Impeachment Briefing NYT

QueEx

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Super Moderator

OCTOBER 1, 2019

Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing, a special edition of the Morning Briefing that explains the latest developments in the House impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

This newsletter will go out in the early evening (Eastern time), though we may tweak that depending on the news. If you’re not interested in receiving the Impeachment Briefing, you can unsubscribe through the link at the bottom of this email, and it won’t affect your regular Morning Briefing subscription.

Today, we’re going to catch you up on the latest news, and set the stage for the coming days, when the impeachment fight is likely to heat up.

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo clashed with House Democrats from Italy, where he and his wife, Susan, arrived for a visit today.Yara Nardi/Reuters
What happened today
  • The White House and House Democrats clashed over attempts to interview American diplomats who are witnesses in the growing Ukraine investigation. Secretary of StateMike Pompeo said the interview request was “an act of intimidation” and did not allow enough time for a proper response.
  • Lawmakers accused Mr. Pompeo of “intimidating department witnesses in order to protect himself and the president,” and argued that blocking the diplomats would obstruct Congress’s work — an action Democrats view as an impeachable offense itself.
  • Given the bombshell news of recent weeks, this was a relatively small skirmish — but one that outlines the contours of the growing battle over Congress’s access to witnesses and documents.
  • The House has already issued a subpoena to Mr. Pompeo for documents related to the Ukraine investigation. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mr. Pompeo was among the officials who listened in on Mr. Trump’s conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
What to expect this week
  • Speaker Nancy Pelosi will hold a news conference Wednesday to outline the immediate steps Democrats plan to take during the House’s two-week break, which lasts until Oct. 15.
  • Kurt Volker, the former United States special envoy to Ukraine, will give a deposition Thursday.
  • The inspector general of the national intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, will testify behind closed doors in front of the House Intelligence Committee on Friday.
The whistle-blower
Mr. Trump kept his focus on the whistle-blower whose complaint helped mobilize House Democrats, saying today that he wanted to “interview” him, a day after saying the White House was seeking to identify him — an action legal experts said could constitute an illegal reprisal.

[Read the whistle-blower’s complaint, annotated by our reporters.]

The White House has known for weeks that a C.I.A. officer lodged concerns about Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. Still, Mr. Trump’s fixation on discovering and discussing the identity of the whistle-blower, whose anonymity is protected by law, was seen as a brazen move for a president under scrutiny for abuse of power.

Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the whistle-blower would testify “very soon."

The tally in Congress
Congress won’t be back for another two weeks. But The Times has asked every member of the House whether they support an impeachment inquiry. As of this morning, this was the count:

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If the House votes on articles of impeachment, a simple majority, or 218 votes, will be needed to impeach.

Impeachment primers
What else we’re reading
See you tomorrow. Email us your thoughts at briefing@nytimes.com.

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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

OCTOBER 2, 2019


By Noah Weiland

Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing, a special edition of the Morning Briefing that explains the latest developments in the House impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

I’m Noah Weiland, and I’m here to catch you up on the day’s news, along with insights from the Washington bureau, where I work, and the rest of the Times newsroom.

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President Trump lashed out at top Democrats as reporters asked about the impeachment inquiry at a joint news conference with the president of Finland this afternoon.Doug Mills/The New York Times


What happened today
  • We got a new look at how House Democrats are planning to pressure the White House. Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, threatened to subpoena the administration if it did not comply by Friday with requests for documents tied to the Ukraine investigation. This fight for access to information is going to be a running theme.
  • We also learned that the whistle-blower whose complaint led to the impeachment investigation alerted an aide to Representative Adam Schiff of his concerns, days before the complaint was made. The whistle-blower was concerned about how the executive branch was handling his allegations about the president, and his consultation with Congress shows how determined he was to see them addressed.
  • Steve Linick, the State Department’s inspector general, briefed lawmakers behind closed doors about a mysterious set of documents. Democrats were preparing for another possible bombshell. Instead, they got a packet of assorted news clippings and conspiratorial memos about Democratic malfeasance in Ukraine. The material came in an aged manila envelope, which listed “The White House” as the return address and contained several folders that appeared to have come from a Trump hotel.
A clash on Pennsylvania Avenue
At a morning news conference, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Mr. Schiff defended the impeachment inquiry from attacks by President Trump, even as Mr. Trump lobbed real-time insults at them on Twitter and during a meeting with Sauli Niinistö, the Finnish president.

“We are proceeding deliberately, but at the same time we feel a real sense of urgency here that this work needs to get done and it needs to get done in a responsible period of time,” Mr. Schiff said. “We’re not fooling around here though. We don’t want this to drag on for months and months and months, which appears to be the administration’s strategy.”

On Twitter, Mr. Trump said Democrats were “wasting everyone’s time and energy on BULLSHIT.” Later in the Oval Office, with his Finnish guest sitting a few feet away, the president raged at his Democratic inquisitors, calling Mr. Schiff “a lowlife” who should resign and be investigated for “treason” — a word the president has increasingly used when talking about his critics.



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The mood on Capitol Hill
I spoke with my colleague Nick Fandos, who’s been covering the impeachment inquiry, about what we know about subpoenas and the mysterious documents that Mr. Linick, the State Department inspector general, took to Capitol Hill. (First he had to hang up, speak with another reporter, and call me back — this story is busy!)

What was Elijah Cummings actually saying when he threatened the White House with subpoenas?

What Mr. Cummings is essentially telling the White House is this: Either you hand over anything and everything related to this Ukraine matter, possibly helping our case against the president, or you refuse and your refusal to comply with this inquiry will be used to build a separate article of impeachment around obstruction of Congress.

There was so much anticipation about what the inspector general had to say, and you knew little until this evening. What’s the best way to wait for news these days as so much is happening?

It becomes a lot about reading body language and understanding maneuvers before they happen. This isn’t like the Mueller report that arrived fully formed, and now Congress has to decide what to do with it. Congress is both trying to uncover the story and decide what to do about it at the same time.

What did it feel like in the Capitol today?

There are almost no lawmakers around, but there are almost as many reporters as I’ve ever seen up here, chasing after the same spare bits of information. The No. 1 objective is not getting hit by TV cameramen running around with large machinery that can knock you over.

What happens next
A reader wrote in to ask what Congress can do if it the White House blatantly ignores its subpoenas. I asked my colleague Charlie Savage, who has written about exactly that issue, and he sent this just as he was getting on the Washington Metro this evening:

“Mr. Cummings will clearly issue the subpoena he is threatening, but because he is seeking internal White House communications, the Trump administration is virtually certain to claim they are protected by executive privilege. If the House filed a lawsuit for the documents, it will join a long list of disputes that are slowly winding their way through the judicial system. It is not likely, therefore, that Congress will obtain these files anytime soon, if ever.”

Beyond the Beltway
Remember Representative Jerrold Nadler, the House Judiciary Committee chairman? He was the face of the House’s investigative apparatus until the official impeachment investigation began, but now Mr. Schiff and his committee have taken over. Around the time Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Schiff were briefing reporters, Mr. Nadler was in his New York district talking about federal funding for public housing.



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What Else We’re Reading
  • In Italy, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that he listened in on the call Mr. Trump had with the Ukrainian president in July. He had previously been evasive about his involvement.
  • In a Times Op-Ed, two law professors at Georgetown argued that the Department of Justice should have referred the phone call between Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s president to the Federal Election Commission.
  • Politico looked at a “Trump hotel mystery,” which is part of the impeachment inquiry.
I’m eager to know what you think of the newsletter, and what else you’d like to see here. Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com.

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QueEx

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Super Moderator


OCTOBER 4, 2019



By Noah Weiland

Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing, a special edition of the Morning Briefing that explains the latest developments in the House impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

I’m Noah Weiland, and I’m here to catch you up on the day’s news, along with insights from the Washington bureau, where I work, and the rest of the Times newsroom.

What happened today
  • Some breaking news tonight: The Times has learned that two of President Trump’s top envoys to Ukraine drafted a statement for the country’s new president in August that would have committed Ukraine to pursuing investigations into Mr. Trump’s political rivals. The effort is more evidence that Mr. Trump’s fixation with Ukraine drove senior diplomats to bend U.S. foreign policy to the president’s political agenda.
  • People familiar with the statement told our reporters that the envoys — Kurt Volker,of the State Department, and Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union — believed that Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, was “poisoning” his mind about Ukraine, and that a public commitment to investigate would encourage Mr. Trump to more fully support the new government there.
  • Mr. Volker was interviewed today as the first witness in the House impeachment inquiry. He disclosed a set of texts in which Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, told him and Mr. Sondland, “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” After speaking with Mr. Trump, Mr. Sondland messaged that there was no quid pro quo, adding, “I suggest we stop the back and forth by text.”
  • On the South Lawn of the White House this morning, Mr. Trump publicly called on China to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden — flouting Democrats who are already investigating him for seeking electoral assistance from a foreign power in private.
  • The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking her to suspend impeachment proceedings until she had answered questions about how she would include Republicans. The move is part of the G.O.P.’s nascent but aggressive impeachment defense of Mr. Trump. In a message sent to Republican lawmakers this morning, Mr. McCarthy accused Democrats of “trying to discredit democracy” and “undo the 2016 election.”
China, if you’re listening …
In his decades-long public life, Mr. Trump has continually said things that shock (“Russia, if you’re listening …”). But today’s open request for China to investigate his political adversary still felt like new territory. I talked to my colleague Maggie Haberman, who has covered Mr. Trump for many years in New York and Washington, about the significance of his statements.

Maggie, why would he just blurt out that he wants China to investigate the Bidens?

He clearly knows something a wise person once said to me, which is that the value of a secret is its ability to be disclosed. So he tries to move the window of acceptability by publicly doing the very thing he is accused of doing in private.

What is it about his circumstances that might encourage him to make a request like this out loud?

He has led a consequence-free life despite enormously self-destructive behaviors over time. The divorces were marriages he wanted out of. The bankruptcies impacted his lenders most, not him. All of his behavior in 2016 ended with him winning the presidency. And the Mueller obstruction inquiry ended with no definitive answer.

Does his request this morning remind you of anything?

The period of time that is the most illuminating happened after the “Access Hollywood” tapecame out. The next day, I wrote a story about Mr. Trump holed up at Trump Tower. He came downstairs sometime after 4 p.m. and went and immersed himself in a crowd of supporters who were outside on the street, and pumped his fist. The next day, he went to the debate in St. Louis and paraded Bill Clinton’s accusers in front of Hillary Clinton. It was the most savage thing I had ever seen anyone do in politics. And it underscored what Mr. Trump does when he is wounded.

