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Discuss: Political Madness All the Time

Lynna is your curator. How are you all holding up, America? Not well, I guess, since this is the hardest working thread ever. The frenzy is growing!

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  2. says

    Here’s a link to today’s Guardian general election liveblog.

    “Labour suffers second cyber-attack in two days”:

    The Labour party has faced a second cyber-attack, a day after experiencing what it called a “sophisticated and large-scale” attempt to disrupt its digital systems.

    It is understood the party was the subject of a second distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on Tuesday afternoon. Such attacks use “botnets” – networks of compromised computers – to flood a server with requests that overwhelm it.

    A Labour spokeswoman said: “We have ongoing security processes in place to protect our platforms, so users may be experiencing some differences. We are dealing with this quickly and efficiently.”

    Labour has not said who it suspects is behind the attacks, but said it was confident its security systems ensured there was no data breach.

    Party officials have reported the initial attack, which took place on Monday, to the National Cyber Security Centre, the government agency that supports and advises organisations on such incidents.

    Labour has not said which digital platforms were targeted, but it is understood some of them were election and campaigning tools, which would contain details about voters. The party has sent a message to campaigners to say what happened and to explain why the systems were working slowly on Monday.

    A party spokeswoman said: “We have experienced a sophisticated and large-scale cyber-attack on Labour digital platforms. We took swift action and these attempts failed due to our robust security systems. The integrity of all our platforms was maintained and we are confident that no data breach occurred.

    “Our security procedures have slowed down some of our campaign activities, but these were restored this morning and we are back up to full speed. We have reported the matter to the National Cyber Security Centre.”

    Whitehall sources said the initial indications were that the attack was carried out by a “non-state actor”.

    The party’s head of campaigns, Niall Sookoo, wrote: “Yesterday afternoon our security systems identified that, in a very short period of time, there were large-scale and sophisticated attacks on Labour party platforms which had the intention of taking our systems entirely offline.

    “Every single one of these attempts failed due to our robust security systems and the integrity of all our platforms and data was maintained. I would I like to pay tribute to all the teams at Labour HQ who identified this risk and acted quickly to protect us.”…

  3. says

    NBC – “In private speech, Bolton suggests some of Trump’s foreign policy decisions are guided by personal interest”:

    Former national security adviser John Bolton derided President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law during a private speech last week and suggested his former boss’ approach to U.S. policy on Turkey is motivated by personal or financial interests, several people who were present for the remarks told NBC News.

    According to six people who were there, Bolton also questioned the merits of Trump applying his business acumen to foreign policy, saying such issues can’t be approached like the win-or-lose edict that drives real estate deals: When one doesn’t work, you move on to the next. The description was part of a broader portrait Bolton outlined of a president who lacks understanding of the interconnected nature of relationships in foreign policy and the need for consistency, these people said.

    …

    Bolton told the gathering of Morgan Stanley’s largest hedge fund clients that he was most frustrated with Trump over his handling of Turkey, people who were present said. Noting the broad bipartisan support in Congress to sanction Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan purchased a Russian missile defense system, Bolton said Trump’s resistance to the move was unreasonable, four people present for his speech said.

    Bolton said he believes there is a personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey because none of his advisers are aligned with him on the issue, the people present said.

    …

    At one point in his closed-door remarks, Bolton was asked what he thinks will happens in January 2021 if Trump is re-elected, people present for his remarks said. Bolton responded by taking a swipe at Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump — both of whom are senior White House advisers — and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, three people familiar with his remarks said.

    Bolton said Trump could go full isolationist — with the faction of the Republican Party that aligns with Paul’s foreign policy views taking over the GOP — and could withdraw the U.S. from NATO and other international alliances, three people present for his remarks said.

    He also posited that Kushner and Ivanka Trump could convince the president to rewrite his legacy and nominate a liberal like Lawrence Tribe — a Harvard Law professor who has questioned Trump’s fitness for office and was a legal adviser to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign — to the Supreme Court, the people present for Bolton’s speech said.

    Bolton said, with an eye roll that suggested he doesn’t take them seriously, that Kushner and Ivanka Trump could do so in an attempt to prove they had real influence and were in the White House representing the people they want to be in social circles with home in New York City, the people present for his remarks said.

    Those present said that at that point, the audience appeared shocked.

    Bolton has been writing a book, having reached a deal with Simon & Schuster, and people present for his remarks in Miami said he suggested to the audience several times that if they read it, there would be much more material along the lines of what was in his speech.

    The former NSA believes Trump’s Syria/Turkey position is being dictated by his personal or business interests, but instead of testifying at the impeachment inquiry he’s teasing his book. (The bit about Tribe is ridiculous.)

  5. says

    HuffPo – “Erdogan Will Have Fewer Friends Than Ever When He Visits The U.S. This Week”:

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has provoked bipartisan condemnation in the U.S. before. On his last visit stateside, in 2017, his bodyguards beat American citizens protesting his government in Washington. Since then, he’s signed a marquee weapons deal with Russia and progressively expanded a domestic crackdown on journalists and any form of opposition that’s horrified much of the West.

    But by attacking in October the Syrian Kurds who had proved the U.S.’s best partner against the Islamic State, he may have finally gone too far. Just weeks ago, nearly every Democrat and Republican in the House of Representatives united to break a decades-long taboo by passing a resolution acknowledging Turkey’s role in the Armenian genocide. Critics are now discussing new sanctions targeting powerful Turks and the country’s economy and have set in motion a process that could end all U.S. arms sales to the NATO ally.

    Erdogan is set to visit Washington this week with his standing here at a historic low ― and the network that’s supposed to help him restore it is in shambles.

    Like other countries eager for American goodwill, Turkey has spent decades developing extensive relationships in Washington and working to sell its viewpoint to the policymakers whose decisions have a major impact on Turkey’s 80 million people. But today, the nation’s efforts to woo friends or even tactical partners have become weak, unconvincing and absurd to the point where they’re frequently laughable, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former congressional aides, U.S. officials, analysts and advocates who focus on the U.S.-Turkey relationship.

    For many Americans, Turkey may now be best associated with violence ― from the attack on the Kurds that included the assassination of a female Kurdish politician to the 2017 incident with Erdogan’s security detail — and corruption, notably paying Trump associate Michael Flynn to push for the extradition and potential kidnapping of a U.S.-based dissident.

    As his closest contacts in U.S. politics, Erdogan counts some of the country’s most notorious political figures. A prime example is former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who lobbied President Donald Trump on the same issue as Flynn and represented an Iranian-Turkish businessman whose case Erdogan personally tracked.

    The persecution by Erdogan’s government of many of Turkey’s most talented citizens, from intellectuals to officials with foreign policy experience, means they’re no longer able or willing to represent it and try to convince Americans to appreciate the nation’s concerns. And ham-handed attempts at persuasion by Turkish officials include bringing a delegation of U.S. reporters to Turkey with false promises of an interview with the president and then selling them conspiracy theories.

    Erdogan may not understand why this matters. Turkey’s autocratic leader has come so close to establishing one-man rule that he may think little matters beyond his personal bond with Trump, who’s called Erdogan a “gentleman” and repeatedly defended him from U.S. criticism.

    But American presidents don’t stay in power the way that Erdogan has, or for as long. That’s why most U.S. allies forge ties with American politicians and institutions from across the political spectrum.

    Erdogan is now relying almost exclusively on one volatile, unpopular Republican president whose own party has repeatedly said he’s out of step with their view of Turkey. But while cozying up to Trump, Erdogen has enraged U.S. lawmakers by bolstering Turkey’s relationship with Moscow with steps that include conducting joint military patrols with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces in Syria and cooperating with his war criminal ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. And Turkey’s government is under investigation by U.S. officials for allegedly transferring American weapons to Arab proxy fighters widely thought to have committed war crimes in the Turkish-led intervention against the Kurds in northern Syria.

    Instead of moderating his behavior or trying to build sympathy for his approach, Erdogan’s doubling down on treating Trump as the only relevant decision-maker in the U.S. It’s a gamble that could cost him dearly.

    …

    Spending money at the president’s properties is a favored tactic of foreign governments seeking U.S. favor today, and “in some ways, no country has done that more than Turkey has,” said Robert Maguire of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington-based watchdog group.

    He has identified four instances of Turkish government or government-linked figures spending often major amounts of money at Trump businesses ― two of them soon after the violence by Erdogan’s bodyguards in Washington.

    and its associates have also established relationships with Trump-world figures like Lewandowski, Giuliani and Bennett. The Turkish government previously employed Ballard Partners, the most connected of the Trump-era lobbying firms, but that relationship ended last year, company official Jamie Rubin told HuffPost. (Rubin served as assistant secretary of state in President Bill Clinton’s administration.)

    Trump, during the course of his presidency, has consistently batted away critiques of Erdogan’s heavy-handedness and made decisions like his move to pull out U.S. troops in Syria based directly on interactions with his Turkish counterpart.

    “Trump himself is doing Erdogan’s bidding when it comes to transmitting Ankara’s propaganda to the American public,” Tahiroglu said. “He does it better than Erdogan can in The Washington Post.”

    It’s quite possible investigations and lawsuits targeting the president’s personal interests and new scrutiny of friends like Giuliani will reveal a darker reason for his approach.

    “Is Trump himself making these decisions because it’s in the best interests of the American people or because it’s in his financial interests? That is far from clear in a lot of instances and it’s a question that the American people should never have to ask of their elected officials,” Maguire said. [That Turkey has compromised Trump and/or Kushner in some way is also plausible. – SC]

    For Erdogan and Turkey, the risk is that their bet on a narrower base of support will backfire.

    Much more at the link. This is especially telling:

    A former senior congressional aide who witnessed meetings with top Turkish government figures in recent years called them “terrible” and “inappropriate.” (The former aide requested anonymity to preserve relationships at their new job.) Ankara’s envoys would become defensive when lawmakers would raise concerns about Turkish behavior and pivot to attacking the U.S. as a bad ally, the former aide said.

    As I noted in the previous iteration, the Turkish trollbots don’t even try to be anything other than openly thuggish.

    See also this recent article about Turkey’s US lobbying.

  6. says

    “Amazing: in @latimes political coverage, Warren, who was an affable professor beloved by her students, gets her opponents’ attacks on her as an ‘elitist’ and her salary mentioned right up top. Meanwhile Pete, who was never a professor, is described as an… ‘affable professor’.

    Of course, both articles were written by white men in Pete’s peer group, @evanhalper and @Noahbierman.”

  8. says

    The Nation – “Turkey’s Other Weapon Against the Kurds: Water”:

    Since the early 2000s, a massive hydropower project in southeastern Turkey has been mired in controversy, moving forward in fits and starts. But as of this past July, construction is finally complete. As the dam and its reservoir become fully operational, the line between hydropower and state power will be washed away. This fall, the violence that followed a sudden, destabilizing withdrawal of US troops from nearby northern Syria captured the world’s attention as it cleared the path for Turkey’s military to dominate the Kurdish opposition.

    Meanwhile, the water slowly rising behind the 442-foot-high, more-than-a-mile-wide wall of the Ilisu Dam across the Tigris River is a less overt sign of that same determination.

    “This dam is a weapon against the lowlands,” said Ulrich Eichelmann, a German ecologist and conservationist and head of the Austrian NGO RiverWatch, over the phone from Vienna. “It was planned and is now being built in a way they can hold back the whole Tigris for a long time. If you see water as a weapon, dams are the new cannons. Iraq has the oil, Turkey has the water, and sometimes, it’s much better to have the water.”

    The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, two of the three longest rivers in the Middle East after the Nile, both originate in Turkey. The Euphrates flows across Turkey, south through the heart of Syria, and into Iraq. Now, both of these storied, sacred, ancient rivers are drying up, and the (once) Fertile Crescent is giving way to arid, cracked ground.

    To some extent, the culprit is climate change. More immediately, the fate and exploitation of these rivers lies with Turkey’s hydropower development and the 41-component project of which the Ilisu Dam is just one part: Dams on the Euphrates have reduced water flow into Syria by an estimated 40 percent in the past 40 years and into Iraq by nearly twice that. With the damming of the Tigris, the last lifeline to this region will also be in Turkey’s grip.

    Downriver, the effects will be water shortage. The Mesopotamian Marshes in Iraq may turn to desert. This region, now a UNESCO World Heritage site, was drained during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 and again by Saddam Hussein in a tactical maneuver to expose his enemies. After Hussein’s ouster, the dikes he had built were torn down in celebration, and the parts of the marshland ecosystem began to return to its previous, verdant state. With the Ilisu’s restricted water flow will come not only ecological repercussions but also a tactical advantage for enemies of the region’s inhabitants.

    Upriver, the problem will be not too little water but an inundation. As with the creation of any major reservoir, bird and fish habitats will be wiped out and the regional climate will be altered. Ecosystems, residential areas, and archaeological sites will be submerged.

    For the past few years, though, one loss has loomed particularly large: the 12,000-year-old settlement of Hasankeyf, a Kurdish heritage site with untold archaeological value, soon to be inundated by Ilisu’s artificial lake.

    In the context of Turkey’s history of imperialism against the Kurds, the impact of this dam-building spree extends well beyond Kurdish Turkey to the entirety of Syria and Iraq. From there, the geopolitical repercussions ripple outward. More than progress, Ilisu is a play for power and domination….

    Much, much more atl.

  9. says

    SPLC – “Stephen Miller’s Affinity for White Nationalism Revealed in Leaked Emails”:

    In the run-up to the 2016 election, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller promoted white nationalist literature, pushed racist immigration stories and obsessed over the loss of Confederate symbols after Dylann Roof’s murderous rampage, according to leaked emails reviewed by Hatewatch.

    The emails, which Miller sent to the conservative website Breitbart News in 2015 and 2016, showcase the extremist, anti-immigrant ideology that undergirds the policies he has helped create as an architect of Donald Trump’s presidency. These policies include reportedly setting arrest quotas for undocumented immigrants, an executive order effectively banning immigration from five Muslim-majority countries and a policy of family separation at refugee resettlement facilities that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said is causing “intense trauma” in children.

    In this, the first of what will be a series about those emails, Hatewatch exposes the racist source material that has influenced Miller’s visions of policy. That source material, as laid out in his emails to Breitbart, includes white nationalist websites, a “white genocide”-themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in “Mein Kampf.”

    Hatewatch reviewed more than 900 previously private emails Miller sent to Breitbart editors from March 4, 2015, to June 27, 2016. Miller does not converse along a wide range of topics in the emails. His focus is strikingly narrow – more than 80 percent of the emails Hatewatch reviewed relate to or appear on threads relating to the subjects of race or immigration. Hatewatch made multiple attempts to reach the White House for a comment from Miller about the content of his emails but did not receive any reply.

    Miller’s perspective on race and immigration across the emails is repetitious. When discussing crime, which he does scores of times, Miller focuses on offenses committed by nonwhites. On immigration, he touches solely on the perspective of severely limiting or ending nonwhite immigration to the United States. Hatewatch was unable to find any examples of Miller writing sympathetically or even in neutral tones about any person who is nonwhite or foreign-born.

    Miller has gained a reputation for attempting to keep his communications secret: The Washington Post reported in August that Miller “rarely puts anything in writing, eschewing email in favor of phone calls.” The Daily Beast noted in July that Miller has recently “cut off regular contact with most of his allies” outside the Trump administration to limit leaks.

    Miller used his government email address as an aide to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions in the emails Hatewatch reviewed. He sent the majority of the emails Hatewatch examined before he joined Trump’s campaign in January 2016 and while he was still working for Sessions….

