2016. It is all a witch hunt, a hoax, Trump has said.
But every bit of it is true, and most every word from Trump’s mouth and his Twitter about it has been a lie, Sondland is testifying. There was a clear quid pro quo, repeatedly stated, and explicitly ordered by Trump through his designated agent, Rudy Giuliani.
Sondland is saying: he did it.
Sondland is also saying: we did it. He is quoting emails demonstrating that the plot, which secretary of state Mike Pompeo once pretended ignorance to, was well known inside the state department, National Security Council and budget office – and by vice president Mike Pence. “It was no secret,” Sondland said.
Now he begins a cross-examination period sure to generate moments that will go down in US political history.
What did the Mike Ps know and when did they know it.
Schiff is driving down on what the Mike Ps – Pompeo and Pence – knew and when they knew it.
Did Pompeo ever deny the connection between investigations and the White House meeting?
“Not that I recall.”
In a meeting with the vice-president in Warsaw, Sondland said he told Pence that he thought the military aid would not flow without the announcement of investigations.
Pence remained sphynxlike, in Sondland’s telling:
The vice president nodded like he heard what I said and that was pretty much it.
Sphynxlike? I think the correct word for that is “stupid.” Pence nodded because his head is empty.
Now Sondland is talking about a phone conversation in which Trump told him there was no quid pro quo. Earlier Sondland had said he took the president at his word. Now Sondland is saying he and everyone else knew there was a clear quid pro quo.
Sondland said after “frantic emails to me and to others about the security assistance” from ambassador Bill Taylor, Sondland called Trump and asked, “what do you want from Ukraine… what do you want?”
It was a very short abrupt conversation, he was not in a good mood. He said I want nothing, I want nothing, there’s no quid pro quo. Tell Zelenskiy to do the right thing.
That’s Trump all right. “There’s no quid pro quo, tell Zelenskiy to do the right thing, get it?”
But the Republicans want us to take the lies at face value.
Castor, the Republican lawyer, asks Sondland if Trump ever told him personally that aid or a meeting were conditioned on an announcement of investigations.
Sondland: “Personally, no.”
Castor: So how did you know Giuliani spoke for Trump?
Sondland: “Well when the president says talk to my personal attorney and then Mr Giuliani says ‘as the president’s attorney,’ we assume it’s coming from the president.
Then Castor splits hairs between Trump saying “Go talk to Rudy” and “Talk to Rudy”. It wasn’t an order, correct? Castor says.
We understood we had to talk to Rudy to get anything done on Ukraine, Sondland said.
Oh but no no no this was all a rogue operation by Rudy Giuliani, entirely on his own, nothing to do with Trump, Trump had no idea it was going on, he is shocked, SHOCKED to hear of it.
Is Giuliani going under the bus?
You’ll recall:
Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has said he is confident the president will remain loyal to him as an impeachment inquiry unfolds in which the former New York mayor has become a central figure.
But Giuliani joked that he had good “insurance” in case Trump did turn on him, amid speculation Republicans will seek to frame him as a rogue actor.
In a telephone interview with the Guardian, in response to a question about whether he was nervous that Trump might “throw him under a bus” in the impeachment crisis, Giuliani said, with a slight laugh: “I’m not, but I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid.”
Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, who was also on the call, then interjected: “He’s joking.”
Nah, he’s not. They’re both crooks and they know each other well.
Nancy Pelosi responds to the White House’s petulant “we won’t we won’t WE WON’T” letter yesterday:
“For a while, the President has tried to normalize lawlessness. Now, he is trying to make lawlessness a virtue. The American people have already heard the President’s own words – ‘do us a favor, though.’ The President’s actions threaten our national security, violate our Constitution and undermine the integrity of our elections. The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the President is above the law.
“This letter is manifestly wrong, and is simply another unlawful attempt to hide the facts of the Trump Administration’s brazen efforts to pressure foreign powers to intervene in the 2020 elections. Despite the White House’s stonewalling, we see a growing body of evidence that shows that President Trump abused his office and violated his oath to ‘protect, preserve and defend the Constitution.’
“The White House should be warned that continued efforts to hide the truth of the President’s abuse of power from the American people will be regarded as further evidence of obstruction.
“Mr. President, you are not above the law. You will be held accountable.”
I hope he is so held soon.
In a performatively outraged eight-page letter to the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon, the White House announced that it would not cooperate with the body’s impeachment inquiry under the circumstances in which it’s being conducted. Or, well, ever.
The tone of the letter, attributable to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, is shouty, reading as a lightly lawyered digest of the president’s tweets. It accuses House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic chairmen of three investigating committees of violating “the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent” in the way they’ve conducted the inquiry.