What else we’re reading
  • Ben Smith outlines what he sees as Mr. Trump’s retaliation structure in Buzzfeed News’s “The Stakes 2020” newsletter:
What Mr. Trump is doing, he writes, “has one purpose, which is to build an alternate scaffolding of lies, truths, and random facts for the Trump movement to hang on to when the big impeachment wave comes. You have your Ukraine accusations? Republicans will have their own Ukrainian narrative. You have Robert Mueller? We have Rudy Giuliani. And so on. Trump’s supporters on Capitol Hill mostly just need something to say, something to throw back in the faces of Trump’s accusers. He’s producing that narrative for them.”
  • Why do impeachment politics feel so personal? The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, released a new survey that shows close to half of Americans think of politics as a struggle between good and evil.
  • CNN rejected a pair of ads from Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign that derided the impeachment investigation, which the network said contained inaccuracies and unfairly attacked the network’s journalists.
  • The Washington Post put together a handy calendar to show what comes next in the impeachment investigation.
  • At an appearance at Amherst College this evening, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgwas asked by a student to characterize this moment in American history. “As an aberration,” she said.
  • This summer, after Mr. Trump said that he would be open to taking information from a foreign power, Ellen Weintraub, chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission, posted a statement to Twitter reminding him (indirectly) that it was against the law. She posted it again todayand added, with a microphone emoji, “Is this thing on?”
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

OCTOBER 4, 2019


By Noah Weiland

Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing, a special edition of the Morning Briefing that explains the latest developments in the House impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

I’m Noah Weiland, and I’m here to catch you up on the day’s news, along with insights from the Washington bureau, where I work, and the rest of the Times newsroom.

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Text messages between two top American envoys to Ukraine, about a week before President Trump’s phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

What happened today

  • The chairmen of three House committees requested documents from Vice President Mike Pence, seeking materials that could shed light on President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine and any role that the vice president played in it. They gave him a deadline of Oct. 15.
  • House Democratic leaders were expected to send a subpoena to the White House for a vast trove of documents. The State Department is facing an end-of-day deadline for a separate subpoena to hand over other Ukraine documents.
  • The House Intelligence Committee privately questioned Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community watchdog who received the whistle-blower complaint that spurred the impeachment probe. Mr. Atkinson had conducted a preliminary investigation into the complaint’s validity and deemed it urgent and credible.
  • Mr. Trump denied again on Friday that there had been any quid pro quo attached to his pressure on Ukraine to investigate his political enemies, but a new batch of text messages suggested that his own representatives saw things differently. One of them, Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, eventually asked the group to move the conversation offline. That “clearly indicates an awareness of a record that could be created later,” my colleague Peter Bakertold me.
Why is this all moving so quickly?
My colleague Mike Schmidt, who helped break the story last night about American envoys drafting a statement for Ukraine’s president, called me this morning as he was eating breakfast to help me answer that question.

Mike, you covered Robert Mueller for two years. That investigation — the evidence-gathering and writing of the report — felt relentlessly plodding. This impeachment inquiry feels like it’s moving at Mach speed. Why?

Mueller was premised on the idea that his investigators had to do their work in secret and then would release what they found. It was this self-contained thing inside the Justice Department, operating under the rules of a federal investigation that are designed to shield work from the public. Then you basically got a big dump of Thanksgiving dinner — the report — and you were supposed to sit there and try to wade through it.

What makes this impeachment investigation so different from one run by professional prosecutors?

The witnesses are scurrying to get their side out publicly to make sure it doesn’t look like they were enabling the president. It propels the story forward at an incredible speed. These inspectors general, like Mr. Atkinson today, are not bound by the same rules of a federal investigation. They’re sort of like free agents and can largely make reports to Congress without going through the Justice Department.

So should Democrats in Congress be grateful that they’re the investigators this time around?

A lot of times, Congress is impeded by a federal investigation and can’t get to a lot of the evidence or witnesses, because the F.B.I. says, “We’re conducting an ongoing investigation.” That’s a huge chill. While Democrats are upset there isn’t an F.B.I. investigation, it has still freed up witnesses to cooperate with them. They benefit from being able to do it themselves.

Ambassador Who?
One through-line of the Trump presidency has been Mr. Trump trying to dissociate himself from people around him who have been linked to a controversy or alleged crime. He did it with Paul Manafort. He did it with Michael Cohen. He tried again today. “I don’t even know most of these ambassadors,” he told reporters who asked him about the revealing text messages of American envoys. “I didn’t even know their names.”

We put together a helpful graphic today that explains what was actually in those texts.

What else we’re reading
  • Ukraine’s top prosecutor said he would audit several investigations carried out by his predecessors, including a case involving a natural gas company that employed Mr. Biden’s son.
  • The Oregonian wrote about Mr. Sondland, who is at the center of the Ukraine investigation. His parents escaped the Holocaust. He founded a Portland-based boutique hotel chain. Before his companies gave money to Mr. Trump’s inauguration, he was a bundler for Mitt Romney.
  • Senator Ron Johnson said he was blocked by Mr. Trump in August from telling Ukraine’s president that military aid was coming, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
  • Does John Cornyn know something we don’t? TheTexas senator tweeted this morning that the Justice Department was investigating Mr. Biden’s “conflicts of interest.” Then one of his aides appeared to walk back the statement. When asked about it, Mr. Trump told reporters they should ask the attorney general.
  • “No pro quo,” Mr. Trump said on the South Lawn of the White House this morning while talking to reporters. Do we sense a new rally chant?
And finally, a scene from the White House lawn, courtesy Kelly O’Donnell of NBC News:

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See you next week.

I’m eager to know what you think of the newsletter, and what else you’d like to see here. Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com. Did a friend forward you the briefing? Sign up here.
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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Textbook case of how political corruption leads to murder and intimidation tactics to cover up their bigger scheme of kickbacks (money received from foreign interests). It isn't the party at the mansion and her testimony but all these other schemes that could be unraveled.

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The murder of Tamara Greene
Tamara Greene, a 27-year-old exotic dancer who went by the name "Strawberry", allegedly performed at the Manoogian Mansion party and was allegedly the person assaulted by Carlita Kilpatrick. Greene was murdered on April 30, 2003, at around 3:40 a.m., near the intersection of Roselawn and West Outer Drive while sitting in her car with her 32-year-old boyfriend.[39][40] She was shot multiple times with a .40 caliber Glock pistol. At the time, this was the same model and caliber firearm as those officially issued by the Detroit Police Department. Investigators believed this to be a "deliberate hit" by a member of the Detroit Police.[40]

Greene's family filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Detroit for $150 million, claiming she was murdered to prevent her testimony about the Manoogian Mansion party.[40] A judge ruled that Norman Yatooma, the attorney representing Greene's 14-year-old son, could have access to text messages between Kilpatrick, police chief Ella Bully-Cummings and dozens of city employees to ascertain if city officials blocked the investigation into the murder.[41] Yatooma also wanted the text messages and GPS positions of every city employee exchanged between 1:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. on the night of the murder.[41][42] The city's communications provider, Skytel, indicated it was prepared to release the text messages if the court ruled accordingly.[41]


The life insurance tables for reporters that do investigative international stories does not look good. I would write a policy for $2000 a month.

1.

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The day before the crash, Hastings indicated that he believed he was being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In an email to colleagues, which was copied to and released by Hastings' friend Army Staff Sergeant Joe Biggs,[70] Hastings said that he was "onto a big story", that he needed to "go off the radar", and that the FBI might interview them.[71][72]WikiLeaks announced that Hastings had also contacted Jennifer Robinson, one of its lawyers, a few hours prior to the crash,[73] and the LA Weekly reported that he was preparing new reports on the CIA at the time of his death.[74] His widow Elise Jordan said his final story was a profile of CIA Director John O. Brennan.[75]

2.
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A Washington Post report heard on tape screaming while he is being butchered alive.

3.

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A news reporters in litigation with the DOJ that gets cyberattacked and shut down investigating an international story.

4.

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A U.S. based reporter that goes overseas to collect information on CIA involvement in the drug trade and commits suicide during the Clinton/Al Gore years, even though he was investigating Reagan misdeeds. Able to squeeze the trigger two times after the first fatal shot.

5.

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Another reporter that was attacked reporting about government corruption with an international slant.

6.
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7.

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Logan and her CBS crew were arrested and detained for one night by the Egyptian Army on 3 February 2011, while covering the Egyptian revolution. She said the crew was blindfolded and handcuffed at gunpoint, and their driver beaten. They were advised to leave the country, but were later released. Later she is sexually assaulted by 300 men, security just vanishes for 30 minutes.

At least the women are cyberattacked and not killed. They should face the same fate as the men.

I have my dealings with these corrupt politicians, nobody wants to deal with these people, they are dangerous. I hate feeble minded people, they are always coming up with scams or schemes like this to get wealthy.
 
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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
This is a disturbing pattern of Democratic Vice Presidents cashing out in office or when they leave from foreign interest.

1. Al Gore

Anemic government policy to jump start the EV industry. Tesla was funded by a Bush era program!

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On January 2, 2013, Al Jazeera Media Network announced that it had purchased Current Media, LLC and would be closing down the Current TV channel while launching and integrating the remains of Current into a new American news channel titled Al Jazeera America using its distribution network.[36][37] Prior to the sale, it was believed that Al Gore and Joel Hyatt each owned approximately twenty percent of Current Media, business magnateRonald Burkle owned about twenty-five percent, and Comcast and DirecTV each owned more than five percent. The terms of the deal were undisclosed.[38] According to Forbes and The New York Times, the purchase was about $500 million USD.[5][39][40] The purchase by Al Jazeera occurred after an attempt by TheBlaze to purchase the media company was rejected in 2012.[41][42]

2. Hilary Clinton

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Another scheme using a non-profit that accepted millions in foreign donations

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3. You got the Kwame Kilpatrick style arrangement in Ukraine and China with Joe Biden and Sons. Kwame Kilpatrick required contractors to do consulting work with his father to win contracts with the city.

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Seeing this connection with the Middle East, my concern is this reporter getting chopped up and disappeared going into a Saudi consulate. It might have been an intimidation tactic to thwart reporters from poking around during the election. Drug cartels will kill reporters looking into their affairs resulting in limited to no reporting on actions.

Republicans have their methods, but reporters are not getting cut up in some consulate.
Bringing to light this problem may discourage them in the future from doing these deals.
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered


He wrote a pro-Biden puff piece without linking any of the reporter deaths, and pattern of behavior with DNC candidates.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
Report: 2nd intelligence official may file complaint about Trump


A second inteligence official is considering filing another whistleblower complaint and testifying to Congress about President Trump's communications with Ukraine's government, The New York Times reports. The official reportedly has more direct information than the first whistleblower, whose complaint that Trump was using the office of the presidency to pressure Kyiv to investigate his political rivals launched a congressional impeachment inquiry. The second official was reportedly interviewed by the intelligence community inspector general to corroborate the first official's account. Trump has reportedly ordered staff reductions on the National Security Council. The first whistleblower alleged NSC officials tried to hide Trump's controversial phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, though sources said the cuts are meant to increase efficiency during a leadership transition.

Source: The New York Times, Bloomberg
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
2nd whistleblower comes forward after speaking with IG

By James Gordon Meek,
Anne Flaherty
October 6, 2019


Mark Zaid, the attorney representing the whistleblower who sounded the alarm on President Donald Trump's dealings with Ukraine and triggered an impeachment inquiry, tells ABC News that he is now representing a second whistleblower who has spoken with the inspector general.