    …

    Katie McHugh, who was an editor for Breitbart from April 2014 to June 2017, leaked the emails to Hatewatch in June to review, analyze and disseminate to the public. McHugh was 23 when she started at Breitbart and also became active in the anti-immigrant movement, frequently rubbing shoulders with white nationalists. McHugh was fired from Breitbart in 2017 after posting anti-Muslim tweets. She has since renounced the far right.

    McHugh told Hatewatch that Breitbart editors introduced her to Miller in 2015 with an understanding he would influence the direction of her reporting….

    “What Stephen Miller sent to me in those emails has become policy at the Trump administration,” McHugh told Hatewatch….

    Lengthy discussion of the emails follows.

  10. says

    ABC – “US troops at Syria base say they’ll keep pressure on IS”:

    At a base in eastern Syria, a senior U.S. coalition commander said Monday that American troops who remain in Syria are redeploying to bases, including in some new locations, and working with the Kurdish-led forces to keep up the pressure on the Islamic State militants and prevent the extremists from resurging or breaking out of prisons.

    The commander, Air Force Maj. Gen. Eric T. Hill, said even though Bradley armored vehicles have arrived in eastern Syria, the mission’s focus has not changed. He said the “force mix,” including the mechanized armored vehicles deployed in Syria for the first time since the war against IS, has an array of capabilities to deny IS the chance to regroup.

    “The mission still continues. And Daesh is trying to resurge wherever they can,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the group. He said the forces have captured 700 IS fighters since its last territorial holding fell in March. “We’ve destroyed many and war remnants and we continue to do so as we find them.”

    Speaking at a remote base in Syria where the Bradleys arrived last week, he said “our primary way that we do that” is through working with the U.S. partners, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

    The deployment of the mechanized force comes after US troops pulled out from northeastern Syria, making way for a Turkish offensive against Kurdish fighters that began last month. Only several miles away from the base, fighting between Turkish-allied fighters and the SDF was ongoing, despite a cease-fire that has so far curbed the Turkish invasion but didn’t end the violence.

    Smoke billowed in the distance, visible from across a major highway that has become a de-facto frontier between Turkish-held areas and areas where U.S. troops are going to operate. An SDF official on the scene said Turkish shelling was continuing.

    Further north, three car bombs went off Monday in the town of Qamishli, killing at least six people while a priest was shot dead. IS claimed responsibility for the attack that killed the Armenian Catholic priest and his father as they drove from Qamishli to the city of Hassakeh, in a sign that the extremists still have reach.

    …

    Hill said while some troops are going home or withdrawing to Iraq, others are redeploying to Qamishli area, Deir el-Zour and Derik, an area where no U.S. bases were before.

    …

    If the U.S. insists its mission is still fighting IS, for the Kurds their priority has now shifted. It is time for the alliance with the U.S. to bear political fruit, said Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the SDF, who was present at one of the bases.

    He said keeping the oil in the hands of his forces was a good card for political negotiations.

    “Here in northeast Syria, we are part of the total picture that is dealing with a crisis and requires finding a track for a political resolution,” Bali said. “The presence of the U.S. forces, a military weight, will have a positive role in finding a political way out.”

    Pentagon officials have stressed that securing oil facilities was a way to ensure that the Kurdish fighters maintain control of an important source of revenue.

    One of the bases visited by journalists Monday was close to oil fields, but there was no way of telling if there was an increase of security around the facilities. While one base was provided with the Bradley vehicles, Apache helicopters had moved in to another, apparently from a base dismantled further north.

    U.S. officials say the enhanced presence of Apaches and artillery are a deterrent to any hostile forces in the area.

    …

    At the base, soldiers said the troop presence also secures other infrastructure, such as water facilities and major highways.

    Hill said the continued U.S. presence is also to assist and train Kurdish-led forces, including in securing prisons where over 10,000 IS militants are held. The U.S. does not guard the facilities but helps the Kurdish forces do so.

    “One of the missions that we will continue to support with the Syrian Democratic Forces is to contain the prisons and make sure that all the prisoners that are under SDF control remain in those prisons and secure,” he said.

  11. says

    SC @6, thanks for posting that. I hadn’t realized how dire the situation is.

    […] Dams on the Euphrates have reduced water flow into Syria by an estimated 40 percent in the past 40 years and into Iraq by nearly twice that. With the damming of the Tigris, the last lifeline to this region will also be in Turkey’s grip. […]

  13. says

    “EXCL: @Channel4News News can reveal Lib Dem candidate @ThatTimWalker has taken unilateral decision to stand down in Labour marginal seat of Canterbury. This is personal decision by Tim Walker to back Labour remain candidate @RosieDuffield1 and NOT a national policy by the LibDems.”

  14. says

    From Wonkette:

    If Donald Trump’s campaign was really doing NO COLLUSION with Russia, it sure as hell wasn’t for lack of trying. Testimony from Steve Bannon and Rick Gates conclusively establishes that the Trump campaign believed they were working with Wikileaks through Roger Stone to get the stolen DNC emails released.

    Maybe Roger Stone was lying about having a conduit to Wikileaks, although he and that loon Jerome Corsi correctly “predicted” that it would soon be John Podesta’s “time in the barrel.” And perhaps the Trump campaign didn’t realize that Kremlin-backed hackers had broken into the DNC server. Although Rick Gates testified that just days before his famous plea for Hillary Clinton’s emails, “Russia, if you’re listening,” Trump hung up the phone after speaking to Roger Stone and announced that Wikileaks was going to dump more stolen Clinton dirt.

    But Steve Bannon testified that the campaign thought Stone had a conduit to Julian Assange and viewed Stone as their “access point” to Wikileaks, and Manafort’s lackey Rick Gates testified that both Manafort and Bannon were in regular contact with Stone about upcoming email dumps. So pretty clearly, THEY WERE TRYING TO COLLUDE.

    But, but, but … Roger Stone is not on trial for NO COLLUSION. He’s charged with lying to Congress and intimidating witness Randy Credico, the guy he tried to finger as his intermediary to Wikileaks to throw the feds off Jerome Corsi’s trail. And somehow those wily federales worked it out, even though Stone and Corsi deleted all their texts and tried to wipe their hard drives. […]

    On or about April 9, 2018, STONE wrote in an email to [Credico], “You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.” STONE also said he would “take that dog away from you,” referring to [Credico’s] dog. On or about the same day, STONE wrote to [Credico], “I am so ready. Let’s get it on. Prepare to die cocksucker.”

    Stone’s lawyers spent several minutes this afternoon trying to convince Judge Amy Berman Jackson that the government failed to prove that Stone ever had an intermediary, and how can you lie about someone who may or may not exist — an oblique reference to the fact that the case against Jerome Corsi was dropped. But Her Honor wasn’t having any of that shit. […]

  16. says

    From Dahlia Lithwick:

    Books! What a democracy-enhancing concept! In one sense, committing one’s ideas to tangible print is a delightfully 18th-century means of bringing about social change. But in another, it might just be the most self-enriching, self-absorbed, and ephemeral play of the Trump era. This week alone, Nikki Haley has a new book out, and Donald Trump Jr. also has a new book out. An anonymous Trump official has a book due out Nov. 19. And John Bolton has a new book deal. […]

    These books are not necessarily about saving the country. Take, for example, Bolton, Trump’s hawkish former national security adviser, who reportedly just reached a $2 million deal with Simon & Schuster for a book to come out next year. Now, Bolton could certainly serve his nation right now by confirming what Fiona Hill has testified to regarding the effort to extort Ukrainian assistance in cooking up oppo research for Trump in advance of the 2020 election. […] Except he has declined to testify, and presumably will not until a federal judge reaches a decision compelling him to do so, a decision that will be appealed and then appealed again and may come long after the impeachment trial has wrapped. For Bolton, the constitutional imperative lies in locking down the book deal.

    Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis also wrote a tell-all book, published earlier this year, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead. But, as Mattis later told Jeffrey Goldberg, editor in chief of the Atlantic, it was really more of a tell-some: He didn’t actually tell everything because “If you leave an administration, you owe some silence,” so that those entrusted to keep us secure can “carry out their duties without me adding my criticism to the cacophony that is right now so poisonous.” As my colleague Fred Kaplan points out, “Mattis’ strategic straddling raises serious questions about the dual obligations of those who leave office over not only disagreements about the president’s policies but also deep concerns about the direction in which he’s taking the country.” […]

    Indeed Mattis’ former chief speechwriter, Guy Snodgrass, also has a new book out. He’s the author of Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis, which he describes as a “firsthand account of what it was really like behind the scenes and what it was really like to serve alongside Secretary Mattis.” […]

    Now John Kelly has not gotten a book deal yet, but he reportedly uses the threat of his future book deal to ensure that Donald Trump doesn’t go after him personally. Apparently the former chief of staff assured his boss that while he would eventually write a book about his time in the White House, he’d wait until Trump was out of office. So long as Trump doesn’t denigrate him first. Some use books to ease the conscience. Others use them to keep Trump at bay. You know, party before Country. Brand above All. […]

    None of this should surprise us. Pocketing cash to build brand identity is, of course, the raison d’être of this entire presidency. Ivanka is hawking kitten heels in the guise of “female empowerment,” Don Jr. is peddling white resentment in the guise of a paean to free speech. Their father violates federal ethics rules to move their product. Everyone stays at a Trump property!

    But as Junior perhaps best illustrates, a book is also the sole remaining way to perform a mass monologue, while pretending to be in conversation, all while still making money. That is all, at bottom, a sad commentary on the state of the current media. Even the most powerful brands on Twitter and television are reduced to moving dusty old book units in order to turn a profit in 2019. If you want to monetize your name, the good old-fashioned book deal is still the gold standard.

    But there’s the rub: In spite of all of this, “books” have somehow retained their vestigial illusion of seriousness and sobriety and adherence to truth and higher values. But these books aren’t penned to make us a better polity, to bring us face to face with our better angels, or to illuminate and elucidate democratic values. They’re branding opportunities for an age of media personalities. This is George Orwell, if Orwell had slowly built an international luxury bedding empire, with 1984 as just one rung on the ladder.

    The entire article is well worth reading.

  17. says

    Guardian – “Revealed: Tory councillors posted Islamophobic content on social media”:

    Twenty-five sitting and former Conservative councillors have been exposed for posting Islamophobic and racist material on social media, according to a dossier obtained by the Guardian that intensifies the row over anti-Muslim sentiment in the party.

    The disclosure that 15 current and 10 former Tory councillors have posted, shared or endorsed Islamophobic or other racist content on Facebook or Twitter will increase pressure on Boris Johnson after he backtracked on a pledge to hold an independent inquiry into the issue.

    Inflammatory posts recorded in the dossier, which has been sent to the party’s headquarters, include calls for mosques to be banned, claims the faith wants to “turn the world Muslim”, referring to its followers as “barbarians” and “the enemy within”.

    In 2017, one councillor, who has been pictured with Johnson, endorsed a suggestion that all aid to Africa helping feed starving people should stop, allowing “mother nature take her course”. She replied: “It’s nature’s way of depopulation.”

    The dossier was compiled by @matesjacob, an anonymous Twitter user who campaigns against racism. After being presented with the posts by the Guardian the Conservative party suspended all those who are still members pending an investigation.

    The news come days after Johnson made a U-turn on a pledge for the Conservative party to hold an independent inquiry into Islamophobia, instead saying the party would have “general investigation into prejudice of all kinds”.

    The cabinet minister Michael Gove had previously said the party would “absolutely” hold an “independent inquiry into Islamophobia … before the end of the year”. It follows repeated warnings about prejudice against Muslims being perpetrated in the party’s ranks and investigations by the Guardian shedding light on Islamophobia in the Conservatives.

    Among the series of instances in the dossier verified by the Guardian were posts from:…

    Much more atl.

  18. says

    A discussion of how Trump undercuts the defenses his loyal Republican followers offer:

    […] Trump’s propagandists have a problem. Some of them badly want to argue there was nothing wrong with Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine, because he merely wanted that country to clean up its legacy of corruption.

    In this telling, by using the funding as leverage to produce better outcomes in Ukraine, Trump was acting in the national interest.

    But Trump himself has other ideas. He is unabashedly arguing that, yes, he absolutely did want Ukraine to investigate one of his leading 2020 campaign rivals — Joe Biden — because, after all, Biden is indeed corrupt. And that undercuts the GOP’s generic-corruption spin.

    […] An important element of the House GOP argument is that “Trump holds a deep-seated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption.” The memo repeatedly casts doubt on whether Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate Biden.

    But then Trump promptly undercut all that by tweeting that, yes, he did want Ukraine to investigate Biden. […]

    […] “I have an ‘obligation’ to look into corruption, and Biden’s actions, on tape, about firing the prosecutor,” Trump added. […]

    At times, Trump has been even more direct than this. On Oct. 3, after the White House released the call summary, which showed Trump explicitly naming Biden as a target of the investigations he wanted, Trump reiterated this right in the faces of reporters:

    QUESTION: Mr. President, what exactly did you hope Zelensky would do about the Bidens after your phone call? Exactly.
    THE PRESIDENT: Well, I would think that, if they were honest about it, they’d start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer.

    Trump thinks he’s hatched a way to say this without undercutting the idea that he wanted Ukraine to investigate corruption more broadly. […] Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) offered a particularly convoluted version on “Meet the Press,” claiming that Trump is exonerated because he genuinely believed Biden was corrupt.

    It’s based on lies

    […] The first lie is that Biden was corrupt. That’s based on claims about Biden trying to oust a prosecutor because he was investigating Burisma, Biden’s son’s company, that have been debunked as a purely fabricated narrative.

    The second lie is that Trump didn’t pressure the Ukrainian president. This is nonsense in every which way: In the call, Trump demanded this “favor” right after Zelensky asked for military aid. Those released texts show Ukrainian officials fully understood that good relations with Trump depended on carrying out his political dirty deeds. They knew they were being pressured.

    What’s more, Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani […] repeatedly conveyed through public and private channels that Ukraine had to launch the investigation of Biden that Trump wanted. And Ambassador Gordon Sondland admitted he told a top Zelensky aide that the aid probably wouldn’t be forthcoming until he committed to doing Trump’s bidding.

    The knee-slapping absurdity is that Trump cared about generic corruption in Ukraine. […] Among other things, before Trump froze the aid, his own State and Defense departments certified that Ukraine had made “substantial actions” toward “decreasing corruption” and recommended the aid go forward.

    Heck, Giuliani and Trump stated over and over again going back to at least May that Biden, and not generic corruption, was their intended target.

    Trump’s confession is right in his political ad
    All of this points to a crowning absurdity hiding right in plain sight. The whole point of this scheme all along was to damage Biden. We know this because Giuliani (who acted at Trump’s direction) told us so, claiming in May that getting Ukraine to investigate Biden would be “very helpful to my client.”

    Indeed, this confession can be found right in the ad that Trump ran, backed by $10 million, which enshrines that entirely fabricated narrative about Biden in 30 seconds: [Ad available at the link]
    […]

  20. says

    “NEW: Trump has discussed firing the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson. The president believes Atkinson was disloyal when he deemed the whistleblower’s complaint credible and reported it to Congress. #déjàvu?”

    NYT link atl.

