Tag: Trumpkraine

William Barr is dropping his heavy hand on the shoulder of various foreign countries, seeking their assistance on finding something to make Trumpkraine go away.

Attorney General William Barr has been tugging on the sleeve of various foreign intelligence officials. He has asked authorities in at least three countries — Australia, Italy and the United Kington — for help.

He reportedly wants their assistance in reviewing how the CIA and the FBI went about investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

Barr’s apparent role in all of this is alarming to some former law enforcement officials.

No kidding. He’s acting like Trump’s personal fixer, not the Attorney General of the [whole, entire] United States. He’s also apparently seeking to help Trump get away with breaking laws.

Barr’s apparent role in all of this is alarming to some former law enforcement officials. That includes David Laufman, a former CIA analyst who worked in counterintelligence for the Justice Department.

Laufman served Republican and Democratic administrations, and he was involved in the early stages of the Russia investigation. He spoke with The World’s host Marco Werman about why Barr’s request for foreign help is so unusual.

…

You served as a political appointee in Republican administrations. Do you think all of this is beyond partisanship?

This is beyond partisanship. This is beyond the consequences of elections. You know this isn’t a matter about changing, tweaking antitrust policy with respect to mergers and acquisitions, you know, the sorts of distinctions that we see when an administration from a different party comes to power. This is about acting as the tip of the spear for a political vendetta that this president is carrying out, and putting the Department of Justice at the head of that spear to accomplish that is stunning. It’s extremely disturbing and it is completely not in keeping with the mission and history of the Department of Justice.

Trump’s rage-tweets about Mitt Romney may be intended as an Awful Warning for any other Republicans thinking of failing to back Trump no matter what he does or says.

The acrimonious exchange is the latest turn in the up-and-down relationship between the two men, who share a party but are miles apart on questions of style, propriety, and adherence to institutional norms.

The vehemence of Trump’s tweets also served as a signal to other GOP lawmakers that Trump is willing to direct his ire at them if they step out of line and offer a hint of support to Democrats’ impeachment efforts against him.

It’s not as if they don’t already know that though. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that Trump will turn on anyone, no matter how loyal for how long.

It’s also possible (though not likely, given their crawling thus far) that the bully signal might backfire. A few of them might get sick of being threatened by this horrible talentless bag of wind, and decide to do what he’s trying to stop them doing.

Trump has been raging at Mitt Romney most of the day, with some raging at Adam Schiff by way of refreshment.

Ten hours ago:

Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him that my conversation with the Ukrainian President was a congenial and very appropriate one, and my statement on China pertained to corruption, not politics. If Mitt worked this hard on Obama, he could have won. Sadly, he choked!

Mitt Romney never knew how to win. He is a pompous “ass” who has been fighting me from the beginning, except when he begged me for my endorsement for his Senate run (I gave it to him), and when he begged me to be Secretary of State (I didn’t give it to him). He is so bad for R’s!

Seven hours ago:

“Schiff is a FRAUD!” @dbongino

Five hours ago:

Not only are the Do Nothing Democrats interfering in the 2020 Election, but they are continuing to interfere in the 2016 Election. They must be stopped!

Wut? How do you interfere in an election three years in the past?

I’m hearing that the Great People of Utah are considering their vote for their Pompous Senator, Mitt Romney, to be a big mistake. I agree! He is a fool who is playing right into the hands of the Do Nothing Democrats! #IMPEACHMITTROMNEY

Oh and by the way

So Crooked Hillary Clinton can delete and acid wash 33,000 emails AFTER getting a Subpoena from the United States Congress, but I can’t make one totally appropriate telephone call to the President of Ukraine? Witch Hunt!

An hour ago:

Mitt, get off the stage, you’ve had your turn (twice)!

Schiff and the Do Nothing Dems have lost all credibility…but the corrupt Media is working hard to keep them in the game!

All very normal.

Breaking news: it wasn’t Trump’s idea at all, it was Rick Perry’s!