Zaid tells ABC News' Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos that the second person -- also described as an intelligence official -- has first-hand knowledge of some of the allegations outlined in the original complaint and has been interviewed by the head of the intelligence community's internal watchdog office, Michael Atkinson.

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National security lawyer Mark Zaid is photographed at his home in the Washington, D.C. area, July 20, 2016.

The existence of a second whistleblower -- particularly one who can speak directly about events involving the president related to conversations involving Ukraine -- could undercut Trump's repeated insistence that the original complaint, released on Sept. 26, was "totally inaccurate."

That original seven-page complaint alleged that Trump pushed a foreign power to investigate his political rival, Joe Biden, and Biden's son, Hunter, and that unnamed senior White House officials then tried to "lock down" all records of the phone call.

"This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call," the first whistleblower stated, in a complaint filed Aug. 12.

Zaid says both officials have full protection of the law intended to protect whistleblowers from being fired in retaliation. While this second official has spoken with the IG -- the internal watchdog office created to handle complaints -- this person has not communicated yet with the congressional committees conducting theinvestigation.

The New York Times on Friday cited anonymous sources in reporting that a second intelligence official was weighing whether to file his own formal complaint and testify to Congress. Zaid says he does not know if the second whistleblower he represents is the person identified in the Times report.


Zaid’s co-counsel, Andrew Bakaj, confirmed in a tweet Sunday that the firm is representing "multiple whistleblowers." Zaid later confirmed in a tweet that two are being represented by their legal team.

According to the first whistleblower, more than a half a dozen U.S. officials have information relevant to the investigation -- suggesting the probe could widen even further.

A transcript released by the White House of Trump's July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy showed Trump asking a "favor" of the foreign leader and pushing him to launch an investigation into the Biden family. Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukraine energy company while his father Vice President Biden led policy on Ukraine during the Obama administration, leading some to question whether there was a conflict of interest or impropriety.

"There's a lot of talk about Biden's son," Trump told Zelenskiy at one point, offering the assistance of his attorney general. He later adds "a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great."

The White House cautioned that the transcript was not verbatim.

Text messages later obtained by Congress showed top U.S. diplomats dangling the possibility of a summit of the two leaders in Washington on the condition that Ukraine agrees to announce an investigation. The Ukraine government never did. The text messages were provided in congressional testimony last week by one of the diplomats, Kurt Volker, who has since resigned.

It is illegal for anyone to receive something of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election, according to the Federal Election Commission. While it is not immediately clear whether Trump or other U.S. officials broke the law in its handling of Ukraine, that might not matter. The Constitution allows for Congress to decide what constitutes an impeachable offense.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, calling the phone call "perfect."

"Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called "Whistleblower," represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way," Trump tweeted Sept. 29.

The White House had no comment.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnew...orward-speaking-ig-attorney/story?id=66092396
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
I hate the scams and schemes of the feeble-minded with a passion and the violence they inflict on other people. I also want to warn people (as I have done for people in the entertainment industry and donors to colleges) so they can develop counter measures, it is clear various countries have assets placed in our government and will do anything to protect their interests. You might do a story about CIA involvement in drug distribution but peak the interest of other parties unrelated to the story who will now see you as a threat. They may also want to intimidate other reporters through you assassination.

This information could have saved Jamal Khashoggi life and other people, knowing he was a high value target.
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

October 7, 2019


By Noah Weiland

Good evening. The week kicked off with renewed bureaucratic battles over access to documents and witness testimony. No fireworks yet, but it’s only Monday!

What happened today
  • The House subpoenaed the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget for documents about the Trump administration’s decision to withhold $391 million in security aid for Ukraine.
  • George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state and Ukraine expert, did not appear for a scheduled deposition with House Democrats, and several other witness interviews scheduled for this week are in doubt. Still, two key figures from the State Department were confirmed for depositions: Gordon Sondland, the United States ambassador to the European Union, on Tuesday, and Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, on Friday.
  • Secretary of State Mike Pompeomissed a Friday deadline to produce documents, even as the State Department continues talks with the House.
  • I asked my colleague Charlie Savage what was at stake here: “It was predictable that the Trump administration would balk at turning over the subpoenaed documents related to the Ukraine matter — including many internal White House communications that any administration would see as covered by executive privilege," he told me. “But the subpoena will likely also allow the House, if it chooses, to link an impeachment article about obstruction directly to the Ukraine scandal.”
  • More on that note: The Miami Herald reported today that two Florida businessmen who helped connect Rudy Giuliani to Ukrainian politicians would not comply with a request for documents and depositions from the three House committees conducting the impeachment investigation.
  • Over the weekend, we learned that a new whistle-blower with “firsthand knowledge” has provided information related to President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. His lawyers are also representing the first whistle-blower, and say that both are now legally protected from retaliation.
The State Department slow-roll
I asked Lara Jakes, who covers the State Department, about Mr. Pompeo’s delay tactics in the impeachment investigation. She got back to me from a busy press room, just after she finished some reporting on Mr. Trump’s decision to pull back from military involvement in Syria.

Lara, we seem to have hit a stalling point in witness depositions. What recourse do Mr. Pompeo and the State Department have at this point? Can he simply block these witnesses from testifying?

It’s not that cut and dried. He hasn’t said he won’t let them take part. He’s said he wants them to have time to consult with administration lawyers. He accused Democrats of going straight to the diplomats and asking them to talk to investigators without the State Department’s knowing or approving of it. In some cases, the administration might claim some executive privilege to prevent some employees from testifying. Mr. Pompeo also could be called as a witness. He was on the callwith Trump and the Ukrainian president.

What official action, then, can he take?

He could try to delay. And that is what we have seen so far, such as the case of Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine. He said this weekend that he’s going to comply with subpoenas as much as the law requires. It may not be as quick as the House Democrats want. It may be more than what the Trump administration writ large is 100 percent comfortable with. But there will be some kind of meeting in the middle.

The State Department is now juggling the news of Mr. Trump’s decision to pull back in the Middle East with all of activity around impeachment, right?

It’s odd, because last week when all of the impeachment stories were breaking, we couldn’t get much information at all out of the State Department on almost any topic. This morning, the State Department is talking about Syria and Turkey and very eager to relay its side of the story. It shows how many complex issues American diplomacy is facing, and on such a fast-moving timeline.

What else we’re reading
  • A federal judge allowed the Manhattan district attorney’s office to move forward with a subpoena seeking eight years of Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, rejecting an argument that sitting presidents are immune from criminal investigations. Here are some key takeaways from that ruling.
  • We surveyed former White House chiefs of staff under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. None of them recalled a time when the White House solicited or accepted political help from a foreign country.
  • The Associated Press outlined the different things we can expect to see this week in the impeachment investigation, adding to The Washington Post’s useful impeachment calendar.
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COINTELPRO

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Registered
After this debacle, there might need to be a Central Economic Agency (CEA) in the U.S. and other countries. It is apparent that the government has been infiltrated by foreign intelligence, not seeking military intelligence but economic gain. These entities can harm domestic industries that making large investments in next generation technology and is thwarted by the lack of action and government policy designed to sabotage their business.

Why is there a limit on tax credits per manufacturer on EV cars?

H.R.2042 - Electric CARS Act of 2019

This bill modifies and extends several tax credits related to electric cars.

The bill extends the tax credit for new qualified plug-in electric drive motor vehicles through 2029. In addition, the bill modifies the credit to

  • remove the limitation on the number of vehicles per manufacturer that are eligible for the credit,
  • allow a taxpayer to assign the credit to a financing entity, and
  • allow an unused credit to be carried forward for five years.
The bill also extends through 2029 the tax credits for (1) alternative fuel vehicle refueling property, and (2) alternative motor vehicles.

 
Last edited:

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
440px-Solyndra_logo.svg.png


Solyndra
was a manufacturer of cylindrical panels of copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) thin film solar cells based in Fremont, California. Although the company was once touted for its unusual technology, plummeting silicon prices led to the company's being unable to compete with conventional solar panels made of crystalline silicon.[1] The company filed for bankruptcy on September 1, 2011.

Another suspicious incident where product was dumped by China and the government did nothing about it to prevent its bankruptcy.

Democrats: Look at the failure of Solyndra and Fisker, we did not fund these startups and GM with money because of the risk involved.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

October 8, 2019


By Noah Weiland

Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. The White House declared war on the impeachment inquiry today, signaling in a dramatic letter to Congress and the blocking of a key witness how far it was willing to go to oppose investigative efforts that it called illegitimate.

merlin_162389814_33ba8f48-ed77-494d-a9bd-a4e02a176552-articleLarge.jpg

President Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday.Doug Mills/The New York Times
What happened today
  • This evening, the White House vowed in an eight-page letter to House Democratic leaders that it would not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, which it said was “partisan and unconstitutional” and in violation of President Trump’s due process rights. (Read the letter.)
  • The White House also blocked Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, from speaking with investigators, a decision Speaker Nancy Pelosicalled an “abuse of power.” Mr. Sondland was one of the three envoys who discussed via text message a plan to secure the Ukrainian president’s commitment to investigate Mr. Trump’s rivals.
  • Democrats in Congress have said they consider the failure to comply with their demands for information to be obstruction, a charge they say is itself worthy of impeachment. Even before the letter’s release, Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said blocking Mr. Sondland from speaking was “strong evidence” of obstruction.
  • This evening, Democrats subpoenaed Mr. Sondland for testimony and documents. Mr. Schiff said the State Department was withholding texts he had sent on a private device that were “deeply relevant” to the inquiry.
What exactly is this fight?
The showdown today felt like the most dramatic clash yet between the branches of government. Are we in what some might call a “constitutional crisis”? Amy Fiscus, our national security editor, answered that question for me between conversations with her reporters about pursuing leads.

“It’s not a constitutional crisis, because that involves a failure of the separation of powers: one of the three branches of government defying one of the others in a way that the Constitution doesn’t resolve. The easiest example is the White House or Congress refusing to follow a Supreme Court ruling.
This is more of a standoff, or a brawl. It’s the latest in a long line of fights between lawmakers and presidential administrations over information. Congress can’t do oversight without it. But administrations can’t function without keeping some presidential deliberations secret. What’s unusual here is that Mr. Trump has declared all-out war on oversight efforts and the impeachment inquiry, not just a refusal to share information about a particular issue.”
What is the president thinking?
Even some Republicans have privately been urging Mr. Trump to cooperate with the impeachment investigation. I stopped by the desk of my colleague Annie Karni, who covers the White House, to ask her about Mr. Trump’s defiance.

Annie, you and Maggie Haberman wrote about anxiety in the West Wing over how to handle impeachment. Why has the president concluded that it’s better not to cooperate?

This is not a criminal investigation, like the Mueller investigation was. This is a political process. And they’re leaning heavily into that idea with the eight-page letter the White House counsel sent tonight. We also see that in the polls: How people view Trump’s actions and the actions of House Democrats is split by party.

We also already know how this story almost certainly ends: Mr. Trump is not going to be convicted by the Senate. Does it matter for him whether there are one or two charges? His, and the White House’s, calculation is: no.