  21. says

    “On the litany of ‘Dumbest Fascists’, these are islamaphobic Polish nationalists, marching in Warsaw- propagating the lunatic, oddly popular, conspiracy theory that Jews all want to move to Poland to steal their houses

    And doing it while culturally appropriating the intifada

    Imagine, the dumbfuck hill that was climbed. A group who viscerally loathes Muslims and refuses to accept refugees, invoking the Palestinian struggle because they imagine that descendants of Holocaust survivors want to go live en masse in the place their ancestors were murdered

    Fortunately righteous Polish anti-fascists were out in the street to challenge this. (photos by Gabi von Seltmann)

    The Yiddish banner reads ‘For Your Freedom and Ours'”

    Photos atl.

  22. says

    Eric Boehlert at Daily Kos – “Memo to media: Don’t screw up the impeachment hearings”:

    Four months after the Beltway press badly failed in its coverage of special counsel Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony on the Russia scandal, the D.C. press corps has a chance at redemption this week with the first public impeachment hearings of Donald Trump. Hopefully, newsrooms will be up to the important task at hand.

    “The stakes don’t get much higher when it comes to fulfilling [journalists’] core mission: informing citizens of what they really need to know,” wrote Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan. Agreed. And here are simple instructions for the impeachment hearings coverage: Don’t Both Sides it with lots of phony false equivalencies. Don’t treat it as theater. Don’t obsess over optics. And don’t pretend Republicans making wild, hollow, conspiratorial claims in defense of Trump are serious people.

    …

    Journalists are already keenly aware that there’s mountainous evidence, mostly coming from officials who worked in the Trump administration, that an attempted bribery of Ukraine took place. They also know that Republicans have been utterly incoherent with the various Trump defenses they have tried to float, including the claim that the White House is too inept to pull off an international bribery scheme. So it’s imperative that news reports do not pretend the hearings revolve around a Both Sides claim, or that it’s just not possible to tell which side is dealing with established facts and which side is basically making stuff up.

    The press needs to redeem itself with the hearings this week because the way journalists covered Mueller’s day of hearings in July was largely a disgrace, as the press gleefully echoed GOP spin about what a supposed bust the event was. Within hours of the two Mueller hearings ending that day, journalists followed Trump’s lead and announced that the day’s events had been a “flop,” and that he had emerged the clear winner.

    When Democrats hold gravely serious hearings, journalists inexplicably don their theater criticism caps and judge the inquiry based on its entertainment value….

    [examples follow – I had forgotten how bad some of it was – SC]

    Looking ahead, I’m cautiously optimistic that the impeachment hearings coverage will be better than the failed Mueller hearing coverage, in part because the two investigations are so different. The Russia probe headed by Mueller mostly took place behind closed doors and unfolded over two years….

    In truth, the Mueller report was a sweeping and damning indictment of Trump, but it took weeks for that accurate picture to emerge, thereby giving the White House a chance to create a false “exonerated” narrative. By comparison, the Ukraine story has been unraveling at a rapid clip and mostly in public view. That means the press has a very clear picture of the scandal and the confirmed misdeeds that have occurred, and journalists can see right through White House attempts to obfuscate. That means a Barr press release isn’t going to work this time.

    I’m also cautiously optimistic because the press understands the impeachment hearings are an ongoing process. When it came to the Mueller hearing everyone knew it was only going to last one day, and therefore the press put a weird pressure on Democrats to create some kind of stunning theatrical moment during that single hearing.

    For the record, I’m not expecting a series of a-ha moments in coming weeks, the way there were during the Watergate impeachment hearings. (Think of when Alexander Butterfield revealed that Nixon had recorded conversations inside the Oval Office.) This is mostly because back then, Republican members of Congress as well as Republican voters were open to being persuaded. They were willing to listen to the evidence, listen to witnesses (most of whom worked for Nixon), and were willing to concede that their president may have been a crook. None of that, of course, applies to today. Just recently, Sen. Lindsay Graham announced he had “made up my mind” about impeachment, even before the public hearings began, and before a trial was conducted in the Senate.

    That will certainly be the Fox News perspective this week, as they report a parallel universe depiction of the hearings. It’s up to real news outlets to give Americans a true picture of the incredibly important impeachment process.

  25. says

    “WOW: Angry over sanction threat, #Erdogan threatened today EU with unleashing captive #ISIS terrorists in #Turkey and #Syria as well as 4 million refugees to Europe, said EU may take this threat lightly but he said it before and means it, he will open the door for ISIS.”

    He’s now landed in the US.

  27. says

    Daniel Dale:

    It’s rare that Trump gets a critical question in front of a big crowd. Here’s how he responded:

    Trump is taking questions. Told that the trade war is hurting various sectors, Trump says, “They haven’t been hurt. You know they were totally down. Now they’re a little bit down. Because a little bit, perhaps, the uncertainty of trade wars – but there is no uncertainty.”

  28. says

    Jim Sciutto:

    Today, Rick Gates contradicted Trump’s written answers to Mueller’s questions.

    Trump said he did not “recall” any conversations with Roger Stone re WikiLeaks & he first learned about the hacked emails “at or shortly after the time it became the subject of media reporting.”

    Former deputy campaign chair Gates testified that he was riding in a Chevy Suburban from LaGuardia Airport in New York in mid-2016 when Trump took a late-evening phone call from Stone, where the pair apparently discussed WikiLeaks’ planned release of hacked Democratic emails.

    “After Mr. Trump got off the phone with Mr. Stone, what did Mr. Trump say?” prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky asked Gates. “He indicated more information would be coming,” Gates responded, in testimony at Stone’s criminal trial in Washington.

    Gates said two secret service agents also witnessed the call. The call happened days after WikiLeaks’ first release on July 22, 2016, of emails the Russian military hacked from the Democratic National Committee.

    This testimony was redacted from Mueller report since Stone trial was still to come.

    Can it still be credibly claimed the Mueller report presented the full picture of Trump’s knowledge of 2016 Russian interference?

  29. says

    Quite an oped by Bill Taylor, the first impeachment witness – “Ukraine’s Committed Partner”:

    …I see this energy, these new ideas, this willingness to explore possibilities within Ukraine’s new government. I see it in civil society, among independent journalists and activists, and in the business community. And the United States stands side by side with the people and government of Ukraine, ready to help Ukraine achieve its goals: halting Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and cementing Ukraine’s place in the Euro-Atlantic community.

    The United States is firmly committed to Ukraine’s success – your success is our success. We will not allow Russia to dismantle the international order that was painstakingly built after World War II. The concepts of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and peaceful resolution of disputes benefit all nations. And Russia’s war against Ukraine shreds the international norms that kept peace and enabled prosperity for decades.

    The United States continues to provide weapons, training, and equipment to Ukraine’s armed forces. And we continue to impose sanctions on Russia for its illegal actions in Ukraine. As Secretary Pompeo has said, the United States will maintain sanctions against Russia until the Russian government returns control of Crimea to Ukraine and leaves Donbas.

    Meanwhile, we also continue to support the Ukrainian people in efforts to defeat corruption within Ukraine. Ukraine must win this battle, too, as it integrates further into the Euro-Atlantic community.

    …

    Ukraine has made progress toward these goals recently….

    …

    But as everyone who promotes democracy knows, strengthening and protecting democratic values is a constant process, requiring persistence and steady work by both officials and ordinary citizens. As in all democracies, including the United States, work remains in Ukraine, especially to strengthen rule of law and to hold accountable those who try to subvert Ukraine’s structures to serve their personal aims, rather than the nation’s interests.

    I’m optimistic about Ukraine’s strength, dynamism, and progress. The Ukrainians I have met are aware of the challenges and are working to tackle them. And these Ukrainians – working to build a better future for the children of Ukraine from Sumy to Sevastopol and from to Lviv to Luhansk – can count on the United States’ committed partnership and support.

  30. says

    David Corn in MoJo – “As Trump Attacks, Death Threats Against the Whistleblower and His Lawyers Increase”:

    In the past two weeks, as the House impeachment inquiry has proceeded, President Donald Trump has ramped up his public attacks on the US government whistleblower who triggered the scandal, and in this stretch the flow of threats, including death threats, directed at the whistleblower and his private attorneys has intensified. According to a source close to the legal team, “threats, including physical harm, and harassment have definitely increased.” The source adds, “Law enforcement is involved.”

    Since September 20, Trump has tweeted almost 100 times about the whistleblower. And the pace has quickened in the past week, with Trump zeroing in on the whistleblower on 16 occasions. Trump has assailed the whistleblower as a traitor and deep state operative. In remarks made at the US mission to the United Nations on September 27, Trump compared the whistleblower to a “spy,” and added, “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? With spies and treason, right?” This was a clear reference to execution: This guy deserves to die. In recent tweets, Trump has approvingly quoted his defenders, who have accused the whistleblower of being corrupt and conspiring with Democrats to topple Trump, and Trump has blasted the whistleblower’s attorneys as “fake.” On Monday, Trump tweeted: “the Whistleblower, his lawyer and Corrupt politician Schiff should be investigated for fraud!”

    Trump’s remarks and tweets—and those of his amen choir—have arguably placed a target on the whistleblower. On Monday, Joe diGenova, a former US prosecutor who, with his wife, Victoria Toensing, has provided advice to Trump, unleashed a massive amount of vitriol on the whistleblower. During a radio interview, diGenova exclaimed, “He worked at the CIA, and he is part of a political assassination. It’s now underway, and all of the listeners should realize that that’s what this is about. This is a fraud on the Constitution and a fraud on the American people.” DiGenova referred to the whistleblower with a name that has been reported in an online conservative publication (and not confirmed) but then said, “Okay, we won’t identify him.” He added, “his name is as follows: John Wilkes Booth.”

    Equating a US government whistleblower, who followed the rules and whose complaint was deemed legitimate by the inspector general of the intelligence community, to a presidential assassin was an extreme and cavalier move. The whistleblower’s legal team does worry that such rhetoric raises the danger level for the whistleblower and for them….

    …

    Back in the real world, impeachment is no longer about the whistleblower. His motives, background, political views—none of that matters, given the thousands of pages of testimony and documents that have come out and that depict the actions of Trump, Giuliani, and the rest of the gang. This material, obviously, is not good for Trump and his side. So Trump and his handmaids need to change the channel—and there’s the whistleblower. That’s their target. And they don’t give a damn that when you make someone a target—when you accuse him of mounting a coup, when you call him a threat to democracy, when you compare him to a presidential assassin—that can send a very serious and dangerous message.

  34. johnson catman says

    re SC @31: There are no god-damned words to express how fucking stupid The Orange Toddler-Tyrant is. What a rambling and utterly foolish “response”. If there is a single thing in that mess that comes even close to coherency or truth, I don’t recognize it. I am dumber for having read it.

  35. tomh says

    @ #32
    That’s the thing, people see a clip or a sentence from Trump in the news and it sounds coherent. It’s only when one sees or listens to an entire answer like this one that you realize how unhinged he really is. Too many people don’t realize that he is completely untethered from reality.

  36. says

    Adam Schiff:

    Impeachment inquiry hearings next week:

    Tuesday morning: Jennifer Williams and Alexander Vindman
    Tuesday afternoon: Kurt Volker and Tim Morrison

    Wednesday morning: Gordon Sondland
    Wednesday afternoon: Laura Cooper and David Hale

    Thursday: Fiona Hill

    More details to come.

  38. says

    Reuters – “U.S. has no intention of ending alliance with Syrian Kurdish fighters: official”:

    The United States has no intention to end its alliance with Syrian Kurdish SDF militia, a senior administration official said on Tuesday, effectively pushing back on Ankara’s demand that Washington stop supporting the fighters it sees as hostile.

    “There is no intention for that cooperation to end,” A senior administration official told a conference call ahead of a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday.

  39. tomh says

    NYT:
    E.P.A. to Limit Science Used to Write Public Health Rules
    By Lisa Friedman
    Nov. 11, 2019

    WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to significantly limit the scientific and medical research that the government can use to determine public health regulations, overriding protests from scientists and physicians who say the new rule would undermine the scientific underpinnings of government policymaking.

    A new draft of the Environmental Protection Agency proposal, titled Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science, would require that scientists disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, before the agency could consider an academic study’s conclusions. E.P.A. officials called the plan a step toward transparency and said the disclosure of raw data would allow conclusions to be verified independently.
    […]

    The measure would make it more difficult to enact new clean air and water rules because many studies detailing the links between pollution and disease rely on personal health information gathered under confidentiality agreements. And, unlike a version of the proposal that surfaced in early 2018, this one could apply retroactively to public health regulations already in place.

    “This means the E.P.A. can justify rolling back rules or failing to update rules based on the best information to protect public health and the environment, which means more dirty air and more premature deaths,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.

    Public health experts warned that studies that have been used for decades — to show, for example, that mercury from power plants impairs brain development, or that lead in paint dust is tied to behavioral disorders in children — might be inadmissible when existing regulations come up for renewal.

    For instance, a groundbreaking 1993 Harvard University project that definitively linked polluted air to premature deaths, currently the foundation of the nation’s air-quality laws, could become inadmissible. When gathering data for their research, known as the Six Cities study, scientists signed confidentiality agreements to track the private medical and occupational histories of more than 22,000 people in six cities. They combined that personal data with home air-quality data to study the link between chronic exposure to air pollution and mortality.

    But the fossil fuel industry and some Republican lawmakers have long criticized the analysis and a similar study by the American Cancer Society, saying the underlying data sets of both were never made public, preventing independent analysis of the conclusions.

    The change is part of a broader administration effort to weaken the scientific underpinnings of policymaking. Senior administration officials have tried to water down the testimony of government scientists, publicly chastised scientists who have dissented from President Trump’s positions and blocked government researchers from traveling to conferences to present their work.

    In this case, the administration is taking aim at public health studies conducted outside the government that could justify tightening regulations on smog in the air, mercury in water, lead in paint and other potential threats to human health.

    Scott Pruitt, the former administrator of the E.P.A., had made publication of underlying scientific data a top priority and tried to rush a proposal through the regulatory system in 2018. Mr. Pruitt resigned that July, and his successor, Mr. Wheeler, delayed the transparency rule and suggested the E.P.A. needed time to address the chorus of opposition from environmental and public health groups.

    But a draft of the revised regulation headed for White House review and obtained by The New York Times shows that the administration intends to widen its scope, not narrow it.

    The previous version of the regulation would have applied only to a certain type of research, “dose-response” studies in which levels of toxicity are studied in animals or humans. The new proposal would require access to the raw data for virtually every study that the E.P.A. considers.

    “E.P.A. is proposing a broader applicability,” the new regulation states, saying that open data should not be limited to certain types of studies.

    Most significantly, the new proposal would apply retroactively. A separate internal E.P.A. memo viewed by The New York Times shows that the agency had considered, but ultimately rejected, an option that might have allowed foundational studies like Harvard’s Six Cities study to continue to be used.
    […]

    Mr. Pruitt’s original proposal drew nearly 600,000 comments, the vast majority of them in opposition. Among them were leading public health groups and some of the country’s top scientific organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
    […]

    The new version does not appear to have taken any of the opposition into consideration. At a meeting of the agency’s independent science advisory board this summer, Mr. Wheeler said he was “a little shocked” at the amount of opposition to the proposal, but he was committed to finalizing it. Beyond retroactivity, the latest version stipulates that all data and models used in studies under consideration at the E.P.A. would have to be made available to the agency so it can reanalyze research itself. The politically appointed agency administrator would have wide-ranging discretion over which studies to accept or reject.
    […]

    The Six Cities study and a 1995 American Cancer Society analysis of 1.2 million people that confirmed the Harvard findings appear to be the inspiration of the regulation.

    “The original goal was to stop E.P.A. from relying on these two studies unless the data is made public,” said Steven J. Milloy, a member of Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. transition team who runs Junkscience.org, a website that questions established climate change science and contends particulate matter in smog does not harm human health.