President Trump told House Republicans that he made his now infamous phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the urging of Energy Secretary Rick Perry — a call Trump claimed he didn’t even want to make.

Behind the scenes: Trump made these comments during a conference call with House members on Friday, according to 3 sources on the call.

• Per the sources, Trump rattled off the same things he has been saying publicly — that his call with Zelensky was “perfect”and he did nothing wrong.
• But he then threw Perry into the mix and said something to the effect of: “Not a lot of people know this but, I didn’t even want to make the call. The only reason I made the call was because Rick asked me to. Something about an LNG [liquified natural gas] plant,” one source said, recalling the president’s comments. 2 other sources confirmed the first source’s recollection.

Well that completely changes everything. It wasn’t his idea, plus he’s a great guy who does what people ask him to do because he’s such a great guy. Heart as big as all outdoors!

Trump also said he would be talking about this a lot more in the coming days. I just bet he will. Dude doesn’t believe in saying things once; dude believes in saying things a billion times.

The proliferating explanations and justifications are the object of mirth on Twitter.

Walter Shaub:

Rick Perry, puppet master. Also, no puppet. He made me make the call, which I didn’t want to make for obvious reasons. Also the call was fine, it was perfect. This is all made up, a hoax. They made it up. But it was perfect. And Perry made me do it. Is it, um, hot in here?

Brian Klaas:

This is that hilariously depressing moment in Trump scandals when the sycophants who have been claiming it was a “perfect call” now switch to saying it was Rick Perry’s fault. Logical consistency just isn’t a part of the Trump universe.

Judd Legum:

Trump says his call with the Ukrainian President was “perfect” and he did absolutely nothing wrong and also he didn’t want to do the call and the whole thing is Rick Perry’s fault.

Peter Gleick:

Day 1. It never happened.
Day 2. Maybe it happened.
Day 3. It wasn’t me.
Day 4. Yes, it was me but it wasn’t wrong.
Day 5. I’d do it again, and ask China too.
Day 6. Rick Perry made me do it.

Jeet Heer:

Trump: This is bad.
Pence: We’re fucked.
Pompeo: We need a fall guy
Pence: But who?
Pompeo: It has to be some really stupid.
Trump: Don Jr.?
Pompeo: No. Someone in loop. Someone really stupid.
[Pause]
Everyone: Rick Perry!!!!

There could be a second whistleblower.

A second intelligence official is reportedly considering filing a whistleblower complaint about Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine as the Democrats’ impeachment investigation into the president and his administration continues to escalate.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, also failed to meet a subpoena deadline to turn over documents related to the investigation, as House Democrats broadened their subpoena request to the White House, demanding documents after the executive branch ignored requests to provide them voluntarily.

Pompeo had a math test and a history paper due this week.

The second official considering filing a whistleblower complaint about the president’s dealings with Ukraine has more direct information about the events in question than the initial whistleblower and was interviewed by an intelligence watchdog to corroborate the first report, the New York Times reported late Friday, citing two anonymous sources.

Elsewhere, the Washington Post reported accounts of a number of Trump’s calls with foreign leaders, citing an anonymous former White House official. The paper said in one of his first calls with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Trump fawned over him, and in a call with the former UK prime minister Theresa May, Trump questioned British intelligence’s conclusion that Putin’s government was behind an attempt to kill a former Russian spy on British soil with a nerve agent.

So, naturally, he was on Twitter calling the Post and the Times corrupt and “fixed” (scare quotes his) this morning. Pure fiction, he yelled; totally dishonest reporting.

The president has defended his open calls for foreign governments to investigate a political rival by repeating that there was “no quid pro quo”.

But one, there was, and two, it’s a crime with or without the quid pro quo.

Few congressional Republicans or commentators have spoken against Trump after the president urged two foreign governments, Ukraine and China, to investigate a political rival this week.

Among those that have are Senator Mitt Romney, of Utah, who said Trump’s dealings with Ukraine and China were “wrong” and “appalling”.