But isn’t that kind of resistance just going to harden Democrats’ belief that there’s some kind of cover-up?

Some witnesses could be really bad for the president, so the White House wants to have a broad position that they’re not going to play along. There were differing opinions internally about the case of Sondland, who some people thought would have had a story to tell that would have been helpful to Trump. But they ultimately decided — really late at night — that their position was about something broader.

Remember when they decided to release the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president? In that case, they clearly made the opposite calculation: Looking like we’re hiding something is worse than the facts in the transcript, which were pretty bad. Now, they’ve basically decided that looking like they’re hiding something is better than looking like they’re cooperating with what they’re calling an illegitimate investigation. House Democrats have only had one witness so far, Kurt Volker, and look how much House Democrats got! They have in writing that there could have been a quid pro quo. What else could they find with even just one more?

What else we’re reading
  • A White House official who listened to Mr. Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president described it as “crazy,” “frightening,” and “completely lacking in substance related to national security,” according to a memo written by a whistle-blower at the center of the Ukraine scandal.
  • Senator Lindsey Graham said he would invite Rudy Giuliani, who led the push for Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and embraced unfounded conspiracy theories about the 2016 election and Ukrainian corruption, to testify in the Senate.
  • Two new polls show growing support for the impeachment investigation. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News pollfound that 55 percent of Americans approve of the inquiry, while a Washington Post-Schar School pollconcluded that the number was 58 percent — the most support any poll has found so far. The Post highlighted that 28 percent of Republicans now support the inquiry.
  • Our graphics team has worked up this handy visual guide to the evidence that has been collected in the inquiry, and what’s been requested.
impeachment-investigation-tracker-promo-1570214529724-articleLarge-v3.jpg

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COINTELPRO

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Obama signs a 8 figure deal with Netflix rumored to be $100 million after it opens up an office in Dubai 2016. Al Gore and Al Jazeera $100 million deal. This strange Monique discrimination complaint against the company.

https://www.thenational.ae/arts-cul...to-launch-in-the-middle-east-in-2016-1.110850

images


Video-streaming service Netflix is planning to launch in the Middle East next year.

“We’ve already stated that our ambition is to be global by the end of 2016, and obviously that includes this region,” the company’s vice president of EMEA communications, Joris Evers, told The National while in Dubai for the city’s film festival.

“We can’t give an exact date as yet, but certainly by the end of the year, Netflix will be operating in the region.”

Evers was keen to “manage expectations” concerning the launch, which has been rumoured and hotly anticipated by movie and TV fans for some time.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

October 11, 2019


By Noah Weiland

Welcome to Friday’s Impeachment Briefing. Today, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine gave an extraordinary interview to impeachment investigators.

What happened today
11us-pm-briefing-ss-slide-72KU-articleLarge.jpg

Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, center, arriving to testify in a closed hearing Friday on Capitol Hill.Damon Winter/The New York Times
  • Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, told impeachment investigators in a closed-door interview that a top State Department official told her that President Trump had pushed for her removal even though the department believed she had “done nothing wrong.”
  • Ms. Yovanovitch said people associated with Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, “may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
  • Gordon Sondland, the American ambassador to the European Union, like Ms. Yovanovitch, agreed to comply with a House subpoena and testify, defying a State Department order not to appear.
What Marie Yovanovitch is thinking
Ms. Yovanovitch delivered her searing account before Congress at the risk of losing her job, since the White House has ordered officials not to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. This afternoon I stopped by the desk of Sharon LaFraniere, who has written about Ms. Yovanovitch, to discuss why the former ambassador to Ukraine was so intent on speaking out.

Sharon, how unusual was her participation? And how unusual was her testimony?

She testified despite a White House declaration that there would be no more cooperation with Congress. She’s acting in defiance of the White House. Her testimony today was a really damning indictment of how the Trump administration is conducting foreign policy. She warned against people who in search of personal gain or private influence undermined the work of American government officials and threatened the policy goals of the United States. And on top of all that, she said the State Department is being hollowed out from within, because diplomats don’t feel the government has their back.

What does she know that House Democrats want to know?

She seemed to suggest that businesspeople who are allies of Rudy Giuliani may have orchestrated this campaign to get her out for their own private gain. Was she removed because she was standing in the way of some sort of quid pro quo deal that the White House was planning to execute? Did they see her as unwilling to play ball in what might have been a corrupt game? Those are the questions impeachment investigators want to answer.

What happened to Rudy Giuliani?
“Smart, charismatic, ruthless, a little megalomaniacal.” “Ambitious, righteous, then self-righteous.” “Personable ... for a little while.” “Decisive, combative, conspiratorial.” “Pugilistic, erratic, extremely smart, reckless.” “Forceful, combative, energetic, vindictive, tireless, annoying.”

That’s Rudy Giuliani, as described by our reporters who have covered him over the past 35 years. A forthcoming episode of The Weekly traces his path from crime-busting prosecutor to Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, now at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

The episode focuses in part on a brutal zinger — that Mr. Giuliani needed only “a noun and a verb and 9/11” to construct a sentence — that was delivered by none other than Joe Biden, which helped sink the former New York City mayor’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“Giuliani did not like that line. I don’t think he ever forgot that Biden said it,” my colleague Maggie Haberman says on the show.

To better understand how we got to this point, I called Dan Barry, who appears in The Weekly episode and has chronicled Mr. Giuliani for decades.

What do you see in Rudy today that reminds you of the guy you’ve covered for so many years?

There’s this combativeness, that need to be at the center of attention — the willingness to go almost anywhere to champion whatever the cause of the moment is for him. All those character traits on display now are quite familiar to anyone who followed him closely 20 or 30 years ago. But the Rudy we see now is also at odds with the Rudy of the ’80s and ’90s, with his moral rectitude then. He was Mr. Law and Order.

Why, after so many years in the public eye, did he want to work for Mr. Trump?

He was leading in the polls in the 2007 to be the Republican nominee for president. He was spending oodles of money. He was getting a lot of ink. And then it all evaporated. He spent millions and ended up with one delegate. That stung. He was an international hero, and then was roundly rejected. He always wanted to be relevant. He needed to be relevant. What happened in 2016? He becomes relevant. Now, he’s effectively the shadow secretary of state. I think he revels in that.

Watch “The Weekly,” our new TV show, on FX Sunday at 10/9c.

What else we’re reading
  • Mr. Trump’s accounting firm must comply with a House committee’s demands for eight years of his financial records, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday.
  • The Justice Department askedanother federal appeals court to stop the release of Mr. Trump’s tax returns to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, arguing that local prosecutors should have to meet a very high legal bar before investigating a sitting president.
  • “I think we do need an inquiry because we have to get to the bottom of it,” Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a moderate Republican, said when asked whether he supported the impeachment investigation. “I’m not ready to say I support impeachment and the removal of the president, but I do think we should have an impeachment inquiry.”
  • Trying to keep track of all the Ukraine-related characters from this week’s impeachment news? We wrote up a helpful guide.
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MASTERBAKER

༺ S❤️PER❤️ ᗰOD ༻
Super Moderator
Trump and Guiliani Won’t Sleep Well Tonight


Sheila MarkinOctober 11, 2019
bsleep.jpg


We are getting multiple sources of evidence that will eventually bring down this president and this administration. Republicans! Get on the right side of history before it is too late.
The US Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York held a press conference on Thursday, not something they usually do without good cause, to announce an indictment of four men who were involved in a scheme to use a phony business (strawman) to funnel foreign money into American political campaigns in violation of campaign finance laws and FEC rules. Lev Parnas, and Igor Fruman are two of the four named co-defendants in the indictment out of SDNY. These two men are Ukrainians with a close connection to Rudy Guiliani. Lev and Igor had gotten invitations to appear before the House Intelligence Committee- one of them was supposed to show up on the very day he got arrested. Instead, they had lunch with Rudy Guiliani at a Trump Hotel and then sped off for Dulles Airport with one-way tickets out of the country in their hot little hands. They were nabbed at Dulles before boarding the plane.

The indictment is mainly focused on their use of a false business entity to funnel money in violation of campaign finance laws. Money flowed into a Trump super PAC and into the pockets of a certain Congressman, Pete Sessions, to elicit his help to get the highly respected, veteran Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, removed from her post by the State Department.

Reporters following this breaking story have learned that these two men were working hand in glove with Rudy Guiliani’s shadow foreign policy campaign in Ukraine. They are similar to the “plumbers” of Watergate. The plumbers of Watergate fame were “a secret unit tasked with digging up dirt on Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. The Plumbers went on to commit crimes for the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, including the Watergate burglaries.”

Similarly, these two Ukrainian men were part of a team of people tasked with advancing Trump’s corrupt political personal interests in Ukraine. These are the same corrupt interests coming to light in the impeachment inquiry. What is emerging here looks to be a criminal enterprise to get help Trump get re-elected that was operating on numerous fronts. One goal of these Ukrainians was to find a way to slime and dirty up Joe Biden and his son. Another was to get Marie Yovanovitch, the squeaky clean Ambassador to Ukraine, removed from her post because she was interfering with the Trump/Guiliani protection campaign.

The most important aspect of the SDNY indictment is that this is an “open”, “still developing” investigation into a conspiracy. In other words, there’s more coming, folks. Stay tuned.

Why are these guys likely to be helpful in getting us the truth? Because they are facing jail time, and there is nothing like pending jail time to get people to suddenly want to get on the right side of history. In other words, we can expect that they might want to make a deal.

The U S Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has a corruption unit that prides itself on being a force for truth and justice that really takes their mission seriously. The unit takes down corrupt actors and vigorously pursues the truth wherever it may lead. Superman comes to mind. This unit has been effective even in the age of Trump. This was the unit that prosecuted Michael Cohen and indicted Jeffrey Epstein. It is led by Geoffrey Berman, who is the U S Attorney in the Southern District of NY, and who is also a Trump appointee. Many people have been worried that Berman might not pursue justice in the age of Trump if the players getting arrested were close to Trump or his allies. It seems like Berman is not cowed by Bill Barr or Donald Trump. At least not so far.

What we can tell from this SDNY indictment is that Parnas and Fruman were funneling Russian money to an American Representative in Congress, Republican Pete Sessions, (and another as yet unnamed lawmaker), to get him to lobby for the removal of the Ukrainian Ambassador, Maria Yovanovitch. Note that the removal of that same Ambassador was mentioned by Trump himself in his phone call with Zelensky. He spoke about how she was going to be “going through some things”. Unspecified things. Very mob boss kind of talk from our Mafia Godfather president. In Trump’s call with Zelensky, Trump seemed to be urging Zelensky to say it was Ukraine that wanted her to be removed. This indicates a nexus between Guiliani and Trump and the effort to oust Yovanovitch.

Yovanovitch testified before the House Intell committee today. This matters a lot. She is still on the payroll of the State Department and the White House has taken the stance that NO ONE should testify before the House. She defied the White House and showed up. What she told the House Intell Committee was consistent with what we are learning from reporters. She told us that she ran afoul of Rudy Guiliani and Trump in Ukraine when she spoke out against a corruption in Ukraine. She is a veteran diplomat with an impeccable record. Guiliani wanted her out. She was getting in the way of his corrupt campaign to help Trump because she would not play along. Guiliani and others launched a smear campaign against her. And then she was abruptly removed from her post by the State Department without cause.