    He dismissed concerns that the new rule could be used to unravel existing regulations, but he said he did expect it to prevent pollution rules from getting tougher.

    “The reality is, standards are not going to be tightened as long as there’s a Republican in office,” he said.

  40. KG says

    SC@29,

    Here in the UK we’re getting His Dark Materials on BBC – first two episodes (of eight, covering only the first book) excellent, and very close to the book. You can get it if you have HBO. I’ve read The Man in the High Castle twice, but can’t really imagine that an adaptation which gets to Series 4 really has much to do with the book!

  41. says

    On Saturday, I linked to this piece by Ahmet Altan in the Guardian: “I’m free but my friends still languish in Turkish jails.”

    He wrote that he knew he might still be re-arrested.

    Yesterday, “Outrage after Turkish journalist re-arrested a week after his release”:

    Turkish police have rearrested the journalist and novelist Ahmet Altan, just a week after his release from prison over alleged links to the failed 2016 coup.

    Altan and another veteran journalist, Nazlı Ilıcak, were released on 4 November despite having been convicted of “helping a terrorist group”.

    The Istanbul court sentenced Altan to more than 10 years in jail but ruled that he and Ilıcak should be released under supervision after time already served – around three years each. They were forbidden to leave the country.

    But an arrest warrant was issued on Tuesday after the chief public prosecutor appealed against the decision to release Altan, state news agency Anadolu said.

    …

    Amnesty International’s Europe director, Marie Struthers, lambasted the “scandalous” move. “It is impossible to see this decision as anything other than further punishment for his determination not to be silenced and it compounds an already shocking catalogue of injustice he has been subjected to,” he said.

    Karin Karlekar, PEN America’s director of Free Expression at Risk Programs, described Altan’s re-arrest as “a disgrace and a horror” and called for his immediate release.

    “Ahmet should never have been imprisoned to begin with; he has committed no crime. His release last week after more than three years in detention was a cause for hopeful celebration, but today we are faced again with the cruelty of a justice system that no longer upholds the rule of law,” she said.

  42. says

    Reuters – “Turkey removes four more Kurdish mayors over alleged terror links”:

    Turkey removed four more mayors on Wednesday as part of a widening government crackdown on the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), bringing to 20 the number of mayors who have been dismissed after being elected earlier this year.

    President Tayyip Erdogan and his government accuse the HDP of having links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, leading to prosecutions of thousands of its members and some leaders. The HDP denies such links.

    Turkey’s interior ministry appointed local governors in place of the mayors in the two districts of Diyarbakir, the largest city in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast. Two mayors from districts of Sirnak and Tunceli provinces were also removed.

    The HDP governs many cities in the southeast of Turkey and typically appoints one male and one female co-mayor to promote gender equality.

    The former co-leaders of the HDP have both been jailed since 2016 on terrorism charges, with several other prominent members accused of supporting terrorism over what the government says are links to the PKK.

    The moves against the HDP come amid a Turkish military offensive in neighboring Syria against the YPG Kurdish militia, which Ankara also accuses of ties to the PKK.

    The HDP is the only party in the Turkish parliament that opposed the offensive in northeast Syria that began on Oct. 9.

  43. says

    KG @ #38, I haven’t read the book so I can’t pinpoint the moment when that part ended, but, yes, my understanding is that the series had to move beyond it a while back. Interestingly, the executive producer is his daughter, Isa Dick Hackett, who’s worked to ensure that this final season is consistent with his vision. (I read an article about it several months ago, but can’t find it now.)

    I’ll check out His Dark Materials!

  44. says

    The morning cable news shows seem to have misread Eric Boehlert’s advice @ #20 above as a how-to guide.

    Josh Marshall: “He used extortion to get a foreign country to sabotage a US election in his favor. What else is there to say?”

  45. johnson catman says

    Hillary Clinton says ‘many, many people’ urging her to run in 2020

    No. No, they are not. Maybe a few oligarchs want you to run, but us regular people absofuckinglutely DO NOT WANT YOU TO RUN.

  46. says

    Adam Klasfeld:

    Some personal news:

    In a naked attempt at journalist intimidation, a pro-Erdogan outlet reputed to be a mouthpiece of Turkey’s ruling party published an editorial yesterday essentially branding me a terrorist.

    The unsigned op-ed in @DailySabah calls me an “American reporter who is known for his coverage of the Halkbank trials in New York and carrying out the activities of FETÖ within the scope of uncovering Turkey’s lobbying activities in the U.S.”

    FETÖ is short for Fethullahist Terrorist Organization.

    The purported terroristic activity Sabah accuses me of is tabulating the Turkish government’s ballooning lobbying expenditures in the United States (especially to Trump-linked firms), as revealed in my country’s public records.

    Classic shoe-leather journalism.

    This absurd accusation by Turkey’s state-aligned media puts me in the illustrious company of ex-U.S. Attorney @PreetBharara, a sitting federal judge, the best and brightest Turkish journalists, and leading scholars.

    It is something of an honor, if a complicated one.

    Truth be told: I did not know whether to ignore the ravings of a faraway propaganda outlet, but I decided to step forward because too many Turkish journalists are languishing in prison for such preposterous claims.

    As Trump welcomes Erdogan, Turkey holds the record as the world’s leading press jailer.

    During their White House powwow, Trump should demand that Erdogan end his war against the press internationally.

    Instead, both leaders will likely remain united against the media and the so-called “deep state.” (A Turkish concept)

    This is the investigation into the Erdogan government’s U.S. lobbying expenditures his state-aligned press depicts as an act of terrorism.

    You should read it here,…

    His article is linked atl, and at the end of #3 above. Highly recommended.

  47. Akira MacKenzie says

    johnson catman @ 43:

    The only thing that surprises me is that she hasn’t announced sooner. Now that it looks like Biden and the other centrists whores are losing ground to Warren and Sanders, it’s time for the DNC call in the Madame herself.

  51. says

    “Bill Taylor and George Kent could not have been more impressive, nonpartisan, detailed, convincing, patriotic.”

    They’ve just started responding to questions. Nunes actually claimed in his opening statement that basically the FBI, DoJ, and now State Department were involved in some sort of conspiracy to take down Trump.

  52. tomh says

    Federal Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional
    Government Must Have Reasonable Suspicion of Digital Contraband Before Searching People’s Electronic Devices at the U.S. Border

    Electronic Frontier Foundation Press Release
    NOVEMBER 12, 2019

    BOSTON—In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional.

    The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and ACLU of Massachusetts, on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without individualized suspicion at U.S. ports of entry.

    “This ruling significantly advances Fourth Amendment protections for millions of international travelers who enter the United States every year,” said Esha Bhandari, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “By putting an end to the government’s ability to conduct suspicionless fishing expeditions, the court reaffirms that the border is not a lawless place and that we don’t lose our privacy rights when we travel.”

    “This is a great day for travelers who now can cross the international border without fear that the government will, in the absence of any suspicion, ransack the extraordinarily sensitive information we all carry in our electronic devices,” said Sophia Cope, EFF Senior Staff Attorney.

    The district court order puts an end to Customs and Border Control (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asserted authority to search and seize travelers’ devices for purposes far afield from the enforcement of immigration and customs laws. Border officers must now demonstrate individualized suspicion of illegal contraband before they can search a traveler’s device.

    The number of electronic device searches at U.S. ports of entry has increased significantly. Last year, CBP conducted more than 33,000 searches, almost four times the number from just three years prior.

    International travelers returning to the United States have reported numerous cases of abusive searches in recent months. While searching through the phone of Zainab Merchant, a plaintiff in the Alasaad case, a border agent knowingly rifled through privileged attorney-client communications. An immigration officer at Boston Logan Airport reportedly searched an incoming Harvard freshman’s cell phone and laptop, reprimanded the student for friends’ social media postings expressing views critical of the U.S. government, and denied the student entry into the country following the search.

  54. says

    Kyle Cheney:

    WOW: Mid-hearing impeachment inquiry officials announce two new closed depositions.

    Friday: David Holmes
    Saturday: Mark Sandy, an OMB official who refused to appear last week.

    Sandy would the first of 5 OMB officials sought by Democrats to testify and could provide the first crack in their effort to digure out how the hold on military aid was handled at the highest levels of the WH budget office.

    HOLMES, who now works for Bill Taylor, may be the aide Taylor just described who overheard Trump call w/ Sondland on July 26, when Sondland indicated Ukraine was ready to move forward with Biden/2016 investigations.

  59. says

    Laurence Tribe on Kent’s opening statement: “George Kent is doing a marvelous job showing the deep parallel between our assistance to Ukraine in resisting Russian aggression and European assistance to the American colonies in securing our own independence from England.”

    Didn’t think Rochambeau and von Steuben would be making an appearance today, but welcome.

  62. says

    “JUST IN: A source familiar with the matter tells @NBCNews that the Taylor staffer who overheard Sondland’s call with Trump is David Holmes, who was just added to the calendar to testify in closed session Friday.”

    This is the call described @ #46 above.

  67. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 62

    So when is Trump going to get that phone call from the Hague letting him know about the pending war crimes charges?

  68. says

    “Daniel Goldman asked Taylor if he had taken notes of some conversations he had. ‘All of them, Mr. Goldman’.”

    The State Department currently has these notes and refuses to turn them over to the impeachment committees. Taylor mentioned that he thought they might be turned over soon, but I don’t know the source of his optimism.

    (Also, Castor is reminding me of Zoolander and I can’t get it out of my mind.)

  76. says

    SC @55, yeah. And Trump says he “hardly knows the gentleman.” But Sondland can use his unsecured mobile phone to call Trump directly from a café in Europe? And at a time of day that, for Trump, would have been the middle of the night?

  78. says

    Josh Marshall: “Rep Wenstrup now working hard to build up Taylor’s credibility as an apolitical voice.”

    Yeah, not sure they’ve thought this through. Nunes opened the hearing suggesting they were politically motivated to get Trump. The desire to get at Obama and Biden is so strong that they’re drawing Taylor and Kent out on when they disagreed with things in that administration.

  79. says

    “KENT: ‘You can’t promote principled anti-corruption action without pissing off corrupt people’.

    REP. CARSON: ‘Some of those people helped Giuliani smear [the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine]?’

    KENT: ‘Correct’.”

  84. tomh says

    From Lawfare:
    We Read All 2,677 Pages of Ukraine Testimony So You Don’t Have To
    By Margaret Taylor Monday, November 11, 2019, 2:03 PM

    Eight deposition transcripts were released publicly last week, totalling 2,677 pages of sworn testimony.

    To make these voluminous pages more digestible, Lawfare contributors have summarized each of the released eight deposition transcripts. We have published summaries of all eight. The summaries are available below and include links to the relevant deposition transcripts:

    Readable summaries at the link

  90. says

    Shimon Prokupecz:

    Listening to the passion from this prosecutor giving the closing argument at Roger Stone’s trial makes me feel like this moment is about more than Stone. Too bad this isn’t public. It’s really the only moment for these guys to argue publicly what Mueller was investigating.

    This is a remarkable day. In a court of law – blocks from the Capitol, where members of congress are arguing the President should be impeached, prosecutors are arguing that a close associate lied to investigators to protect the President from an investigation.

  91. says

    Both MSNBC and CNN are showing Adam Schiff’s post-hearing press conference and analysis rather than the Trump-Erdoğan appearance, which makes me so happy I could cry. I hope they don’t show the whole thing later.

  93. says

    From the Stone closing arguments:

    Back to Marando, he was referring to Rogow in his own closing saying ‘so what’ to the charges against Stone. “If that’s the state of affairs we’re in I’m pretty shocked. Truth matters. Truth still matters….

    Marando: “I know we live in a world nowadays with Twitter, tweets, social media, where you can find any political view you want. You can find your own truth…

    Marando: “However, in our institution of self government, courts of law, or committee hearings, where people are under oath and have to testify truth still matters and Mr. Stone came in and he lied to Congress, he obstructed their investigation and he tampered with a witness…

    Marando: “And that matters and you don’t look at that and say ‘so what?’ And for those reasons we ask you to find him guilty of the charged offenses.” Then he rests.

  100. tomh says

    WaPo:
    Congress can seek eight years of Trump’s tax records, appeals court rules
    Ann E. Marimow
    November 13, 2019 at 3:53 p.m. PST

    Congress can seek eight years of President Trump’s tax records, according to a federal appeals court order Wednesday that moves the separation-of-powers conflict one step closer to the Supreme Court.

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit let stand an earlier ruling against the president that affirmed Congress’s investigative authority on a day when the House was holding its first public impeachment inquiry hearing.

    Trump’s lawyers have said they are prepared to ask the Supreme Court to intervene in this case and in several other legal battles between the president and Congress.

    The D.C. Circuit was responding Wednesday to Trump’s request to have a full panel of judges rehear a three-judge decision from October that rejected the president’s request to block lawmakers from subpoenaing his longtime accounting firm.

    The order does not mean Trump’s taxes will be turned over to Congress immediately. The D.C. Circuit previously said it would put any ruling against the president on hold for seven days to give Trump’s attorneys time to ask the Supreme Court to step in.

    Trump’s attorneys also are planning to ask the high court as soon as this week to block a similar subpoena for the president’s tax records from the Manhattan district attorney, who is investigating hush-money payments in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The New York-based appeals court ruled against Trump this month and refused to block the subpoena to his accounting firm, Mazars USA.

    The D.C. Circuit case centers on a House Oversight Committee subpoena from March for the president’s accounting firm records — issued months before the beginning of its impeachment inquiry, related to Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.

    The request for information followed testimony from Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen that Trump had exaggerated his wealth when he sought loans. Lawmakers are investigating potential conflicts of interest, including the accuracy of the president’s financial disclosures.

    A divided three-judge panel of the court held in October that the House had issued its subpoena for “legitimate legislative pursuits, not an impermissible law-enforcement purpose,” as the president’s lawyers had argued.

    “Contrary to the President’s arguments, the Committee possesses authority under both the House Rules and the Constitution to issue the subpoena, and Mazars must comply,” wrote Judge David S. Tatel, who was joined by Judge Patricia A. Millett. Both were nominated by Democratic presidents.

    The dissenting judge, Neomi Rao — nominated by President Trump — said if the House wants to investigate possible wrongdoing by the president, it should use its constitutional impeachment powers, not oversight powers.

    “Allowing the Committee to issue this subpoena for legislative purposes would turn Congress into a roving inquisition over a co-equal branch of government,” Rao wrote in a dissent longer than the majority opinion.

    The House subsequently passed a resolution affirming its impeachment inquiry.

  104. says

    HuffPo UK – “It’s 2019, But Boris Johnson’s Partying Like It’s 2015”:

    …But more than anything, the reason the ‘chaos’ attack on Corbyn may fail is because voters in the flooded north believe that life has been pretty damned chaotic in the past week. Today, Johnson finally collided with the great British public and it felt like a car crash. “It’s took you over five days,” said one woman. “You should have been there Saturday morning having a meeting… and I’m sorry your announcements yesterday were a pittance.” It was the reaction every politician fears: too little, too late.

    Add that footage of him lamely deploying a mop in a hairdressers, as well as him looking like he was treating the whole floods as a PR opportunity, and there’s a big question mark again over whether Johnson’s premiership style feels like a foreign language in the North. Asking hard-pressed volunteers what more he can do missed the point: they wanted him to have already gripped the situation with all the power and cash of the state, not leave it to them….

  105. says

    Trump retweeted Tom Fitton from Judicial Watch: “If Schiff doesn’t know who the ‘whistleblower’ is — how can he protect his identity. Cover-up!”