And compare Trump, who honors Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent in every way at all times. He’s like a miracle of rule of law-observation!
The White House’s plan is to mark the impeachment process as an illegitimate sham, and granting Republican ranking members subpoena power and high-end massage chairs in committee rooms would just lead to new complaints about the rigged nature of the process. A letter like this is not sent as an opening offer in negotiations.
They are not a crook.
Except they are though.
Apparently there was much scrambling.
Aides to President Trump scrambled in the aftermath of his July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s leader — both to alert lawyers of their concerns and to contain the damage, new CNN reporting shows.
At least one National Security Council official alerted the White House’s national security lawyers about the concerns, three sources familiar with the matter said. Those same lawyers would later order the transcript of the call moved to a highly classified server typically reserved for code-word classified material.
Wait a second. What kind of “concerns” are we talking about? Concerns about the criminality and treachery of Trump’s attempt to extort campaign interference from the president of Ukraine? Or concern about the criminality and treachery of Trump’s attempt to extort campaign interference from the president of Ukraine’s being found out by the rest of the world?
Do they give a shit about the substance at all? Or is it completely, 100%, entirely about Trump and about their jobs and reputations and hides? Moving the transcript suggests it was the latter.
Those concerns were raised independently of the complaint brought forward by an intelligence community whistleblower. They reflect new evidence of the unease mounting within the administration at the President’s actions.
But was the unease about Trump’s actions? Or about the consequences to them?
White House lawyers, aware of the tumult, initially believed it could be contained within the walls of the White House. As more people became aware of the conversation — and began raising their internal concerns about it — a rough transcript of the call was stored away in a highly classified server that few could access. The order to move the transcript came from the White House’s national security lawyers to prevent more people from seeing it, according to people familiar with the situation.
Shouldn’t national security lawyers be focused on the national security part, not Trump’s ability to continue doing bad shit part?
The scramble and fallout from the call, described by six people familiar with it, parallels and expands upon details described in the whistleblower complaint. The anxiety and internal concern reflect a phone conversation that deeply troubled national security professionals, even as Trump now insists there was nothing wrong with how he conducted himself. And it shows an ultimately unsuccessful effort to contain the tumult by the administration’s lawyers.
I hope they all get disbarred. They shouldn’t have been trying to “contain the tumult”; they should have been sounding the alarm.
So, is this the day it all comes crashing down? Or is it the day Trump seizes absolute power, and troops fill the streets?
I don’t think the second is very likely, because I don’t think Trump has that much ability to make everyone jump when he says jump any more.
But I hope his opponents hurry up and do something about this defiance of a subpoena problem.
US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been told by the State Department to not appear this morning before the House.
His attorney Robert Luskin said Tuesday morning he has no choice but to comply. “He is a sitting Ambassador and employee of State and is required to follow their direction,” Luskin said.
Luskin said Sondland will not appear.
They stayed up late talking about it.
Administration officials were in discussions late last night about blocking Ambassador Gordon Sondland from sitting down for his scheduled deposition today, per an official familiar.
The talks centered around how much the White House should be cooperating with requests from House Democrats without a formal impeachment inquiry vote, which the White House has asserted they need for this to be a legitimate probe, though Democrats have said otherwise.
Yes that’s definitely the issue – whether or not there’s been a “formal impeachment inquiry vote.” It’s not at all that Trump thinks he can get away with everything by just saying NO over and over.
A source familiar with discussions inside President Trump’s impeachment team says Ambassador Gordon Sondland not appearing is “part of an overall strategy connected to what is viewed as irregularities in the House impeachment inquiry.”
Blah blah blah. It’s part of “an overall strategy” of acting like a dictator as long as he can get away with it, which means literally until someone forcibly drags him out of there.
“The days of playing nice are done,” the source said.
The what? The days of what? When has he ever “played nice”?
The contrast with how the White House dealt with Special Counsel Robert Mueller is notable. John Dowd, Trump’s former lawyer, once noted Mueller was part of the executive — but Congress is outside and the White House and Trump do not feel an obligation to be as cooperative.
In other words he thinks he’s a dictator. Literally.
Schiff states the obvious: this is obstruction.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff said both Congress and the American people are “being deprived” of US Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony today.
Earlier today, Sondland’s lawyer said the Trump administration’s State Department ordered him not to appear before Congress.
Schiff said Sondland has “text messages or emails on a personal device” the committee would like to see.
“Although we have requested those from the ambassador, and the State Department is withholding those messages as well,” Schiff said. “Those messages are also deeply relevant to this investigation and the impeachment inquiry.”
“The failure to produce this witness, the failure to produce these documents we consider yet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress.”
So basically it’s an attempted coup. I hope they can put a stop to it without further delay.