It is becoming clearer that many of Trump’s inner circle are hiding things from us that they know about and that many have been going along with what is looking more and more like a Trump enterprise to get him re-elected by engaging in dirty tricks and criminal acts. Very Nixonian.

Trump has succeeded in getting people in cabinet posts who will look the other way or, worse, help him in these paranoid enterprises. Pompeo at the State Department is one of them. He was one of the dozen or so people listening in on the call between Trump and Zelensky. At first, Pompeo feigned ignorance about that call when he spoke with reporters. Then reporters learned he was actually ON THE CALL listening in! Caught red handed in his dissembling, Pompeo then confirmed that yes, he was on the call. The House has said (appropriately) that Pompeo should therefore recuse himself from making any decisions about who should testify from the State Department in the impeachment inquiry. Pompeo himself could be charged with a crime. He is only one of the many cabinet members who may be caught up in this growing impeachment morass.

Barr is compromised as well. We know that he tried to deep-six the whistleblower complaint in numerous ways and numerous times. Barr should recuse himself. He won’t but he should.

Rick Perry is another. He has been subpoenaed by the House to turn over documents. He was the guy who went to Ukraine in place of VP Pence when Trump was trying to impress upon Zelensky that he would NOT get his money for military protection UNLESS he played ball with Trump’s goal of sliming Biden. Perry had reportedly been very active in Ukraine trying to get sweet lucrative deals for himself and donors with Ukrainian gas companies. Rick Perry is resigning from office. Trump has been trying to lay blame on Perry as use him as a fall guy.

If you think this whole thing smells bad, you are right. The connections between these two Ukrainian mopes, Guiliani, and Trump and many others in this administration who went along with Trump are shockingly reminiscent of Watergate. There are more and more people getting mired in the quicksand. These two Ukrainian “plumbers” are in the muck up to their necks and they might be very happy to rat out Guiliani and others because they are facing jail time. These guys and others are eventually going to tell us a lot about what Trump and Guiliani have been up to.

The good news is that we now have two sources of truthful information: the House Intell Committee and the SDNY criminal case. As the investigation picks up steam in the House, many more people with knowledge are going to come out of the woodwork and tell us the truth out of self-interest. The courts are helping. There was a 2 to 1 ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit upholding Congress’s broad investigative powers and soundly rejecting the argument that Trump’s lawyers are making. Mazars, Trump’s accounting firm, must turn over 8 years of financial documents including Trump’s taxes. That ruling supports the broad power of the House to subpoena and obtain documents to satisfy their oversight role.

The tide is turning. First there is a trickle, then the flow of information that gets bigger as people calculate what is best for themselves and their legacies.

Congress will be back in session next week. We are going to hear from witnesses who will tell us more about this Trump/Guiliani enterprise to get Trump re-elected by using a shadow campaign in Ukraine outside the State Department to get dirt on opponents.

Fiona Hill will be testifying. She is no longer at the State Dept but she is known to be a straight shooter and she was there for many months before leaving government service, so she knows some things. Ambassador Gordon Sondland says he will be testifying in response to a subpoena from the House despite the White House’s attempt to prevent him from appearing. The House will be very interested in the conversation he had with the president after Sondland realized that his text message communications he was engaged in were incriminating. Most likely, Trump gave him the talking point to be sure to put in his text reply “there was no quid pro quo.” Nice try. There was. Others from the State Department seem to be willing to testify about what they have been seeing and hearing.

It is time for the Republicans to get on the right side of history. This is the moment, as George Conway, Kelly Ann Conway’s husband has been saying this for some time. Conway was joined by over a dozen conservative Republicans calling for Trump be impeached “expeditiously”. There are also rumors that Mitt Romney is building a coalition of the willing to defy Trump and possibly vote to convict him in the Senate.

This is getting very very interesting.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
The New York Times
October 14, 2019​
Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing. Tonight, we’re covering the latest witness in the inquiry, and why so much testimony is happening behind closed doors.
What happened today
  • Fiona Hill, the president’s former top adviser on Russia and Europe, testified privately before House investigators. She was expected to say that she and other Trump officials strongly objected to the removal of Marie Yovanovitch as the ambassador to Ukraine.
  • Ms. Hill viewed that dismissal as an egregious abuse of the system by allies of President Trump who were seeking to push aside a perceived obstacle to their own foreign policy goals, according to a person familiar with her account.
  • Ms. Hill, who left her job on the National Security Council just days before the July 25 phone call between Mr. Trump and Ukraine’s president, was the first person who worked in the White House to be interviewed by House investigators.
Why can’t we see the witnesses testify?
Ms. Hill, like other witnesses in the impeachment investigation, testified privately — meaning it will take time to see a verbatim version of what she told investigators, if we see it at all. My colleague Nick Fandos, who was on Capitol Hill today, explained to me why Democrats are doing so much out of public view:
The Democrats are trying to collect as much information as possible as quickly as possible. Big made-for-TV hearings are a chaotic and clunky way to try to build a body of evidence. They allow witnesses to line up their stories in advance and could easily backfire on Democrats trying to build a public narrative in real time.
Most congressional veterans would tell you that from a fact-finding point of view, you are better off following the Watergate model: Investigate in private first, then choreograph a series of public hearings that recreate for the public what the investigation found. Republicans, nevertheless, are accusing Democrats of impeaching a president in secret.
What do the witnesses this week have to tell us?
Democrats believe that two witnesses — Ms. Hill and Gordon Sondland, the Trump donor-turned-ambassador who inserted himself into Ukraine policy — are critical to understanding the July 25call Mr. Trump had with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. I talked to Julian Barnes, who covers national security and the C.I.A., about the larger story.
Julian, what did Ms. Hill’s testimony tell us about the impeachment investigation?
What Ms. Hill likely helped outline today was the difference between our official foreign policy and the real foreign policy. Fiona Hill is the National Security Council official who, until her departure this summer, was supposed to be in charge of Ukraine policy and advise the president on it. But what we will likely learn from her appearance is that she was largely cut out of it. There’s this other foreign policy going on, directed by other people like Gordon Sondland, who were working on parts of this Ukraine policy that she never knew about.
Why is it important that Ms. Hill wasn’t the one handling Ukraine policy?
Mr. Sondland is the American ambassador to the European Union. On the books, he should have nothing to do with Ukraine. Ukraine is not part of the E.U. But in reality, he was tasked by Mr. Trump to work on Ukraine policy. He was deep in the mix of forming Ukraine policy, pushing the Ukrainians on what Mr. Trump was after.
So if Ms. Hill and Mr. Sondland were working on the same project — Ukraine policy — from competing lanes, how might that affect their testimony?
It appears right now that Ms. Hill and Mr. Sondland have two different agendas. Ms. Hill is coming in, it seems, in a nothing-to-hide way. She comes from a more neutral foreign policy tradition. She has left government. She doesn’t have a responsibility to speak the administration’s party line. Mr. Sondland is a defender of the president. He has decided to comply with a subpoena, but we don’t think he is going to turn on the president. Mr. Sondland is just trying to get his side of the story out.
Looking ahead
Congress returns from a two-week break on Tuesday, bringing more of the lawmakers who are conducting the impeachment inquiry back to Washington. On Tuesday, investigators will interview George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state and Ukraine expert. On Wednesday, they’ll talk to Michael McKinley, who resigned as a senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week. On Thursday, they’ll hear from Mr. Sondland. On Friday, they’ll speak with Laura Cooper, a Defense Department official who works on Ukraine.
This week is also the deadline for responses to document requests from some major figures, including Mr. Giuliani, Vice President Mike Pence, the acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and officials from the Defense Department and the Office of Management and Budget. The White House has vowed not to cooperate, though it has not blocked several officials from testifying.
What else we’re reading
  • Trey Gowdy, a former South Carolina congressman, was announced last week as a new member of Mr. Trump’s impeachment defense team. A day later, the arrangement quickly fell apart.
  • How is impeachment selling? A searchon Etsy, the online gift marketplace, turns up more than 4,000 impeachment-themed goods, including candles, pins, hats and mugs.
  • Conventional wisdom holds that the Republican Party suffered for impeaching Bill Clinton — a point some Democrats have made in arguing against the Trump impeachment. But that’s not quite right, our Op-Ed columnist David Leonhardt writes. History shows that Republicans paid a short-term penalty, while the costs to the Democratic Party appear to have been longer-lasting.
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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
It looks like they are backtracking on the Democratic side which is good. Corruption leads to murder if not exposed promptly, they are always looking over their shoulder and conscious of the consequences if caught. It harms businesses that are trying to release an important product onto the market. It harms us due to the lack of jobs, I don't want an EBT card or Medicaid.

Just sitting quietly, these fools will be plotting all kinds of things against you to cover up what they did. This is why you see me ranting online.

I hate the feeble minded with a passion, they are always coming up with scams and schemes to deal with their mental or physical deficiency.
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
On April 30, Obama called McRaven one more time to wish the SEALs well and to thank them for their service.[55] That evening, the President attended the annual White House Correspondent's Association dinner, which was hosted by comedian and television actor Seth Meyers. At one point, Meyers joked: "People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush, but did you know that every day from four to five he hosts a show on C-SPAN?" Obama laughed, despite his knowledge of the operation to come.[66]



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I noticed none of the press is touching the Middle East links which is much bigger potentially, they are talking about the China/Ukraine corruption scandal. Was President Obama, Biden, Hilary Clinton - Democrats making death threats to the press, that was linked with the Osama Bin Laden operation to kill or capture, he attends a correspondent dinner which is odd.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