    I don’t know if I lost more brain cells reading the transcript @ #31 or this tweet.

  106. tomh says

    It’s hard to say. In the Manhatten case, Trump’s lawyers and the district attorney’s office said in a joint letter to a federal judge that the decision will be appealed to the high court by Nov. 14. They had agreed to fast track the case before a ruling was made. The deal has several provisions, including; if the President loses in the Circuit Court (he did) and does appeal to the Supreme Court, he must ask the Justices to hear and decide the case during the current term, which is expected to run until late June next year. The SC has complete discretion on whether to even hear the case (they will) and what their timeframe will be.

    I don’t know of any such agreement in the D.C. case, but I’m sure it will be appealed as soon as possible. Again, what the SC will do is anyone’s guess.

  108. says

    The Hill – “Graham blocks resolution recognizing Armenian genocide after Erdoğan meeting”:

    Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) blocked a resolution on Wednesday that would have formally recognized the Ottoman Empire’s genocide against the Armenian people.

    Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) asked for consent to pass the resolution that would have provided “official recognition and remembrance” of the Armenian genocide.

    “The United States foreign policy must reflect an honest accounting of human rights abuses, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We cannot turn our backs on the Armenian victims of genocide,” he said.

    Menendez noted that he listened to President Trump’s press conference Wednesday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish president scolded a House-passed resolution recognizing the genocide and instead promised to “establish a history commission.”

    Graham objected to passing the resolution in the Senate, saying senators shouldn’t “sugarcoat history or try to rewrite it.”

    Under the Senate’s rules, any one senator can ask for consent to pass a bill or resolution, but any one senator can block it.

    Graham’s objection came hours after he took part in a White House meeting with Trump, Erdoğan and a group of GOP senators.

    “I just met with President Erdoğan and President Trump about the problems we face in Syria by the military incursion by Turkey. I do hope that Turkey and Armenia can come together and deal with this problem,” he added on the Senate floor.

    Graham added that he was objecting “not because of the past but because of the future.”

    The resolution passed the House in a 405-11 vote. Turkey does not recognize the killing of 1.5 million Armenians as genocide.

    The House vote came in the wake of Ankara’s military incursion into northern Syria after the Trump administration pulled troops from the area.

    He can keep going lower.

  111. says

    More re #7 above – NBC – “Democrats call for Stephen Miller to resign after leak of xenophobic emails”:

    Several prominent Democrats have called for White House senior adviser Stephen Miller to resign following the release of emails in which he purportedly linked to white nationalist websites.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center released a cache of hundreds of emails Tuesday leaked by former Breitbart writer Katie McHugh, who corresponded with Miller between 2015 and 2016. In the correspondence, Miller urged Breitbart’s increased coverage of crimes by Hispanic and nonwhite people.

    NBC News has not seen the emails or been able to confirm their authenticity.

    Miller was appointed senior policy adviser to the Trump campaign in January 2016 and later joined President Donald Trump’s transition team. He currently advises the president on immigration policy and is credited with spearheading Trump’s hard-line efforts on border security.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted a petition demanding Miller’s resignation.

    “Stephen Miller must resign. Now,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Each day we allow a white nationalist to be in charge of US immigration policy is a day where thousands of children & families lives are in danger.”

    Other Democratic politicians made similar statements. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said Miller needs to step down. Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro called Miller and Trump “a shame to our nation.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., tweeted that Trump should fire Miller immediately.

    Conservative politicians did not echo those calls, but Tiana Lowe, a commentator for The Washington Examiner, a newspaper that leans conservative, called for Trump to fire Miller.

    “A damning email dump from former Breitbart editor Katie McHugh points to Miller simply being a racist who hates immigrants,” Lowe wrote in an opinion article.

    …

    [SPLC reporter Michael Edison] Hayden told NBC News that McHugh sent him the emails in June, in part because of his previous reporting on extremists and white nationalists.

    He said the emails struck a tone that was similar to that used by other extremists.

    “It’s the sort of intellectual white nationalism that’s very familiar to people covering this stuff,” Hayden said.

    Hayden said the SPLC is set to publish more emails from Miller in the coming days, specifically ones in which Miller targeted Republican opponents of then-candidate Trump in 2015 and 2016. Hayden said McHugh had only met Miller in person once but still sent her almost 1,000 emails.

    “And we only have the emails that start in 2015,” Hayden said. “It shows how the degree to which laundering material was going on between Miller and conservative media.”

  113. says

    Josh Marshall is on it now: “Holy Shit! Rudy/Trump confidant DiGenova spouts wild list of bananas conspiracy theories after hearing: ‘There is no doubt that George Soros controls a large part of the foreign service part of the State Department and the activities of FBI agents overseas who work with NGOs’.”

    Video atl with more to come he says.

  114. KG says

    I’d be interested in SC’s take on the events in Bolivia. My own view, based just on Guardian reports, is that while Morales has disappointed in a number of ways (shifting rightwards, building himself an absurd palace, going for a fourth term despite losing a referendum on changing the constitution, allowing activities in the Bolivian Amazon that led to serious fires), and while it’s possible there were irregularities in the recent vote, what has transpired is a far-right coup backed by the military – and notably, by Trump and Bolsonaro.

  115. says

    KG @ #112, that’s my take as well. I’d add that it appears to be very much a Christianist-racist backlash. Terrible situation right now.

    For anyone who hasn’t been following developments there (I haven’t been able to very closely), here are a couple of pieces getting at various aspects and what’s at stake:

    Democracy Now!: “A Coup? A Debate on the Political Crisis in Bolivia That Led to Evo Morales’s Resignation.”

    Guardian: “What the coup against Evo Morales means to indigenous people like me.”

    It’s depressing to me because I’m angry that Morales has insisted on running so many times. When he first emerged, propelled by the Water Wars and other movements at the turn of the century, he struck me as relatively humble and non-egotistical. I still think that’s accurate, but there have been so many people involved with the social movements in Bolivia who could have emerged as leaders over the last 13 years, and from the moment he came to power he should have been raising up the next generation of leaders so that everything wouldn’t depend on him and his re-election, and then he should have stepped aside.

    A Morales supporter quoted in the DN! article: “Remember, the opposition will never be able to govern as Evo Morales has done. It hurts us. Evo Morales was our leader. Viva Evo! We miss and love you, Evo. We have been left orphaned.” From the Guardian article: “For our indigenous president, after five centuries of colonization, 13 years was not long enough.” I understand their emotion given what’s happening, but that’s not healthy. I have a visceral reaction to personalized politics of this sort. To be strong, a party or movement can’t be so focused on a single person. I recognize that leaders are important in certain moments (though I think the qualities for good leadership vary widely depending on the circumstances), but I don’t think investing leadership in a particular individual over a long period of time is good for anyone.

    I’m not saying in any way that he “brought this on himself” or became power-mad or anything like that, which is why I’ve been reluctant to discuss it at all. The Right (backed by the US) is always there, always waiting for their moment to attack, and carrying forward a program of massive social change while defending against the constant barrage is almost impossible, so there are no easy choices. But I am disappointed that he let it be centered around himself for so long. So thanks for the opportunity to get that off my chest, I guess. :)

  118. says

    Nancy Pelosi, talking about how this is an inquiry about getting at the truth, just said “and if the president has something that is exculpatory…” then turned to the camera and interjected “- Mr. President, that means do you have anything that shows your innocence -” then continued “then he should make that known. And that’s part of the inquiry. And so far we haven’t seen that, be we welcome it. And that’s what an inquiry’s about.”

  120. says

    From Axios:

    An Oval Office meeting yesterday with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took a dark turn when Erdogan pulled out his iPad and made the group watch a propaganda video that depicted Kurds as terrorists, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. […]

    Erdogan apparently thought he could sway these senators by forcing them to watch a clunky propaganda film…. Erdogan’s video “was unpersuasive,” according to a source who was in the room.

    CNN quoted a source who characterized Erdogan’s video as “surreal” and “straight propaganda.”

  121. says

    Commentary on the text quoted in #118, from Steve Benen:

    […] In recent months, Trump has cleared the way for a Turkish military offensive against our Kurdish allies, reached a “deal” with Turkey in which Ankara got everything it wanted, and heaped gushing praise on his Turkish counterpart.

    It’s against this backdrop that Trump not only invited Erdogan to the White House, he also offered the Turkish leader an opportunity to privately lobby Republican lawmakers ahead of congressional efforts to sanction Turkey for its pending deal to purchase Russian military equipment. […]

  124. says

    From Twitter, contributions to the drinking game where you drink every time you think a witness wants to tell Rep. Jordan to go F-himself:

    “As I testified, Mr. Jordan…” is the classiest way I’ve ever heard someone say, “Listen, shit burger.”
    ——————-
    “For what purpose does Mr. Jordan seek recognition.” — favorite Schiff quote so far, so meta #ImpeachmentInquiry #FuckYouJimJordan
    ———————
    Mr. Jordan was promoted to the Intelligence Committee because he’s an expert on looking the other way when crimes are committed. [Jordan infamously looked the other way when boys/young men on a wrestling team he coached were being sexually abused.]
    ————————-
    Fifty bucks to anyone who uses thirty seconds of their time to ask Gym Jordan why he didn’t report sexual assault in the showers. @Jim_Jordan #ImpeachmentHearings
    ————————-
    In a perfect world:

    Chairman Schiff: The chair suggests Mr. Jordan, the gentleman from Ohio, switch to decaf.
    ————————
    Republican: I yield my screaming time to the gentleman from Ohio.

    Jim Jordan: HUROSIBDJWBEHCOVEREDNFBUPHH …

    Ambassador Taylor: Uh, Mr. Jo…

    Jordan: HDSEXUALJJAHSSHABUSEHDBATJJDJEJOHIOBRJFJUGUSISTATEGXJISI IT…

    Adam Schiff: Your time is up, Mr…

    Jordan: HHSGGGGFH VTT HHI

    And there’s this: https://twitter.com/SistaCitizen/status/1194706824169000960

    Ambassador Taylor during Mr. Jordan questioning.

  130. says

    AP – “AP source: 2nd US official heard Trump call with Sondland”:

    A second U.S. embassy staffer in Kyiv overheard a key cellphone call between President Donald Trump and his ambassador to the European Union discussing the need for Ukrainian officials to pursue “investigations,” The Associated Press has learned.

    The July 26 call between Trump and Gordon Sondland was first described during testimony Wednesday by William B. Taylor Jr., the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. Taylor said one of his staffers overhead the call while Sondland was in a restaurant the day after Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that triggered the House impeachment inquiry.

    The second diplomatic staffer also at the table was Suriya Jayanti, a foreign service officer based in Kyiv. A person briefed on what Jayanti overheard spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter currently under investigation.

    Trump on Wednesday said he did not recall the July 26 call.

    “No, not at all, not even a little bit,” Trump said.

    The staffer Taylor testified about is David Holmes, the political counselor at the embassy in Kyiv, according to an official familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

    Holmes is scheduled to testify Friday before House investigators in a closed session.

    …

    The accounts of Holmes and Jayanti could tie Trump closer to efforts to hold up military aid to Ukraine in exchange for investigations into his political rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings.

  131. says

    Judd Legum:

    1. For the last 13 months BRETT KAVANAUGH has kept a low profile.

    That changes tonight, when Kavanaugh is honored as the keynote speaker at The Federalist Society’s annual black tie dinner.

    And who is a “Gold Circle” sponsor of the event?

    FACEBOOK

    2. Last year, many Facebook employees were angry when a top Facebook executive, Joel Kaplan, showed up to support Kavanaugh

    Facebook attempted to control the damage & Kaplan apologized

    Now, Facebook is sponsoring Kavanaugh’s return to the public stage

    3. One thing that has changed since Kavanaugh’s confirmation is that the evidence against Kavanaugh has gotten STRONGER.

    Specifically, there are now more corroborating evidence to support the claims of Deborah Ramirez, who wasn’t even allowed to testify

    4. Facebook says it doesn’t matter because it donates to groups across the political spectrum

    But those other groups aren’t celebrating a man accused of sexual assault

    I will continue to hold Facebook accountable.

    For more, sign up for my newsletter…

    5. Facebook did not respond to a question about whether it consulted with the employees who were upset by Kaplan’s appearance last year before agreeing to sponsor this event.

    Facebook did tell me, after I asked, that Kaplan wasn’t attending the dinner

    UPDATE: @WeDemandJustice has launched on online ad campaign urging employees to fight back

  132. says

    Politics.co.uk – “The war against the non-religious: Blasphemy laws on the rise”:

    [B?]illions of people – more people than ever – live in countries with severely limited freedom of thought, expression and association, where criticising a religion, or simply being non-religious, can result in serious persecution.

    The 2019 Freedom of Thought report, released today by Humanists International, monitors the situation for humanists and other non-religious people in every country of the world. It highlights this year that, for many, the situation is getting worse.

    This year the thematic focus of the report has been in laws against ‘blasphemy’ and ‘apostasy’. There has been some progress in the last five years, with eight countries having abolished blasphemy laws, but these were mainly countries that were already relatively free. Around 70 other countries still retain severe punishments for leaving a religion or expressing non-religious beliefs.

    In Pakistan, for example, those that express these views publicly or leave Islam can face the death penalty, mob violence, incarceration and extrajuidical violence. In countries like Brunei and Mauritania, persecution has become more acute in the last two years and we have seen the introduction of death sentences for both blasphemy and apostasy.

    These laws are – always and everywhere – a violation of the human rights to freedom of thought and expression. The logic that supports them is narrow, perverted, and an abuse of human freedom and intellect.

    Defenders of apostasy laws say that to shun a religion is a crime because it contradicts a religious prohibition and a natural law – peculiar logic when the very point is that the person in question, by definition, does not share that belief. In fact, the very existence of the law itself presupposes that obviously people’s minds do change and that, given freedom of enquiry, people will reach different conclusions about the various metaphysical, moral and historical questions that religions hope to address.

    Defenders of blasphemy laws will often make a narrowly religious case, for instance that blasphemy is an ‘offence against God’. But they often also produce a more secular argument around the harmful effects on society upon hearing criticism, ridicule, or insult to beliefs that many members of society hold dear. Humanists argue that a right to be immune from general criticism does not and should not exist, but we do have a very fundamental right to express ourselves.

    In the West, some argue that blasphemy laws are necessary to curb behaviour that is genuinely hateful. But laws can target harassment, intimidation and incitement without employing the incommensurable, ambiguous religious concept of blasphemy. And in any case, there is an obvious difference between making a criticism of a religious institution in a blog or conversation from a weak social position of dissent and shouting it in the face of an adherent on the street or outside their place of worship.

    It is sometimes argued that such laws help to combat social ‘disharmony’ or extremism. But it’s very clear looking at this year’s Freedom of Thought report in particular, that countries with the most severe and widely-enforced blasphemy laws are usually those with the most religious tension and extremism.

    Humanist and other nonreligious people face growing persecution globally, in every sphere, from family law to criminal law, and in policy. The causes are various. Sometimes it’s religious extremism, whether Christian or Muslim. Sometimes it’s ethnic nationalism, whether in India, Russia, America, or Europe. Sometimes it’s authoritarian governments, such as in China. Those without a faith are one of the most viciously persecuted belief minorities in the world.

    The answer to their persecution, however, is not to focus on the rights of the nonreligious but to reclaim the universal nature of the human right to freedom of opinion and expression of all people….