Trump’s tweets on Saturday targeted Romney saying: “Somebody please wake up Mitt Romney and tell him my conversation was a congenial and very appropriate one.”

“Congenial” – that’s not in Trump’s vocabulary. Credit: Scavino.

Lawyers agree: this is not your average criminal conspiracy.

Neal Katyal:

You can litigate for literally decades (as I have) and never see something in writing as damning as this and the other texts released last night. Unbelievable.

George Conway:

Same. And in my 31 years of practice, I’ve been involved in litigations in which, In the aggregate, tens of millions of documents were produced.

Elizabeth McLaughlin:

I said the same thing last night. Even the most blatant antitrust and securities fraud cases i litigated for 15 years never had evidence like this.

I have to wonder exactly how vindicated Andrew McCabe is feeling right now.

I also wonder if Barr’s Xmas party at Trump’s hotel is still on the calendar.

New news is that a Republican senator told the Wall Street Journal that Sondland (the hack ambassador) told him (the senator) that the Ukraine thing was a quid pro quo.

I sent Trump a little note an hour or so ago, in the form of a reply to one of his tweets, objecting to his habit of screaming that he has an absolute right to do this or that.

As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!

I really hate that habit of his, so I’m cheered to see this from Benjamin Wittes:

@Susan_Hennessey and I, for our book, began a collection of statements in which Trump uses the phrase “I have an absolute right.” Now we send each other these tweets excitedly whenever they appear.
#IHaveAnAbsoluteRight

I need to read that book.

The Guardian has a helpfully concise summary of the texts issue.

Just before midnight Thursday, three House committees involved in the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump released a letter advising colleagues of discoveries they had made over the course of nine hours of testimony that day by Kurt Volker, the former US special envoy to Ukraine.

Attached to the letter were six pages of transcripts of text messages among Volker; acting US ambassador to the Ukraine Bill Taylor; US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland; and an aide to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelinskiy.

I was misled by the matching “ambassador” titles earlier this morning until I read further. Bill Taylor is a career diplomat, a civil servant; Gordan Sondland is a hotel tycoon and big Trump donor. The two “ambassadors” have radically different loyalties and motivations and qualifications.

The text messages capture a running conversation among the diplomats about how to fulfill a demand from “Potus” and his personal agent, Rudy Giuliani, that Zelinskiy make a public statement that Ukraine would investigate a company tied to Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son.

In exchange for the public statement, the diplomats dangle an official White House invitation for Zelinskiy. Also on the table is a large military aid package for Ukraine that Donald Trump had suspended.

While Volker and Sondland appear to scurry to seal the deal, (“I think Potus really wants the deliverable,” Sondland writes), Taylor uses the text exchange to memorialize what he believes is outrageous conduct. “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” he says in one text.

Sondland replies, implausibly, that nobody is talking about a quid-pro-quo here.

At the center of the current impeachment inquiry against Trump is the allegation that he used the power of the presidency to wrest help for his political campaign from foreign countries.

Many people read the text exchange as jaw-droppingly powerful evidence of exactly that conduct.

Preet Bharara:

All week I’ve been saying you never see direct written evidence of a quid pro quo. I stand corrected.

Matt Miller:

I keep imagining him walking around the last couple months asking “can you say that again a little more clearly and right into this lapel?”

Breathe.

Common Dreams explains about the texts:

House Democrats Thursday night released a trove of explosive text exchanges between top U.S. diplomats that provides a closer look into U.S. President Donald Trump’s months-long effort to pressure Ukraine’s leader to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.

The text messages, provided to House committees by then special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, show that the Trump administration attempted to use a possible meeting between the U.S. president and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky to pressure Kyiv to launch an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter.

You want Javelin missiles? Give us dirt on Biden. You want a meeting? Give us dirt on Biden.

The messages also showed Bill Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, raising alarm about Trump’s attempt to withhold aid to Ukraine for electoral purposes.

“Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?” Taylor asked  Volker and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland on Sept. 1, before the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s call with Zelensky went public.

Sondland replied simply, “Call me.”