The New York Times
October 18, 2019​
Quid Pro Quo
Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing. We thought today’s news would be another deposition — and then Mick Mulvaney stepped up to the podium.
What happened today
  • Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told reportersthat the Trump administration withheld nearly $400 million in military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate an unfounded conspiracy theory about the 2016 election. That effectively confirmed a premise of the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.
  • Asked whether he had just admitted to a quid pro quo, Mr. Mulvaney said, “We do that all the time with foreign policy.” Hours later, he tried to reverse his statement, saying, “There was absolutely no quid pro quo.”
  • In testimony before impeachment investigators, President Trump’s ambassador to the E.U., Gordon Sondland, said the president had essentially delegated American foreign policy on Ukraine to Rudy Giuliani, and had refused the counsel of his top diplomats. Mr. Giuliani’s goal, Mr. Sondland said, may have been “to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the president’s 2020 re-election campaign.”
Why Mick Mulvaney admitted the quid pro quo
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Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, spoke to reporters during a press briefing Thursday at the White House.Leigh Vogel for The New York Times​
Impeachment investigators have been gathering evidence for weeks to prove what Mr. Mulvaney freely admitted to reporters in the White House Briefing Room. I talked to my colleague Maggie Haberman about why he said something so stunning.
Maggie, whoa. That happened in front of reporters at the White House.
The briefing was jaw-dropping by any metric. He admitted to a quid pro quo. But it showed once again something you and I talked about two weeks ago: Mr. Trump tries to shift the window on conduct by revealing stuff publicly to take the sting out of its discovery. Mr. Mulvaney insisted the terminology doesn’t matter, but he bluntly acknowledged that aid was withheld from Ukraine to get a desired outcome on an investigation. That is at the heart of what Democrats have been trying to ascertain.
Was it actually the plan for him to do this?
I do think it was, yes — at least in part. Remember, this happened as Mr. Sondland was on the Hill giving a closed-door deposition. So I think Mr. Mulvaney was trying to rob House Democrats of a headline and frame the events on his own, to take the air out of the sails by saying it out loud. But it’s not clear that he was actually supposed to say there was a quid pro quo. It’s breathtaking that he’s the first person they’ve sent out to expressly discuss these issues and that he said so much.
How might this affect the impeachment investigation?
He came out and admitted to a lot of what House Democrats were hoping to get from him in a deposition! I can’t imagine the White House counsel and others were thrilled. Mr. Mulvaney and the counsel’s office have been at odds lately.
Since we’re talking about Mr. Mulvaney, why is he the guy Mr. Trump has wanted as his air traffic controller with Ukraine and now impeachment?
He’s what Mr. Trump thinks he needs. When he sold himself to Mr. Trump as chief of staff, part of his pitch was that he had run two agencies and that both were drama-free. But the president grinds down guardrails, and Mr. Mulvaney wants job security. He has the same problem the other Trump chiefs of staff have had, which is this concern about self-preservation that can be at odds with the needs of the president. I think he was willing to go out and be the “human hand grenade,” to borrow a turn of phrase from the Fiona Hill testimony.
I’m sensing some irony in the outcome, then.
Mr. Mulvaney’s job has been perceived as being in jeopardy. There isn’t a clear replacement for him right now, but he may not have helped himself today. We don’t yet know how Mr. Trump feels about what Mr. Mulvaney said. But if past is prelude, if it proves problematic, the president will blame Mr. Mulvaney.
Inside the White House briefing room
On Thursday, the president was in Texas, the vice president and secretary of state in Turkey, and Mr. Mulvaney on his own in the briefing room. One of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers even put out a statement saying the president’s legal team “was not involved.” Here’s how my colleague Katie Rogers, who was in the room, described the scene:
Reporters knew this was big news right away, and I think you saw the incredulity in the questions that were asked of him. We kept asking the same question in different ways, which was essentially: “How is what you’re telling us not an acknowledgment of something the president has outright denied?” The first time he said it, I emailed our White House team saying, “Did he actually just link Ukraine conspiracy theories to withholding aid?” All of us in the room were trying to figure out if what we were watching was actually happening.
What else we’re reading
  • Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat hailed as a powerful moral voice in American politics, died Thursday at the age of 68. His death left a void in the impeachment investigation: Mr. Cummings was chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, one of the committees leading the inquiry.
  • Rick Perry told the president today that he would resign from his positionas energy secretary. His resignation had long been anticipated, even before news emerged of his involvement in efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate the energy company Hunter Biden worked for.
  • The Washington Post looked into the taxpayer-funded renovation of Mr. Sondland’s residence in Brussels, which includes more than $400,000 to remodel the kitchen and a $95,000 outdoor “living pod.”
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

The New York Times
October 22, 2019​
Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. Investigators have a new star witness, who said the Trump administration made repeated quid pro quo demands to Ukraine.
What happened today
  • Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, told impeachment investigators that President Trumpheld up security aid and withheld a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, until Mr. Zelensky agreed to publicly announce that he would investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals.
  • Mr. Taylor told lawmakers that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, said “everything,” including the military aid, was dependent on such an announcement. “He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky ‘in a public box’ by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.”
  • Mr. Taylor, who referred to detailed notes he took throughout the summer, told investigators about a budget official who said during a secure National Security Council call in July that she had been instructed not to approve the $391 million security assistance package for Ukraine, and that “the directive had come from the president.”
In his own words
My colleague Sharon LaFraniere highlighted six key parts of Mr. Taylor’s opening statement. Here are three of the most compelling passages:
1. Mr. Taylor described an explicit quid pro quo.
There appeared to be two channels of U.S. policy-making and implementation, one regular and one highly irregular … By mid-July it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on the investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by [Rudy] Giuliani.
2. Mr. Taylor was told Ukraine had to ‘pay up.’
Before these text messages, during our call on September 8, Ambassador Sondland tried to explain to me that President Trump is a businessman. When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.
3. Mr. Taylor said Ukrainians would die as a result of the delay in military aid.
Ambassador Volker and I traveled to the front line in northern Donbas to receive a briefing from the commander of the forces on the line of contact … Ambassador Volker and I could see the armed and hostile Russian-led forces on the other side of the damaged bridge across the line of contact. Over 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. assistance.
The scene in the Capitol
My colleague Nick Fandos was standing outside of the secure room where Mr. Taylor was being interviewed. Here’s what he told me about the scene.
Nick, it was just a few hours into Mr. Taylor’s interview that you started to sense something big was happening. What was going on outside the room?
You had dozens of reporters standing in wait of any word from inside the closed hearing room. One by one, Democrats started coming out. They made clear that the testimony Mr. Taylor had given was on another level from what they had been hearing. To a person, they said:You’ve got to read the opening statement.” At the same time, you had a Republican come out — Representative Mark Meadows — and say he didn’t think he learned anything new today.
Why were the Democrats so taken aback? Representative Andy Levin said that in his 10 months in Congress, this was his “most disturbing day.”
These lawmakers don’t know what they’re going to hear ahead of time in any of these depositions. They seemed more genuinely surprised by this testimony, in part because there had been so much anticipation about Mr. Taylor, going back a few weeks. From what I understand, it took Mr. Taylor quite a while to read this opening statement. It ate up the better part of an hour.
What are lawmakers allowed to say?
In a private deposition of this nature, members are not supposed to come out and discuss any details of the testimony. They can offer takeaways or general impressions. Today, members were coming out in real time, caught off guard, saying, “We can’t tell you what we heard, but you’ve got to hear what we heard.” Only until a few hours later were we able to put the whole picture together.
What else we’re following
  • Who is Bill Taylor? The former Army officer has served in every administration of both parties since 1985, and is known for his credibility. “If Bill Taylor says it happened,” said one former ambassador, “it happened.”
  • Mr. Trump described the impeachment investigation as “a lynching,” a fraught term that invokes the racist murder of black people. Even some top Republicans condemned the president’s words. “That’s not appropriate in any context,” Senator John Thune said.
  • Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, denied telling Mr. Trump that a phone call the president had with Mr. Zelensky in July was “innocent,” as Mr. Trump has claimed. “You’d have to ask him. I don’t recall any conversations with the president about that phone call,” Mr. McConnell told CBS News.
  • In his breakdown of a new poll, CNN’s Harry Enten highlighted some historical context: More Americans want to remove Mr. Trump from office now than they did Bill Clintonor Richard Nixon at this point in their impeachment hearings.
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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Based on my previous threads on this topic, the ISIS beheadings of US citizens and reporters may have been intimidation tactic that was directed at the press keep them from digging into political corruption. Oil is the lifeblood of the region, and they will do anything to keep the wealth it provides flowing. Joe Biden's reentry into politics that was unwelcomed by Pres. Obama/DNC and drew attention to whatever scheme they had come up with. Biden was pursuing a big payoff for his son from China.

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What are they trying to hide?

The US does not have a Central Economic Agency. It is apparent the government has been infiltrated by foreign interests through payoffs to institute policies unfavorable to its citizens. You can betray your country in many ways besides just giving classified information. We need laws on the books to define this behavior as a serious criminal act.
 
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
The New York Times
October 25, 2019​
Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing. House investigators are in talks to secure the testimony of an unlikely star witness.​
What happened today
  • A federal judge in Washington declared that the House's impeachment investigation was legal and legitimate even without a formal vote by lawmakers, undercutting one of the White House’s key arguments.​
  • The judge also ordered the Department of Justice to hand over secret grand jury evidence from Robert Mueller’s investigation to the House Judiciary Committee, despite efforts by William Barr, the attorney general, to withhold it.​
  • Three more administration officials were subpoenaed, including Russell Vought, the acting head of the White House budget office.​
Why Democrats want to talk to John Bolton
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John Bolton was ousted as President Trump’s national security adviser in September.Doug Mills/The New York Times​
Impeachment investigators are in talks with a lawyer for John Bolton about bringing the mustachioed former national security adviser in for a closed-door deposition. I talked to my colleague Peter Baker, who is writing a story on Mr. Bolton’s potential role in the impeachment inquiry, about what could make him a valuable witness.​
Peter, we know Mr. Bolton’s departure from the White House was acrimonious. Why do Democrats want to talk to him?​
This is the man everyone wants to hear from. As national security adviser, he was thick in the middle of all these issues and moments with Ukraine. Even if he ever was deeply loyal to the president, considering how they parted ways, he has less incentive to hold back and more incentive to say what he knows. It doesn’t mean that he will necessarily damn the president. But we at least assume he’ll have a more independent view of things than someone considered to be a loyalist.​
What made him unhappy with his boss?​
He didn’t like the way Mr. Trump was doing policy in certain ways, like with Iran and North Korea. We assumed that was the crux of the departure. But Ukraine could be a part of it. He had just gotten back from there before he was forced out. He went to Kiev right before Mr. Trump was supposed to meet with Ukraine’s president.​
What makes him different from the other witnesses who’ve been deposed?​
He has cachet among conservatives. If he has testimony to give implicating the president in some way, he would have greater sway with Republicans than what the White House has been calling the “unelected bureaucrats” who have talked to investigators. Unlike with Bill Taylor, a certain number of Americans actually do know who Mr. Bolton is. He almost ran for president himself. He goes on Fox News. He’s known and supported by a lot of people on the right. He isn’t as easy to dismiss as someone they’d call a functionary of the state.​
Mr. Bolton is working on a book, right?​
As far as we know. He did one after he left the Bush administration. It was bracingly candid. He didn’t hold back. He never has. He’s always said what he thinks, even if it makes people uncomfortable.​
What’s ahead
  • There will be weekend testimony: Investigators are scheduled to talk tomorrow to Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.​
  • Charles Kupperman, who served until last month as deputy national security adviser at the White House, is scheduled to sit for questioning on Monday. Mr. Kupperman worked closely with Mr. Bolton.​
  • And Timothy Morrison, the senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council and a Bolton loyalist, is scheduled to appear next Thursday. He would be the first current White House official to speak with investigators.​
What else we’re reading
  • As State Department officials began testifying in the impeachment inquiry, officials from the department’s employee association sent a request to its members: send money. Witnesses have racked up bills of $15,000 or more for lawyers.​
  • The government’s inspectors general sharply criticized a Justice Department ruling from last month that determined that the whistle-blower complaint about Mr. Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president should not go to Congress.​
  • On the latest episode of “The Argument,” the podcast from The Times’s opinion section, David Leonhardt, Michelle Goldberg and Ross Douthat discuss the Democrats’ impeachment strategy so far, and whether there’s anything that could convince Republicans in the Senate to vote against the president.​
  • ProPublica investigated how Lev Parnas, one of Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associates, worked with a reporter for The Hill to promote a “disinformation campaign” about the Biden family’s activity in Ukraine.​
  • An NBC reporter noticed an unusual voicemail on his phone — it was from Mr. Giuliani, who had accidentally called him and left a three-minute recording of a private conversation.​
Note: A Q&A in last night’s newsletter incorrectly stated that Senator Richard Shelby was retiring. While there is speculation that he will retire — he will be 88 when he is up for re-election in 2022 — he has not yet announced his plans.​
I’m eager to know what you think of the newsletter, and what else you’d like to see here. Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com. Did a friend forward you the briefing? Sign up here.
You can unsubscribe through the link at the bottom of this email, and it won’t affect your regular Morning Briefing subscription.​
Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance.
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Subscribe to The Times
 

COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Eritrean-Mum-Who-Left-Baby-in-a-Locked-Car-to-be-Charged2.jpg


Without this pattern of reporters being killed or intimidated, political corruption, I would say this is an impeachable offense. I would equate what Pres. Trump did with a police officer that smashes the window of a car to rescue a child. Did the police officer break the law by damaging your car? Yes. However, the law provides some immunity from prosecution for this offense.