  137. says

    CNN – “Italian council is flooded immediately after rejecting measures on climate change”:

    Veneto regional council, which is located on Venice’s Grand Canal, was flooded for the first time in its history on Tuesday night — just after it rejected measures to combat climate change.

    The historic Italian city has been brought to its knees this week by the worst flooding there in more than 50 years.

    And the council chamber in Ferro Fini Palace started to take in water around 10 p.m. local time, as councilors were debating the 2020 regional budget, Democratic Party councilor Andrea Zanoni said in a long Facebook post.

    “Ironically, the chamber was flooded two minutes after the majority League, Brothers of Italy, and Forza Italia parties rejected our amendments to tackle climate change,” Zanoni, who is deputy chairman of the environment committee, said in the post, which also has photographs of the room under water.

    Among the rejected amendments were measures to fund renewable sources, to replace diesel buses with “more efficient and less polluting ones,” to scrap polluting stoves and reduce the impact of plastics, he said.

    Zanoni went on to accuse Veneto regional president Luca Zaia, who is a member of Matteo Salvini’s far-right League Party, of presenting a budget “with no concrete actions to combat climate change.”

    …

    The regional council meetings on Thursday and Friday were moved to Treviso because of the flooding, according to the council’s website.

    On Tuesday, Venice’s mayor Luigi Brugnaro blamed climate change for the unusually high tides in Venice, and said the flooding was “a wound that will leave a permanent mark.”…

  138. says

    Followup to SC @128.

    Sondland did not go out on his own and attempt to promote some corruption in Ukraine. He was not freelancing in Kyiv. Ambassador Sondland, Mulvaney, Giuliani and Rick Perry were working together on a scheme cooked up by Trump. Trump was directing the scheme, and he was making sure that he got updates.

  141. says

    Elizabeth Warren is reveling in the tears of billionaires.

    […] On Wednesday, Warren’s campaign launched a new ad titled “Elizabeth Warren stands up to billionaires.” It features Warren on the campaign trail touting her proposed wealth tax and remarking, “I’ve heard that there are some billionaires who don’t support this plan.” The ad then cuts to excerpts of interviews with billionaires talking about her in interviews — hedge funder Leon Cooperman, TD Ameritrade founder John Ricketts, former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, and entrepreneur Peter Thiel. And it takes shots at them — Cooperman’s settlement on insider trading, Ricketts’s Republican donations, Blankfein’s earnings during the financial crisis, Thiel’s ties to Facebook and Donald Trump — all while noting their net worths.

    What’s notable about the ad isn’t just what’s in it, but also where the senator’s team is placing it: on CNBC. The financial news outlet reported that the ad was going to be shown during two of its most popular shows on Thursday. Warren is taking aim at rich guys, and she wants them to know it.

    CNBC has been fanning the flames of the billionaires vs. Warren narrative, perhaps especially when it comes to Cooperman, who spent 25 years at Goldman Sachs before starting a hedge fund, Omega Advisors, that he has since converted to a family office. In September, Cooperman told CNBC he thought the stock market would fall by 25 percent if Warren wins the presidency, if it opens at all. […]

    In response to Warren’s new ad, Cooperman told CNBC’s Brian Schwartz that Warren is “disgraceful.” He continued, “She doesn’t know who the fuck she’s tweeting. I gave away more in the year than she has in her whole fucking lifetime.” […]

    And Warren just keeps getting in digs. Her campaign is now selling mugs that read “BILLIONAIRE TEARS.” The nicer read: It’s an anti-elitism take on a well-worn meme that spans the political spectrum. The meaner interpretation, though, is that it’s a reference to Cooperman, who in an interview earlier this month on, yet again, CNBC grew emotional when talking about the 2020 election and Warren.

    Last week, Warren’s campaign also unveiled a “calculator for billionaires” that lets people estimate how much they would pay under her wealth tax. It name-checks Cooperman specifically, as well as former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is considering a presidential bid, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who joked about the wealth tax and asked whether Warren was “open-minded” to meeting with him last week. […]

    Link

    I fully understand and endorse having lots of policy discussions. But do we really need to feel sorry for whining billionaires? Do we really need to give billionaires a pass when they insult Warren without providing any arguments on the substance?

  142. says

    Kurdistan 24 – “Russians enter US air base near Kobani after US forces left: SDF official”:

    US-led Coalition forces on Thursday finalized their withdrawal from the Kobani region, a Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) official told Kurdistan 24, as Russian forces entered the base.

    Mustafa Bali, the head of the SDF press office, told Kurdistan 24 the “last group of Americans left and destroyed everything which belonged to them. Russians took their place and raised the Russian flag.”

    According to Kurdistan 24 reporter in Kobani, Redwan Bezar, 50 US troops left the Serin base south of Kobani. Local Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported that the evacuation of the base began days ago, with the withdrawal of soldiers and equipment from the base.

    Earlier on Wednesday, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper confirmed that the US would withdraw from Kobani, but that it would “take another week or so.”

    However, it seems the withdrawal from the Kobani region went faster than planned.

    US Air Force Maj. Gen. Eric Hill, head of Special Operations Joint Task Force, also told reporters on Monday that US forces would withdraw from western areas [near Kobani] and would remain in the east of Syria to continue the fight against the Islamic State with the SDF in bases from “Deir al-Zor to Qamishli and Derik.”

    Experts warn that this could open the way for Turkey to attack Kobani.

    Kurdish Affairs analyst Mutlu Civiroglu told Kurdistan 24 that Kobani, as a city, has symbolic value since it was the first city were the Islamic State was defeated in January 2015.

    “If US forces completely withdraw, it could open the city to attacks by Turkey and will damage the perception of Kobani’s people,” he argued. “The stability and peace that the city enjoyed would turn into chaos, as is what happened in other parts of Kurdish-controlled Syria.”

    On Monday, Bali told Kurdistan 24 there was still a threat to Kobani and that “Russia and America and other states should offer guarantees to protect our people.”

    …

    In mid October, senior US officials said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan assured US President Donald Trump that he would not attack Kobani.

    During a meeting between US president Trump and Turkish president Erdogan on Wednesday, the US president also stated that the Turkish-US ceasefire deal from October 17 was “moving forward.” But the fighting continues and has included attacks on villages inhabited by Christians, whom the Trump administration had particularly promised to protect….

  143. says

    From Wonkette:

    Donald Trump Jr., who by the grace of God is the president’s son and not yours, has long hoped his father might someday at least pretend to love him. Unfortunately, the president doesn’t like losers, which Trump Jr. is. But all is not lost for the self-described “son of a rich white guy living in 2019.” Trump Jr. finally achieved some measurable success that didn’t involve his father sending him to Las Vegas to learn the casino business. He “wrote” a whiny ode to white male grievances called Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us, and it’s just topped the New York Times bestseller list.

    This was good enough for a congratulatory tweet from the president — suitable for framing and prominent display in Trump Jr.’s house.

    Wow! Was just told that my son’s book, “Triggered,” is Number One on The New York Times Bestseller List. Congratulations Don!

    I hate to rain on this parade of paternal praise, but there is a slight asterisk-shaped catch. It seems that “institutional, special interest, group or bulk purchases” contributed to the book’s strong sales. Yeah, if you thought Trump Jr. couldn’t give away copies of Triggered, he’s proven your liberal ass wrong. So there!

    The Republican National Committee bought enough copies of Triggered to fill a row of porta-potties. The RNC is giving them to donors as thanks for their continued financial support. The lucky folks probably won’t read the book […]

    Link

  145. tomh says

    WaPo:
    Rep. King offers ‘clues’ to the whistleblower’s identity with four photos shared on Twitter

    With a tweet on Thursday, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), a lawmaker prone to controversy, seemingly suggested that he knows the identity of the whistleblower whose complaint has sparked the impeachment inquiry against Trump.

    In his tweet, King referenced comments from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) that he doesn’t know the identity of the whistleblower. “@RepAdamSchiff here are four strong clues,” King wrote.

    The “clues” were four photos of the same man posing with prominent Democrats. But to many of Twitter, it was instantly apparent that the man in the photos didn’t match the description of the whistleblower as a U.S. intelligence official.

    It was, in fact, Alexander Soros, the 34-year-old son of George Soros, the liberal billionaire philanthropist. Neither Soros is a member of the U.S. intelligence community.

    A spokesman for King did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether he was deliberating implying Alexander Soros is the whistleblower. Shortly afterward, King deleted the tweet and posted pictures of another individual.

    In a statement, Laura Silber, a spokeswoman for the Open Society Foundations, an international grant-making network where Alexander Soros serves as deputy chairman, said King was “circulating false information.”

    “[Alexander Soros] is not the whistleblower, and any attempt to identify the whistleblower is a violation of protections put in place to help people in government root out waste, fraud and abuse,” Silber said. “Rep. King should know better, but as a member of Congress with a long established history of white nationalism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia — whose behavior is so abhorrent House Republican leaders stripped him of his committee assignments — our expectations of his suddenly showing any principles are low.”

    By John Wagner

  147. says

    From Dahlia Lithwick:

    […] Let’s imagine Hercule Poirot, or even Harriet the Spy, were tasked with explaining the impeachment plot. The Devin Nunes theory of the case would be extravagantly complex: This whodunit seems to involve House Democrats colluding with a deep state whistleblower and his attorney, who had been plotting a “coup” against the president since the weeks following his election, and who was willing to conspire with Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee to sideline the inspector general and hide the whistleblower from public view. Simultaneously, Democrats have been working assiduously with Russia toward the “funding and spreading” of the Steele dossier while “cooperating in Ukrainian election meddling” all while Hunter Biden used his preelection influence to have an impact on foreign policy under Predsident Barack Obama, and as the “politicized bureaucracy” now conspires to deliberately undermine “the president who they are supposed to be serving,” in the form of corrupt ambassadors. […]

    This, per Nunes, is a sprawling “hoax” engineered by disparate “elements of the FBI, the Department of Justice, and now the State Department” along with the “corrupt media” to work hand and glove to something, something “nude pictures.” The theory of the case is that all of these entities conspired for years, together, to craft a hoax and sham “Star Chamber” in order to subvert the will of the American electorate. All that’s missing, truly, is Colonel Mustard with a lead pipe in the conservatory. […]

    There is, of course, a second theory of the case. It’s that Donald Trump got an absurd idea in his head about Ukraine working to hurt him in the 2016 election, and another dumb idea in his head about how to smear his likely 2020 electoral opponent, and so he created a back channel consisting of “three amigos” to effectuate a shadow foreign policy that involved withholding appropriated aid to Ukraine until its leader did a CNN interview claiming to be investigating those things. That’s it. There’s no elaborate web of shady malefactors who hate America and engaged in a yearslong, multiagency, deep state takedown of the president. It’s just a bunch of largely incompetent international affairs novices who thought themselves fractionally more adept than they really were, and the host of enablers and bag men who tried to cover it all up after the fact.

    The most intriguing moments of Wednesday’s hearings happened when Taylor and Kent, lifelong sane people and career diplomats, were questioned about the Republican theory of the case and, finding themselves utterly confounded, simply blinked into the klieg lights. Questioned about CrowdStrike and Donald Trump’s moon-bat theory that the firm was involved in hiding the Democratic National Committee server in Ukraine and passing the blame to Russia, George Kent appeared baffled: “To be honest, I had not heard of CrowdStrike until I read this transcript on Sept. 25,” Kent clarified. When he was asked if there was any “factual basis” to support the claim of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, Kent replied, “To my knowledge, there is no factual basis, no.” […]

  148. says

    Finally!

    Republican Gov. Matt Bevin conceded defeat [today]. Democrat Andy Beshear will be sworn in next month as Kentucky’s governor.

  149. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 145

    It’s that Donald Trump got an absurd idea in his head about Ukraine working to hurt him in the 2016 election…

    Yeah, I wonder who Putin that absurd idea into his head.

  150. says

    Politico, yesterday – “Justice Department withdraws secrecy argument on McCabe files”:

    A change to the Justice Department’s legal stance in a suit related to former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is prompting fresh speculation about the mysterious state of the Justice Department’s effort to prosecute McCabe over alleged misstatements to investigators about his interactions with colleagues during the 2016 election.

    In a brief court filing Wednesday, Justice Department attorneys said they were no longer arguing that public release of records about McCabe would interfere with an ongoing enforcement action. That claim is typically used to withhold records about ongoing investigations or prosecutions.

    The move could signal that prosecutors have given up on their quest to charge McCabe, or it could simply be an effort to forestall attempts by a judge to get prosecutors to publicly reveal whether they are still trying to indict the former FBI official.

    …

    On September 30, a federal judge overseeing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington met privately with Justice Department attorneys and said officials needed to make a decision about how to proceed with potential charges against McCabe.

    “I do think it’s been a long time and this is just dragging too long,” said U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton. “And those who have to make these hard decisions need to do it. And if they don’t, I’m going to start ordering the release of information. That’s just the reality….I will not condone further delay.”

    Prosecutors have the option to present more evidence against McCabe to the same grand jury or submit all the evidence to another one.

    While McCabe is not a party to the FOIA suit, at the September hearing, Walton also said McCabe was entitled to some resolution.

    “Mr. McCabe and his lawyers have publicly and with the Department of Justice pleaded to know the status. This is like the sword of
    Damocles over his head,” said the judge, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

    Walton set another hearing on the suit for this Friday and indicated he wanted an answer on McCabe’s status by then.

    …

    Lawyers for CREW offered their own submission Wednesday, urging Walton to stand by his order requiring a prosecutor familiar with the McCabe case to be present at the Friday hearing.

    “The government’s conduct and its months-long insistence that disclosing documents from the long-closed IG investigation would harm an ongoing investigation raise serious questions about the government’s conduct and the extent to which it may have abused court processes to advance its own interests over those of the public,” CREW lawyers Anne Weismann and Adam Rappaport wrote. “In light of these questions, the Court, the plaintiff, and the public are entitled to an explanation for DOJ’s sudden and unexplained reversal.”

    Walton issued a brief order Wednesday afternoon denying, without explanation, the government’s motion to get out of having a McCabe prosecutor on hand at the upcoming hearing. He also moved that session up to Thursday afternoon.

    The court submission from the government Wednesday in the politically charged McCabe issue came exactly one hour before historic hearings considering the impeachment of Trump launched on Capitol Hill.

    Now: “NEW NOW: Judge is requiring government lawyers to explain to him privately why they abruptly shifted legal stance in litigation over McCabe records. Says he’s concerned DOJ manipulated him.”

    WH reporters are saying Trump was expected to appear on the way to a LA rally, but was seen in the Oval Office in an “animated discussion” with Barr. Of course, that could concern any number of their criminal schemes.

  152. says

    Lynna @ #141, and it’s more RNC money going directly into Trump pockets. They still don’t seem to realize that it’s only going to get worse from here.

    Also: “RNC winter meeting will be at Doral, the president’s resort, per person familiar with plans. The G-7 was scuttled at the resort for next summer after bipartisan backlash & ethics concerns.”

    I still can’t get over the fact that the announcement that the G-7 would be held at Trump’s private ramshackle club was made at the same press conference where Mulvaney admitted the quid pro quo and told the public to “get over it,” and now the Trumpublicans are trying to claim that it was all about Trump’s deep concerns about corruption.

  154. says

    CNN – “Ratings for first impeachment hearing show healthy interest and a serious partisan divide”:

    On the first day of the televised impeachment hearings against President Trump, the two most popular TV news channels were the two mostly closely associated with political parties.

    Fox News, the favorite among Trump and other Republicans, had the single biggest audience during the daytime hearings. It averaged 2.9 million viewers at any given time between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Wednesday, according to Nielsen (NLSN) TV ratings.