Meaning: don’t leave a trail of text messages.

[Updating to add: Taylor is a career diplomat; Sonderland is a hotel tycoon who gave $1 million to Trump’s campaign and was then – entirely coincidentally I’m sure – made ambassador to the EU. Taylor is a civil servant; Sonderland is a hack. Taylor is non-partisan; Sonderland is a trumpy hack.]

Eight days later, Taylor wrote to Volker and Sondland, “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

Jake Tapper interprets that as deliberately leaving a trail:

On Sept 9 in the midst of another conversation with Sondland, Taylor — seemingly trying to establish a paper trail — texts: “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

Trump on the other hand claims he has “the absolute right” to do that and anything else that pops into his festering head.

Back to Common Dreams:

“Sondland taking five hours to respond, talking to Trump, and then replying ‘no quid pro quo’ shows 1) they knew what they were doing 2) knew it was wrong 3) settled on the ‘no quid pro quo’ defense before it ever became public,” wrote MSNBC‘s Chris Hayes.

It seems like a pretty feeble defense when they spell out the quid pro quo multiple times. But at least now we know why Trump keeps saying robotically “no ‘quid. pro. quo’.” It’s what they told him to say.

Observers said the text messages thoroughly undermine Trump’s claim that he was not seeking a quid pro quo with Ukraine.

“These Kurt Volker text messages are FILLED to the BRIM with quid pro quo,” said Brookings Institution fellow Scott Anderson. “I never expected anything this explicit in writing. It’s truly astounding.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) directed a tweet at Trump’s Republican defenders.

“If you’re a Republican who hung your hat on ‘no quid pro quo!’, what do you do tomorrow?” Murphy wrote. “The texts make 100 percent clear: 1. Our top diplomat in Kiev says there was an “investigation for aid” quid pro quo. 2. Everyone knew there was a ‘investigation for meeting’ quid pro quo.”

But Trump says there was no, so who ya gonna believe, huh?

Trump last night:

As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!

He likes to talk about his “absolute right” to do this or that, which tells us a lot about him. It’s not normal for presidents to yammer about their absolute right to do this or that, even though we know some of them believe that, like Nixon and Bush 2 for instance.

Keep breathing.

I’m scrolling through CNN’s live updates on the Trump outrages, remembering to breathe every couple of minutes or so.

Headline from an hour and 20 minutes ago:

Trump told China’s president the US would stay silent on Hong Kong protests during trade talks

Breathing halted again.

Text under headline:

During a private phone call in June, President Trump promised Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US would remain quiet on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong while trade talks continued, two sources familiar with knowledge of the call tell CNN.

Why this matters: The remarkable pledge to the Chinese leader is a dramatic departure from decades of US support for human rights in China and shows just how eager Trump is to strike a deal with Beijing as the trade war weighs on the US economy.

More to the point, it shows just how indifferent Trump is to human rights and human beings.

And like other calls with the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and Saudi Arabia, records of Trump’s call with Xi were moved to a highly-classified, codeword-protected system, greatly limiting the number of administration officials who were aware of the conversation.

Because it’s so filthy. They’ve been hiding the highly-filthy ones so that even most of the trumpies won’t know about them.

Scrolling down…last night there were text messages released.

The text messages, which were released by the House Intelligence Committee, underscore how Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was closely connected to US policy on Ukraine and was involved in setting up the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky, in which Trump also urged an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden.

They show how cognizant the Ukrainians were about the importance of the election investigation to Trump and Giuliani’s role.

On the morning of the call, in an exchange with a key adviser to the Ukrainian President, then-US Special Envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker made clear that it was important to the White House that Zelensky convince Trump that an investigation into the 2016 election would happen.

“Heard from the White House — assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate/’get to the bottom of what happened’ in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington,” Volker said via text to the Ukrainian adviser on the morning of July 25.

Volker provided Congress with the text messages ahead of his closed-door congressional testimony on Thursday before three committees leading the House’s impeachment inquiry into Trump and Ukraine.

So there it is, in writing.