Political corruption leads to criminality, murder, and other abhorrent behavior that is intolerable. It is a breakdown of social order when it happens at such a high level. It is also a national security issue. I believe the whistleblower and other people involved in the call are not seeing the big picture.

Based on my investigative reporting, companies are taking proactive measures to defend themselves from the government and will critically analyze any legislation that comes from the left or right side of the aisle regarding their industry.
 
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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
Another example is waterboarding or torturing Al Qaeda or ISIS detainees for information regarding terrorist plots.

Here's another example of questionable behavior of Democrats in office. The post office trucks get 10 miles to the gallon and spew all kinds of emissions in the city.

mail-work.jpg


Just replacing these would save millions of gallons of fuel and allow the United States to export more oil to other countries such as China. This is a strategy that Saudi Arabia utilizes to reduce their domestic consumption of oil to increase exports. The technology to manufacture these vehicles have been proven. You want to reduce the trade deficit, here is a perfect example.

Amazon announced their intentions of building electric delivery trucks then they lost some big contract with the government.
 

QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
The New York Times
November 5, 2019​
Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. Today marked the beginning of the public phase of the impeachment investigation, with the release of two witness transcripts.
What happened today
  • Impeachment investigators released the transcripts of closed-door interviews with Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, and Michael McKinley, a top diplomat who advised Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The campaign to oust Ms. Yovanovitch from her post has been key to the investigation.
  • Investigators are expected to release two more transcripts tomorrow that are central to their case, including one for Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union.
  • Four Trump administration witnesses refused to sit for interviews today with investigators, including John Eisenberg, the top lawyer on the National Security Council, and Robert Blair, an aide to Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.
  • The White House informed Mr. Eisenberg’s lawyer on Sunday that President Trump was directing him not to testify. The White House is claiming “absolute immunity” — a form of executive privilege that contends the president’s closest advisers are not obligated to cooperate with Congress.
What the transcripts say
Today’s transcripts give us an idea, in the witnesses’ own words, of how alarmed they were by what they felt was a pressure campaign exerted on Ukraine for Mr. Trump’s political benefit.
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Ms. Yovanovitch told investigators that she knew as early as late 2018 that the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others allied with him, including the former top prosecutor in Ukraine, were painting her as disloyal to Mr. Trump.
“Basically, it was people in the Ukrainian government who said that Mr. Lutsenko, the former prosecutor general, was in communication with Mayor Giuliani, and that they had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me.” — Yovanovitch transcript, Pages 27-28
Ms. Yovanovitch also said that she was hurried out of Ukraine.
“The reason they pulled me back is that they were worried that if I wasn’t, you know, physically out of Ukraine, that there would be, you know, some sort of public either tweet or something else from the White House. And so this was to make sure that I would be treated with as much respect as possible.” — Yovanovitch transcript, Page 132
(Read the full transcript of Ms. Yovanovitch’s testimony here.)
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Mr. McKinley told investigators that his resignation as a senior aide to Mr. Pompeo was prompted by his belief that the State Department was being used to dig up dirt on Mr. Trump’s political opponents.
“In 37 years in the foreign service and different parts of the globe and working on many controversial issues, working 10 years back in Washington, I had never seen that.” — McKinley transcript, Page 112
Mr. McKinley said that Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine — and those helping him with it — were compromising the integrity of the entire diplomatic corps, the “overwhelming majority” of which shared his concern.
“It became clear to me that State Department officials, if not the State Department itself, were being drawn into the domestic political arena in some way. And I repeat: I feel that this is not the way we maintain the integrity of the work we do beyond our borders.” — McKinley transcript, Pages 130-131
(Read the full transcript of Mr. McKinley’s testimony here.)
What else we’re reading
  • Adored by the left, reviled by the right, Representative Adam Schiff has become a Rorschach test for American politics.
  • Long before his pivotal phone call with Ukraine’s president, Mr. Trump was exchanging political favors with a different Ukrainian leader.
  • Mr. Pompeo finds himself at the most perilous moment of his political life, trying to demonstrate loyalty to the president while insisting to others that he is pursuing a traditional foreign policy.
  • Hoping to shape opinion on impeachment and tie up phone lines, the Republican National Committee paid to generate thousands of calls to the congressional offices of nearly three dozen House Democrats.
  • Some Republicans are testing out a new refrain: Even if a quid pro quo between Mr. Trump and Ukraine existed, it is not grounds for impeachment. “Concern is different than rising to the level of impeachment,” Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
P.S.: Your impeachment costumes
We asked Impeachment Briefing readers to send us impeachment-related Halloween costumes, and you did not disappoint! Here are a few of our favorites.
From Stefanie in Arvada, Colo., we have “Squid Pro Quo”:
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Dante in Santa Monica, Calif., went as the “anonymous whistle-blower”:
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And finally, from Laura, Dave, Chip, Lois and Carol in Fort Collins, Colo., comes this ensemble costume. They explain: “The pink in the middle was a Rockford Peach (from “A League of Their Own”), on the glove side is a display of mints. The three in the middle are flanked by a Whistle-Blower and an Unnamed Source.”
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I’m eager to know what you think of the newsletter, and what else you’d like to see here. Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com. Did a friend forward you the briefing? Sign up here.
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COINTELPRO

Transnational Member
Registered
This is a disturbing pattern of Democratic Vice Presidents cashing out in office or when they leave from foreign interest.

1. Al Gore

Anemic government policy to jump start the EV industry. Tesla was funded by a Bush era program!

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2. Hilary Clinton

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Another scheme using a non-profit that accepted millions in foreign donations

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3. You got the Kwame Kilpatrick style arrangement in Ukraine and China with Joe Biden and Sons. Kwame Kilpatrick required contractors to do consulting work with his father to win contracts with the city.

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Seeing this connection with the Middle East, my concern is this reporter getting chopped up and disappeared going into a Saudi consulate. It might have been an intimidation tactic to thwart reporters from poking around during the election. Drug cartels will kill reporters looking into their affairs resulting in limited to no reporting on actions.

Republicans have their methods, but reporters are not getting cut up in some consulate. Bringing to light this problem may discourage them in the future from doing these deals.



I always suspected these places were capable of being infiltrated and users being spied on because it was happening to me. People thought I was crazy when I complained.

We have post office trucks getting 10 miles to the gallon still on the road. It is clear we have high level moles such as, Kamala Harris in the DNC, directing energy policy favorable to the Middle East. The Republicans of course support the oil industry, however, compromising Democrats would prevent reforms to the energy policy of the United States. The United States could be exporting this oil to other countries reducing trade deficits.
 