    MSNBC, the favorite among Democrats, was closely behind. MSNBC averaged 2.7 million viewers during the hearings.

    On a typical day, Fox News has about 1.5 million viewers during the daytime hours, and MSNBC has closer to 1 million, so viewing levels were certainly elevated due to the impeachment hearings.

    The ratings contradict claims from some of the president’s allies, including one of his sons, Eric Trump, who said on Fox News that “no one was watching it. No one cares.”

    Clearly lots of people cared enough to tune in. They also wanted to see the spin later in the day — Fox’s Sean Hannity had one of his highest-rated shows of the year, with 4.4 million total viewers.

    It’s impossible to estimate how many people watched or heard the hearings across all platforms, since television, radio and streaming video are all measured in different ways.

    Some people consumed the hearing in one sitting, but the more common experience is much more scattered — hearing snippets on the air and seeing clips on social media and headlines on phones.

    The ABC, CBS (CBS) and NBC broadcast networks pre-empted regular programming for Wednesday’s hearings as well. ABC and CBS averaged 2 million viewers each, and NBC had nearly 1.67 million.

    But a much greater total number of people saw some portion of the hearings over the course of six hours. The granular Nielsen data shows fluctuations throughout the proceedings.

    …

    The cumulative average audience for the big six channels listed above was 13 million — about on par with the day former special counsel Robert Mueller testified in July.

    Wednesday’s hearing was also carried live on PBS; by some local Fox stations; by C-SPAN; and by other television networks.

    And the hearing was streamed almost everywhere, on a wide variety of social networks and news websites.

    …

    There’s no Nielsen-like way to measure cumulative viewership on the web.

    But the overnight ratings indicate that the impeachment hearing reached both political junkies and a wider group of daytime TV viewers.

    The vast majority of Americans, however, didn’t watch the entire event live — they soaked it up through social media and heard about it later.

  156. says

    The Demand Justice protesters are phenomenal:

    There is a HUGE screen outside of Union Station right now featuring Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in the Senate — as Brett Kavanaugh is inside speaking at the Federalist Society annual fundraiser dinner. Compliments of @WeDemandJustice

    There are also handmaids standing outside the Federalist Society-Brett Kavanaugh dinner. As Federalist Society members pass by them in tuxedos.

    Oh man. Anti-Kavanaugh protesters are shouting “I believe Dr. Ford! I believe Anita Hill!” right in the faces of Federalist Society members as they’re stuck waiting in line for their gala to start. For who knows how long. #awkward

    Still awkward as all these Fed Society people in tuxes are stuck standing here with people shouting “hey hey, ho ho! Kavanaugh has got to go!” Also I see Rod Rosenstein is in line (!) for this gala with Brett Kavanaugh.

    “Thank you Brett Kavanaugh!” — this one dude with a pro-Kavanaugh sign. Handmaids’ eyes are rolling. Couple hundred Fed Society members still stuck here next to them. This is bonkers.

    Just skimmed the line of Fed Society gala attendees and pretty sure Eric Murphy is in here. This guy.

    Here is the long line of tuxedo’d Federalist Society members for their dinner with Brett Kavanaugh. The line is insane and not moving, which means they will continue hearing “shame! shame!” from protesters.

    Incredible photos and video atl.

  157. says

    “NEWS: OMB official Mark Sandy will testify in impeachment inquiry , if he is subpoenaed, lawyer tells @SaraMurray confirming the @washingtonpost scoop.

    This is an important development that could offer a window into the issue of what happened with the Ukraine security aid.”

    I had assumed this was the case given the announcement @ #52 above, but good to see it confirmed.

  158. says

    Jonathan Topaz, ACLU: “NEW: We have a filing tonight detailing how the Trump Administration misled the court about the attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

    Stunning new documents show that GOP strategist Thomas Hofeller played a much larger role than previously disclosed….”

    Thread with screenshots of documents still growing. Big news. Second case in the past few hours involving accusations of the DoJ under Trump misleading the courts.

  160. says

    Bloomberg – “Giuliani Faces U.S. Probe on Campaign Finance, Lobbying Breaches”:

    Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is being investigated by federal prosecutors for possible campaign finance violations and a failure to register as a foreign agent as part of an active investigation into his financial dealings, according to three U.S. officials.

    The probe of Giuliani, which one official said could also include possible charges on violating laws against bribing foreign officials or conspiracy, presents a serious threat to Trump’s presidency from a man that former national security adviser John Bolton has called a “hand grenade.”

    A second official said Giuliani’s activities raise counterintelligence concerns as well, although there probably wouldn’t be a criminal charge related to that. The officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, provided the first indication of the potential charges under investigation.

    Giuliani is a central figure in the U.S. House impeachment inquiry, which focuses on an effort led by the former New York City mayor to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate the president’s political rivals. If Giuliani is charged or indicted, he could expose Trump to a new level of legal and political jeopardy, especially if he’s accused of committing a crime on the president’s behalf.

    “I would not be surprised if he gets indicted,” said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. “It’s clear Giuliani is up to his ears in shady stuff and there’s tons of smoke.”

    …

    Giuliani is under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which he once led. The office began to scrutinize his activities in Ukraine as prosecutors investigated two of his associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The two were subsequently charged in the U.S. with illegally funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to U.S. officials and a political action committee that backed Trump.

    Parnas and Fruman were working for Giuliani on matters related to Trump. It’s not clear, however, whether the investigation of Giuliani is focusing on the work he did for the president.

    …

    Trump has shown no signs that he is willing to part ways with Giuliani. Trump told reporters on Oct. 25 that Giuliani is a “good man” who is one of the “the greatest crime fighters and corruption fighters.”

    But some Trump allies in Congress have sought to put distance between the two men, painting Giuliani as a rogue player not operating under Trump’s orders. That description is at odds with Giuliani’s claim he was acting as the president’s personal defense attorney….

  163. says

    Akira @147, Ha! Well put.

    Re SC’s comment 160, I see that Trump is repeating his usual lies, gaslighting and whatnot. Occasionally he comes up with a new lie, or a twist on an old lie … but it is all lies.

    Trump says Louisiana is doing poorly compared to other states’ economies, “and that’s even after I gave you” a $10 billion LNG facility he visited. The facility was approved under Obama. This is explained in detail on the facility’s website.

  164. says

    From the link in comment 160:

    Sen. John Kennedy is speaking. He says he is a “proud deplorable” and unlike the “cultured, cosmopolitan, goat’s milk latte-drinkin’, avocado toast-eating, insiders elite.” […]

    Some context: Kennedy, a multimillionaire lawyer, graduated from Vanderbilt University, the University of Virginia and Oxford University.

  165. says

    Followup to SC’s comment 144.

    From Steve Benen:

    […] To go along with confirming him, Senate Republicans had to overlook Menashi’s ugly record on matters related to race, women, and the LGBTQ community. And then they also had to overlook the fact that Menashi has never tried a case, made oral arguments, or conducted a deposition.

    And then they also had to overlook the nominee’s role in devising an illegal scheme at the Department of Education that punished victims of scam for-profit colleges.

    For 51 Senate Republicans, none of this was a deal-breaker. Menashi will likely now serve on the federal appellate bench – just one level below the U.S. Supreme Court – for the next several decades.

    I’ve long believed the lasting effects of the Trump era can be boiled down to the three C’s: the climate, the nation’s credibility, and the federal courts. Health care benefits can be restored, alliances can be rebuilt, and tax breaks can be scrapped, but the lost years on dealing with the climate crisis are tragic; it’ll be a long while before the world forgets that we’re a country capable of electing someone like Trump; and with Republicans confirming young, far-right ideologues to the bench at a brutal clip, we can expect a generation’s worth of conservative court rulings.

  169. says

    CNN – “Trump hikes price tag for US forces in Korea almost 400% as Seoul questions alliance”:

    Secretary of Defense Mark Esper landed in South Korea on Thursday to navigate renewed threats from an “enraged” North Korea and newly heightened strain in the alliance with Seoul that congressional aides, lawmakers and Korea experts say has been caused by President Donald Trump.

    Trump is demanding that South Korea pay roughly 400% more in 2020 to cover the cost of keeping US troops on the peninsula, a congressional aide and an administration official confirmed to CNN.

    The price hike has frustrated Pentagon officials and deeply concerned Republican and Democratic lawmakers, according to military officials and congressional aides. It has angered and unnerved Seoul, where leaders are questioning US commitment to their alliance and wondering whether Trump will pull US forces if they don’t pay up.

    “Nothing says I love you like a shakedown,” said Vipin Narang, an associate professor at MIT who follows the Korean peninsula, summarizing South Korean uncertainty about the US.

    In the US, congressional aides and Korea experts familiar with the talks say the President’s $4.7 billion demand came out of thin air, sending State and Defense Department officials scrambling to justify the number with a slew of new charges that may include Seoul paying some costs for US personnel present on the peninsula and for troops and equipment that rotate through.

    Negotiations are underway as North Korea threatens to step up its weapons development, deepening Seoul’s anxiety. On Thursday, Pyongyang condemned US-South Korean joint military exercises, saying it was “enraged” and threatening to respond with “force in kind.”

    North Korea has already launched 24 missiles this year, each a violation of UN resolutions, to match the country’s previous annual record for firing off projectiles that threaten South Korea and Japan, according to Bruce Klingner, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

    Germany, France and the United Kingdom recently condemned Pyongyang for the launches, saying they undermined regional security and stability. Meanwhile, South Korean leaders are acutely aware that Trump has downplayed the launches, saying he is “not at all” troubled by them.

    “There are a lot of hard feelings,” Klingner said of South Korean views of the US right now, adding that “people are questioning the viability of the US as an ally.”

    That’s being driven in part by US acquiescence to North Korea’s missile launches, which “is raising angst… about whether the US is a reliable ally,” Klingner said. “The exorbitant push to further increase the US demand for the cost of stationing US forces overseas is adding to that.”

    …

    The US-South Korea cost sharing agreement has been in place for decades and, until Trump, was renegotiated every five years. During the 2016 campaign, candidate Trump declared that he would pull US troops from the peninsula if he didn’t get 100% compensation for their presence.

    Last year, when the Special Measures Agreement came up for negotiation, Trump asked for a 50% increase from Seoul. Ultimately, the two sides agreed South Korea would pay 8% over the prior year’s cost, but that the agreement would be renegotiated yearly.

    This year, Trump raised the asking price from approximately $1 billion to $5 billion before being convinced by officials at the State Department and Pentagon to winnow that down to $4.7 billion, according to a congressional aide and the administration official.

    Esper, like other administration officials, has refused to confirm that figure publicly, saying Wednesday only that “we have asked for a significant increase in the cost-sharing for our deployed troops.”

    …

    Sen. Edward Markey, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia said that he was “troubled by President Trump’s demand. … If South Korea decides that it is better off without the United States, President Trump will have undermined an over 60-year shared commitment to peace, stability, and rule of law. The region is less safe when countries lose confidence in America’s ability to lead.”

    Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Asia, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Neither did the second ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, or the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. James Risch of Idaho.

    Behind closed doors though, the congressional aide echoed another colleague on Capitol Hill, saying that “there’s a lot of concern up here with both Democratic and Republican staff. People … are not happy. They think this is really dangerous.”

  171. says

    Trump released the MEMCON of the conversation with Zelenskyy in April congratulating him on his electoral win.

    Natasha Bertrand: “Odd: The initial readout of this call in April said that Trump urged Zelensky and the Ukrainian people to ‘root out corruption’.
    But corruption isn’t mentioned in this record.”

    From her link: “April 21: Zelenskiy is elected president of Ukraine and President Trump calls to congratulate him. A White House readout of the call says Trump ‘expressed his commitment to work together with President-elect Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption’.”

    He didn’t talk about democracy or corruption (he did talk about the Miss Universe pageant, though, and he did invite Zelenskyy to the WH and promise him a “great representative” from the US at his inauguration).

  174. says

    Re the April Trump-Zelenskyy call:

    “This is odd given there is no mention of Yovanovitch. In the July 25th call, Zelensky (in response to Trump’s mention of her), said: ‘It was great that you were the first one. who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree·with you 100%’.”

    “The first Trump-Zelensky call raises more questions. 1) Why did the readout say they pledged to root out corruption, when they didn’t? 2) Why did Trump invite Z to the White House, only to use it as leverage later? 3) Why did Trump bar Pence from growing to Z’s inauguration?”

  175. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 163

    Senate Republicans had to overlook Menashi’s ugly record on matters related to race, women, and the LGBTQ community…

    Overlooked? Menashi’s “ugly record” is the likely reason he was nominated in the first place.

  180. says

    After Yovanovitch talked about how she was told Pompeo was afraid to issue a strong statement defending her because Trump could possibly undercut it with a tweet, Schiff read out part of Trumps tweet attacking her right now as she testifies, and asks for her response. He also asks about the potential effect on other witnesses of these attacks, and she responds that “it’s intimidating.”

  184. says

    Daria Kaleniuk:

    April 25, 2019 – Ambassador Yovanovitch gives a “Woman of Courage” award to the father of Kateryna Gandziuk, an anticorruption activist who was attacked with acid and died after 4 months suffering. The same night Ambassador got a call from DC to leave Kyiv on the next plane.

    Here is Ambassador’s statement at that evening. I’ve been there jointly with many other activists and Kateryna’s friends, who were calling for justice. We were outraged with failure of prosecutor Lutsenko to investigate attack on Katya.

    And the same Lutsenko who covered up perpetrators of attacks on anticorruption activists colluded with Giulliani to successfully recall Ambassador Yovanovitch.

  195. says

    “In the middle of his impeachment inquiry, the President calls for the imprisonment of his political opponents and members of the law enforcement and intelligence community.”

    Trump tweeted: “So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come. Well, what about Crooked Hillary, Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the others, including even Mueller himself? Didn’t they lie?….

    ….A double standard like never seen before in the history of our Country?”

  197. says

    Yovanovitch makes an important point: re the “black ledger,” the focus in the US was on the involvement of Manafort, but in Ukraine it was on Yanukovych and the money he stole and where it went. Really undermines the argument that Leschenko was out to get Trump.

  201. says

    Alexandra Chalupa: “For the record: I have never worked for a foreign government. I have never been to Ukraine. I was not an opposition researcher. In 2008, I knew Manafort worked for Putin’s interests in Ukraine. I reported my concerns about him to the NSC in 2014 & sounded the alarm bells in 2016.”

  203. says

    Marc Elias: “BREAKING: In major court victory ahead of 2020, Florida federal court throws out state’s ballot order law that lists candidates of the governor’s party first on every ballot for every office. Finds that it gave GOP candidates a 5% advantage. @AndrewGillum lost in 2018 by .4%.”

  207. says

    WSJ – “Federal Prosecutors Probe Giuliani’s Links to Ukrainian Energy Projects”:

    Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Rudy Giuliani stood to personally profit from a Ukrainian natural-gas business pushed by two associates who also aided his efforts there to launch investigations that could benefit President Trump, people familiar with the matter said.

    Mr. Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pitched their new company, and plans for a Poland-to-Ukraine pipeline carrying U.S. natural gas, in meetings with Ukrainian officials and energy executives this year, saying the project had the support of the Trump administration, according to people briefed on the meetings. In many of the same meetings, the two men also pushed for assistance on investigations into Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and alleged interference by Ukraine in the 2016 U.S. election, some of the people said.