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
The New York Times
November 7, 2019​
Welcome to the Impeachment Briefing. We spent the day poring over 300 pages of testimony by America’s top diplomat in Ukraine.
What happened today
  • Impeachment investigators released the deposition transcript of Bill Taylor, the top American diplomat in Ukraine, expanding on the opening statement that was published after his closed-door testimony last month. Mr. Taylor said he repeatedly warned other officials of the perils of tying a military assistance package to investigations of President Trump’s political rivals.
  • Mr. Taylor, who has served in every administration of both parties since 1985, is an esteemed figure in the world of diplomacy. In his testimony, he said that America’s traditional foreign policy was being subverted by people outside the normal chain of command — particularly Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.
  • House Democrats announced that they would hold public impeachment hearings next week. The first session, on Wednesday, will involve Mr. Taylor and George Kent, a senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy. Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, will testify on Friday.
A ‘second channel’ of American diplomacy
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Bill Taylor on Capitol Hill in October, when he gave his closed-door testimony.Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times​
Mr. Taylor’s testimony gave us what might be the most detailed account yet of how and why Mr. Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine, a move that went against what he called the “unanimous opinion of every level of interagency discussion.” Here are six key moments from the transcript.
1. Mr. Taylor pinned the origins of the Ukraine plan on Mr. Giuliani, who Mr. Taylor said was acting in Mr. Trump’s interests.
Mr. Taylor: I think the origin of the idea to get President Zelensky to say out loud he’s going to investigate Burisma and 2016 election, I think the originator, the person who came up with that was Mr. Giuliani.
Representative Tom Malinowski: And he was representing whose interests in...
Mr. Taylor: President Trump.
2. Mr. Taylor repeatedly described a “second channel” in American foreign policy, which he said operated beneath the official diplomatic channel and involved the efforts by Mr. Giuliani and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, to secure the investigations.
“The regular channel is all of our interactions with Ukraine, and one of the very important components of that interaction with Ukraine is the security assistance. And the security assistance got blocked by this second channel.
My concern about the whole second track was that, apparently at the instigation of Mr. Giuliani, Ambassador Sondland and Ambassador Volker were conditioning an important component of our assistance on what would ultimately be a political action.”
3. Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump have said those investigations were intended to root out “corruption” in Ukraine. But Mr. Taylor’s testimony undermined those claims.
“The irregular channel seemed to focus on specific issues, specific cases, rather than the regular channel’s focus on institution building. So the irregular channel, I think under the influence of Mr. Giuliani, wanted to focus on one or two specific cases, irrespective of whether it helped solve the corruption problem, fight the corruption problem.”
4. Mr. Taylor said that he directed other diplomats to steer clear of Mr. Giuliani.
“What the embassy tries to do, as a general rule, is stay out of either our domestic or Ukraine internal politics. So we have not — we have tried to avoid dealing certainly with Mr. Giuliani and the kind of efforts that he was interested in.”
5. Mr. Taylor described one day in June when Mr. Sondland crowded the usual suspects out of a phone call with Ukraine’s president.
“Ambassador Sondland told me that the timing was going to change, that the time of the phone call was going to change. And I asked him something like, shouldn’t we let everybody else know who’s supposed to be on this call? And the answer was, don’t worry about it. Even his staff, I think, were not aware that the time had changed.”
6. Mr. Taylor said that John Bolton, the former national security adviser, fought behind the scenes to stop Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Sondland from establishing a quid pro quo, including at a meeting with top Ukrainian officials.
“When Ambassador Sondland raised investigations in the meeting, that triggered Ambassador Bolton’s antenna, political antenna, and he said, ‘we don’t do politics here.’”
What else we’re following
  • David Hale, the under secretary for political affairs at the State Department, became the first administration official this week to comply with investigators’ requests to appear. Democrats planned to ask him about the ouster of Ms. Yovanovitch, and why he and others did not defend her against political attacks.
  • Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, and Tony Sayegh, a former Treasury Department spokesman, are expected to join the White House communications team to work on impeachment messaging.
  • House Democrats pulled their subpoena for testimony from Charles Kupperman, a former deputy national security adviser who asked federal courts to rule on whether he could testify. They believed the litigation could slow down the impeachment investigation.
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator
The New York Times
November 8, 2019​
Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. A number of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s top diplomats have testified to impeachment investigators. Where does that leave him?
What happened today
  • John Bolton, President Trump’s former national security adviser, did not show up for scheduled testimony. Mr. Bolton’s lawyer told the House Intelligence Committee that he would file a lawsuit in federal court if he were subpoenaed, a challenge that could take months to resolve. Democrats have instead decided to use his refusal as evidence that Mr. Trump is obstructing Congress.
  • Democrats leading the inquiry released another transcript, this one of testimony from George Kent, a State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy. Mr. Kent told investigators that he and other experienced diplomats were all but cut out of making the foreign policy they were supposed to be involved with.
  • One witness did appear on Capitol Hill today: Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence. Ms. Williams, who listened in on the July 25conversation between President Trump and the Ukrainian president, was expected to answer questions about that phone call, as well as Mr. Pence’s involvement in efforts to pressure Ukraine.
What George Kent told investigators
Mr. Kent’s testimony made explosive claims about four top Trump administration officials involved in the impeachment inquiry. Here’s some of what he said.
1. Mr. Kent said that Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, had ginned up a “campaign of lies” against Marie Yovanovitch, the former ambassador to Ukraine, who Mr. Trump’s allies claimed was disloyal to the president. “Assertions and allegations against former Ambassador Yovanovitch were without basis, untrue, period,” Mr. Kent said.
2. Mr. Kent said that Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, may have lied about Ukraine-related discussions he had in the White House. Mr. Kent said that Fiona Hill, the top Russia expert on the National Security Council, had concerns that Mr. Sondland “made assertions about conversations that did not match with what had actually been said.”
3. Mr. Kent described how Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, wielded power over Ukraine policy — it was Mr. Mulvaney, he said, who controlled the nearly $400 million in military aid designated for the country. “The head of the Office of Management and Budget who was the acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, at the direction of the president, had put a hold on all security assistance to the Ukraine,” Mr. Kent testified.
4. Mr. Kent said that his own boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, failed to back up Ms. Yovanovitch when she came under assault by conservatives. “It’s always most helpful if the top leader issues a statement,” Mr. Kent said. He also said Mr. Pompeo’s assertion that investigators were trying to “bully” diplomats into testifying was untrue. “I was one of two career foreign service officers which had received letters from the committees, and I had not felt bullied, threatened and intimidated,” Mr. Kent said.
How implicated is Mike Pompeo?
Mr. Pompeo, who was once the C.I.A. director, has been seen as one of Mr. Trump’s most durable allies in the administration, refusing to criticize his boss through years of investigations. I talked to my colleague Ed Wong, who wrote this week about Mr. Pompeo, to get a sense of where he stands in the impeachment inquiry.
Ed, how would you describe Mr. Pompeo’s role in what lawmakers are investigating?
What emerges from witness testimony and from what various other people, including Mr. Giuliani, have said is that Mr. Pompeo was an enabler — at the very least — of the shadow Ukraine policy.
Why are some officials who have testified upset with Mr. Pompeo?
There’s no State Department leadership defending their right to testify. In fact, Mr. Pompeo has tried to block them from testifying. When you talk to career officials at the State Department and talk to people who have left State, they say that Mr. Pompeo has failed to carry out the most important thing a leader there should do, which is to stand up for the ambassadors, the diplomats and everyone else in the foreign service corps.
Who do you think Mr. Pompeo feels most loyal to at this moment?
Right after the scandal blew up, he went on television and defended Mr. Giuliani. He’s been promoting these conspiracy theories that Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have pushed, about 2016 election interference. At the same time, he wants to try and maintain a reputation as someone who’s been looking out for the national security interests of the United States and not only be a Trump loyalist. What these episodes have shown is that you can’t do both.
One of Mr. Pompeo’s former top aides, Michael McKinley, testified to his concern over how the State Department had been politicized under Mr. Pompeo.
The fact that someone so senior and someone so close to the secretary would resign — he was a de facto chief of staff to Mr. Pompeo and had served 37 years in the foreign service — over what he saw as the failings of Mr. Pompeo’s leadership says a lot about how far Mr. Pompeo had fallen in the eyes of some top career officials. And it says a lot about the failure of Mr. Pompeo to step up and protect his people.
What else we’re reading
  • After Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman gave damaging testimony about Mr. Trump’s Ukraine call, an attack on the colonel’s character made its way from the dark corners of Mr. Trump’s Twitter following to the front lines of the impeachment battle.
  • Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, was ready to announce on CNN the investigations that Mr. Trump had demanded. Then word of frozen military aid leaked out — a stroke of luck that meant he never had to follow through.
  • ABC News reported that House Democrats are looking at several articles of impeachment that go beyond Ukraine, including the obstruction of Congress and the Mueller investigation.
  • Politico wrote about the witnesses Republicans would like to call in the public phase of the inquiry, including the whistle-blower whose complaint led to the investigation and whose anonymity is protected. And Yahoo News obtained threatening voicemails, emails and social media notes left for lawyers of the whistle-blower.
  • Donald Trump Jr. made an appearance on “The View” today. The show was, predictably, chaotic.
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QueEx

Rising Star
Super Moderator

The New York Times
November 15, 2019​
Welcome back to the Impeachment Briefing. With no public hearings today, we’re looking at how the politics of impeachment are complicating races around the nation.
What happened today
  • Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the testimony in Wednesday’s public hearing “corroborated evidence of bribery” by President Trump in his dealings with Ukraine. Her use of “bribery” — one of the crimes the Constitution cites as an impeachable offense — suggests that Democrats are moving toward a more specific set of charges that could be codified in articles of impeachment.
  • A new witness emerged — a State Department official in Kiev named Suriya Jayanti — who will be able to describe the overheard phone call that Bill Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, testified about on Wednesday. On the call, the president and Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, discussed the political investigations Mr. Trump sought from Ukraine. Mr. Sondland is set to testify publicly next week.
  • Mark Sandy, a high-ranking career official from the Office of Management and Budget, will appear for a closed-door deposition on Saturday if subpoenaed, his lawyer said. O.M.B. played a key role in holding up the delivery of $391 million in security assistance at the center of the inquiry.


Mr. Trump’s congressional warrior
Yesterday was the public impeachment debut of Representative Jim Jordan, a conservative favorite who has become one of Mr. Trump’s loudest advocates on cable news and in congressional hearings. I asked my colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who is working on a profile of Mr. Jordan, about him.​
Sheryl, why is Jim Jordan effective in the eyes of Republicans?​
He defends Mr. Trump at all costs. It’s very simple. He did what Republicans needed him to do yesterday, which was raise doubts about the witnesses by saying they were hearing things secondhand. He tried to poke a few holes in their testimony.​

And he did that when he elicited an admission out of Mr. Taylor, when he said that in three face-to-face meetings with Ukraine’s president, the topic of military aid hadn’t come up. That’s something that Republicans have been seizing on since.​
He talks so quickly. In a five-minute video he posted of himselfdefending Mr. Trump at the hearing, he asked no questions.​
It’s very rat-a-tat-tat, auctioneer, no-nonsense, aggressive. That’s a way to knock witnesses off their stride. He was a championship wrestler, so he brings a wrestling ethos to everything he does. Wrestlers are scrappy. Jim Jordan is scrappy.​
Does it work?​
By acting as the proverbial attack dog, he makes witnesses look like they’re on the defensive. You can also see his value in the way that other members of the committee are ceding parts of their assigned time and handing their questioning to him. He was brought on to the Intelligence Committee for these hearings.​
Who’s paying attention to impeachment?
I called my colleague Jonathan Martin, who’s in Bossier City, La., covering the governor’s race and tonight’s Trump rally, to ask him about how the investigation is playing on the campaign trail.​
Jonathan, how effective are these hearings at reaching voters?​
The country is so polarized that the impact is mostly with that slice of undecided voters in the middle, and that’s a pretty small slice at this point. There aren’t a lot of people who haven’t made up their minds about Mr. Trump. But it’s an important cadre, since it could be crucial in next year’s election.​
How much is impeachment actually influencing races across the country?​
It’s the overlay of every race at the moment, this question of where you stand on Mr. Trump. It was crucial in Kentucky last week, where the unpopular governor made a big part of his race about the question of impeachment.​
Here in Louisiana, the Republican candidate for governor, Eddie Rispone, based his entire campaign on Mr. Trump endorsing him, and the fact that he’s in Mr. Trump’s party. He’d love for this to be a referendum on the state’s view of Mr. Trump and impeachment.​
What about for the Democratic candidate?​
John Bel Edwards, the incumbent, wants to talk about what he’s done for the state budget. Red-state Democrats want to localize the races. They want to talk about local issues that pop better for them, like health care. And the blue-state Republicans, like those in Virginia, don’t want to talk about Mr. Trump.​
Tonight on ‘The Latest’
The Times debuted a new podcast yesterday all about impeachment. It’s called “The Latest,” and episodes will come out every weeknight.​
On tonight’s episode, our congressional editor, Julie Davis, dives into Ms. Pelosi’s news conference, and explains why it matters that she used the word “bribery” instead of “quid pro quo.” You can listen to it here.
What else we’re reading
  • Senate Republicans are conflictedabout how quickly to move on an impeachment trial. Some are arguing for a speedy vote, while others see an opportunity to drag it out and tie down some Democratic senators who are running for president.​
  • To better understand how the first impeachment hearing played across the nation, we listened to callers and hosts on talk radio shows on both ends of the political spectrum. Not surprisingly, the airwaves offered little consensus.​
  • Facebook and YouTube said they would block attempts to name the whistle-blower who set in motion the impeachment inquiry. But the tech companies’ human moderators and artificial intelligence tools are struggling to keep up.​
  • In an interview with The Guardian, Rudy Giuliani was asked whether he was worried Mr. Trump might “throw him under a bus.” Mr. Giuliani replied, “I’m not, but I do have very, very good insurance, so if he does, all my hospital bills will be paid.” His lawyer jumped in to add, “He’s joking.”
I’m eager to know what you think of the newsletter, and what else you’d like to see here. Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com. Did a friend forward you the briefing? Sign up here.
You can unsubscribe through the link at the bottom of this email, and it won’t affect your regular Morning Briefing subscription.​

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