    In conversations that continued into this summer, Messrs. Parnas and Fruman told Ukrainian officials and others that Mr. Giuliani was a partner in the pipeline venture, which was a project of their company, Global Energy Producers, one of the people said. Another person said the men considered Mr. Giuliani a prospective investor in their company more broadly, but said the pitch was unsophisticated and exaggerated.

    …

    The Ukrainians understood the pipeline to be “part of the essential package” Mr. Giuliani and his associates were pushing, often mentioned immediately after the demand for investigations, said Kenneth F. McCallion, a New York lawyer who represents a number of Ukrainian individuals who learned of the pipeline deal, including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who left office in 2010.

    …

    Messrs. Parnas and Fruman presented themselves, and the pipeline deal, as having the backing of Mr. Giuliani and the Trump administration, according to people familiar with the conversations. They also told Ukrainian officials and others that the project had the backing of Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian tycoon who made his fortune brokering natural-gas sales from Russia and Central Asia to Ukraine.

    The Trump administration has long promoted U.S. liquefied natural gas, dubbed “freedom gas,” as a way for Europe to reduce its reliance on Russia for energy.

    Mr. Firtash, who is in Vienna fighting extradition to the U.S. to face bribery and related charges, has aligned himself in recent years with people close to Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani. Mr. Firtash has denied the allegations….

  210. says

    “[Rep.] Heck: …I am very angry by how it is the most powerful person in the world would remove you from office and then characterize you as bad news who was goingmto go through some things. very angry but not surprised. he belittled mccain, gold star family …deeply offensive.”

  212. says

    “Priceless @GOP Dodgers:
    ‘Several Republicans on Intel Committee dodged the topic [of Trump’s tweet attacking Yovanovitch] entirely. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) quickly whipped out his cell phone and began talking into it, even though his home screen was visible and there was no call in progress’.”

  213. says

    “Yovanovitch draws a distinction between foreign official expressing opinions of foreign policy happens vs. election interference.

    Having an opinion and expressing it is different than hiring troll armies, stealing emails, engaging in social media suppression efforts…”

    The fact that she’s demolishing their arguments doesn’t mean they won’t continue to use them. Frankly, I don’t know how Castor is going to do several more days of this. He looked so pained, so uncomfortable.

  219. johnson catman says

    re SC @202: Asshole asks a question, cuts off her answer, then says he will not allow her answer on “his time”. FUCK ALL REPUBLICANS!

  221. says

    The cable news insistence on dwelling on what Democrats “need to do” and are doing wrong in informing the public and pushing back against Republican disinformation, like they’re Statler and Waldorf all of a sudden, is truly bizarre. Fact-checking and presenting information to the public are literally their job.

  222. says

    Susan Hennessey:

    This week has been completely devastating to any plausible defense of the president. And there is good reason to think next week will be even worse for him.

    My prediction/suspicion is that now Barr rushes to get the IG report on Russia out as soon as he can muster and then the Republicans attempt to splinter off an alternative reality news universe on Fox out of it—regardless of what report might actually say.

  223. says

    Daily Beast – “Exclusive: Giuliani Ally Pete Sessions Was Eyed for Top Slot in Ukraine”:

    At the same time that Rudy Giuliani and his now-indicted pals were pushing for President Donald Trump to remove Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Ukraine, Trump administration officials were eyeing potential contenders to take over her job.

    One of the people in the mix, according to three sources familiar with the discussions, was Pete Sessions, a former congressman who called for Yovanovitch’s firing. He is also a longtime ally of the former New York Mayor, and is believed to have been the “beneficiary of approximately $3 million in independent expenditures” from a PAC funded in part by Giuliani’s indicted cronies, according to a federal indictment.

    …

    Conversations about Sessions—and another possible pick for the job, Raul Mas Canosa, a South Florida businessman with deep ties to the Cuban expat community—circulated inside and outside the administration from late 2018 through the early months of 2019, according to the sources. Lev Parnas, a Giuliani associate arrested last month for alleged campaign finance violations, was part of discussions about Mas Canosa with associates in Kyiv, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. One former State Department official said U.S. diplomats in Kyiv learned Mas Canosa was in contention after a rumor about him circulated in Ukrainian political circles.

    A spokesperson for Sessions told The Daily Beast he was not offered the ambassadorship or vetted for it. Mas Canosa confirmed that he was approached about taking the position.

    …

    Since-deleted Facebook posts show Sessions met with Parnas and Fruman on Capitol Hill on May 9, 2018. He sent the letter calling for the State Department to fire Yovanovitch on the same day.

    Since the Ukraine scandal broke, a federal grand jury in New York has subpoenaed Sessions for documents related to his interactions with Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman, including the effort to have Yovanovitch recalled….

    Much more atl. I remember Jorge Mas Canosa, who basically was readying the rightwing capitalists in FL to take over Cuba. Honestly didn’t know he had a brother, but I’m not surprised to see one popping up in this sketchy plot.

  224. says

    “The White House has issued a statement that appears to blame Alexander Vindman for the divergence between the White House readout of the April call and the rough transcript the White House released today, which didn’t show Trump mentioning corruption or sovereignty.”

    Statement atl. Claims Trump “continues to push for transparency” while he’s trying to prevent every impeachment witness from testifying, intimidating witnesses, blocking the release of thousands of pages of subpoenaed documents, and going to the Supreme Court to prevent his tax and financial documents from being turned over to New York or Congress.

  226. says

    Peter Maass in the Intercept – “Peter Handke Won the Nobel Prize After Two Jurors Fell for a Conspiracy Theory About the Bosnia War”:

    …The conspiracy theory about Ruder Finn has circulated in the bowels of the internet for nearly as long as the web has existed. While a small number of books and articles defending the Serbs feature it, there is basically no reputable work that lends any credence to the theory. The proposition that it was unfair to define the Serbs as the overwhelming culprit in Bosnia — and that a relatively small PR firm created this myth and got everyone to believe it — is utterly crackpot. Even Jacques Merlino, the French journalist whose 1993 interview with a Ruder Finn executive gave rise to the theory, seems taken aback with how far it’s gone. “I know they did their work but I don’t know if it was particularly effective,” he wrote in an email to The Intercept.

    Yet two jurors for the Nobel Prize for Literature say they relied on books that peddled this conspiracy theory in the service of exonerating Handke….

    Much, much more atl. This is a common feature of so much conspiracism: “The conspiracists pick one soon-to-be-discredited data point and ignore everything that discredited it later on.”

  228. says

    David Holmes (one of the aides who overheard the Trump-Sondland call in a Kyiv restaurant and then talked to Sondland – see #60 above) is still being deposed, but Manu Raju just read long segments of his 10-page opening statement on CNN. It’s something.

  230. says

    Manu Raju:

    I obtained a copy of David Holmes’ opening statement, saying that he heard Trump telling Gordon Sondland: “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” Sondland tells Trump: “He’s gonna do it” and that Zelensky will do “anything you ask for.”

    Sondland responded Trump only cares about “big stuff.” When Holmes said that the Ukraine war was big, Sondland responded “‘big stuff’ that benefits the President, like the Biden investigation that Mr. Giuliani was pushing,” Holmes said.

    10-minute video of Raju reading from the statement atl. Said Sondland told him Trump doesn’t “give a shit” about Ukraine.

  232. blf says

    Giuliani offers bizarre explanation for ‘misleading’ claims about Clinton:

    Giuliani says of 2016 remarks implying he spoke to ‘active’ FBI agents: I mean they are not old men, they can still do things

    Rudy Giuliani offered the FBI an extraordinary — and seemingly implausible — explanation for “misleading” remarks he made on television just a month before the 2016 election about a “surprise” that could derail the Hillary Clinton campaign.

    The former New York mayor, who serves as a personal lawyer to Donald Trump, faced justice department scrutiny last year for remarks he made in October 2016 that strongly suggested he had insider knowledge about a secret FBI investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information.

    James Comey, the then FBI director, publicly disclosed that investigators were looking into new material in the Clinton matter shortly after Giuliani’s public comments, in what proved to be one of the most contentious and controversial decisions in the weeks before the 2016 vote […].

    [… Giuliani] suggested that when he used the word “current” agent he meant that the FBI agents were retired but still in the broader US workforce, and that when he said they were “active” agents, he meant they were retired but still physically youthful and able-bodied.

    Sometimes I described them as active agents, and I probably misled people when I said active agents, because what I meant by that one… was that they were people that I work with. I didn’t mean people that were ‘on duty’. I know agents that are 85 years old, and I know agents that are 60 years old, and I consider the 60-years-olds to be active agents, he said.

    […]

    Pressed by the Guardian about the fact that the common understanding of the term “active agent” would mean that an individual was still working for the FBI, Giuliani said his use of the words “current” and “active” were understood by people who work in the security business, though perhaps not be laymen.

    […]

  235. says

    Face the Nation:

    “He made a mistake,” @SpeakerPelosi says on Trump’s tweet about Yovanovitch during her testimony. “I think part of it is his own insecurity as an impostor…he knows full well he’s in that office way over his head. And so he has to diminish everyone else.”

    Video atl.

  236. tomh says

    WaPo:
    Trump’s supporters flood social media with message dismissing Yovanovitch

    As the hearing unfolded, some of the president’s supporters sought to present a united front online, flooding social media with precise and coordinated messaging.

    One line in particular gained traction on Twitter: “I hired Donald Trump to fire people like Yovanovitch.”

    The statement gained about 12,600 interactions — meaning tweets, retweets, mentions and replies — during a roughly two-and-a-half hour period on Friday morning, according to analysis conducted by Marc Owen Jones, a disinformation researcher and assistant professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, Qatar. It continued to spread through much of the afternoon, appearing on other major social media platforms, such as Facebook, as well as on Trump-friendly message boards on 4chan.

    The line echoed the defense mounted by the White House and congressional Republicans that it was the president’s prerogative to dismiss the career diplomat. And it picked up steam as Trump assailed Yovanovitch with a mid-hearing tweet of his own.

    Dialing up the volume on the single line was evidence of the discipline that is a hallmark of Trump’s online followers.

    While the online mantra appeared to originate with an authentic user, some of its amplification seemed to exhibit coordinated activity that alarmed researchers. Jones said it was unusual to see a tweet copied and pasted without attribution “on such a large scale from so many accounts.” Many of the accounts in question were created in January 2017, further pointing to the possibility of a centralized campaign.

  237. blf says

    Bribery allegations over fishing rights rock Iceland and Namibia:

    ‘Fishrot files’ lead to head of Samherji fishing company and Namibian ministers stepping down

    Two Namibian government ministers have resigned and the boss of Iceland’s biggest fishing company has stepped aside amid a spiralling scandal over alleged bribes paid to officials in the southern African country in exchange for trawling rights.

    Þorsteinn Már Baldvinsson, the CEO of the Icelandic fishing firm Samherji, and Namibia’s fisheries and justice ministers, Bernhard Esau and Sacky Shanghala, are the first heads to roll following revelations this week of a vast corruption case.

    Three thousand company documents released by WikiLeaks and investigations by the Icelandic magazine Stundin and the TV show Kveikur showed how Samherji had allegedly paid more than 1bn Icelandic króna (£6.2m) since 2012 to ensure access to the fishing quotas, transferring the proceeds from the catches, mainly of horse-mackerel, via a web of offshore firms to a shell company in the Marshall Islands.

    The so-called Fishrot Files suggested Samherji had channelled about £54m to the tax haven in this way between 2011 and 2018, with some of the money reportedly passing through Norway’s largest bank, DNB, in which the Norwegian state holds a 34% stake.

    Johannes Stefansson, a former company employee turned whistleblower, told Icelandic media he had approved the kickbacks with Samherji’s backing. The company habitually “does whatever it takes to get its hands on the natural resources of other nations”, Stefansson said.

    […]

    As global fish stocks decline, Africa’s coastal waters are becoming more and more sought after by international trawler fleets, with Namibia’s resource-rich fisheries particularly prized. It emerged last year that a fifth of the country’s MPs hold shares in fishing companies.

    […]

    In Iceland, the fisheries minister, Kristján Þór Júlíusson — a former managing director of Samherji and lifelong friend of Þorsteinn — is facing calls to step aside until investigations into the company’s behaviour are concluded. Halldóra Mogensen, a Pirate party MP, demanded that the minister answer questions in parliament, adding that “the myth of Iceland’s innocence is dead”.

    The ruling Independence party, however, blamed a culture of corruption in Namibia for the scandal. That’s perhaps the root of the problem in this case, said the finance minister, Bjarni Benediktsson. A weak government, a corrupt government in this country. That seems to be the underlying problem that we’re seeing now.

  238. blf says

    From the Onion, Full Trump Transcript Includes 37 Pages Of Confused President [sic] Mashing Fingers Against Dial Pad While Ukrainian President Tries To Speak (quoted in full):

    Shedding light on what exactly transpired between the US president [sic] and Ukraine during a mysterious April call, a transcript released Friday includes 37 pages of a confused Donald Trump mashing his fingers against his phone’s dial pad while President Volodymyr Zelensky tries to speak. According to the released call logs, President [sic] Trump responded to Zelensky’s appeals for further cooperation between the two countries by hitting nine and then star 30 times in a row while yelling Ukraine! into the phone. This was reportedly followed by an eight-minute exchange where the president repeatedly held down the entire keypad in an attempt to hang up the phone. In addition, several pages of the transcript document noted rapid fire dialing as Trump muttered about not knowing how to spell Ukraine with numbers. At press time, legal analysts going over the call were expressing the most interest in the final five minutes, where President [sic] Trump attempts to order a meat lovers pizza and cinnamon sticks from Domino’s before launching into a six-minute diatribe about how someone with President Zelensky’s thick accent shouldn’t be working at a pizza place.

  240. says

    Politico – “Trump ignored aides’ advice to raise corruption in first Zelensky call, source says”:

    White House national security advisers suggested President Donald Trump raise the broad issue of corruption in his first call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on April 21, but Trump chose not to, according to a person familiar with the matter.

    One of Republicans’ central defenses in the impeachment inquiry has been that Trump cares deeply about corruption in Ukraine, which is why he asked Zelensky in July to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s dealings with the country.

    That the president did not adhere to his National Security Council’s advice to discuss corruption with Zelensky during their April call appears to undermine those claims.

    Trump released a record of the April call on Friday morning, which also appeared at odds with a readout of the call released by the White House to reporters that said Trump had “expressed his commitment” to work with Zelensky to “strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption.”

    According to the record, Trump congratulated Zelensky on his election victory but did not mention corruption.

    A person familiar with the events preceding and following the call said the NSC news release had been drafted based on the talking points provided to the president — and, because the call occurred on a Sunday, likely wasn’t updated before it went out to reporters.

    “In advance of a Presidential call, the National Security Advisor reviews and approves a draft press release prepared by the Directorate and reviewed by NSC Legal and NSC Press Office, which is based on prepared talking points for the call,” this person said.

    “Typically, the NSC will update the press release to reflect the topics actually discussed,” they added. “On April 21, 2019, President Trump did not raise the issue of corruption during the call with President-elect Zelensky, despite the NSC’s recommendation that he do so and specific talking points included in briefing materials addressing that important topic.”…

  242. says

    Vicky Ward at CNN – “Exclusive: After private White House meeting, Giuliani associate Lev Parnas said he was on a ‘secret mission’ for Trump, sources say”:

    Among the many guests who had their pictures taken with President Donald Trump at the White House’s annual Hanukkah party last year were two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev Parnas and Igor  Fruman. 

    In the picture, which Parnas posted on social media, he and Fruman are seen smiling alongside Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and Rudy Giuliani, the President’s personal lawyer.

    At one point during the party that night, Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a large reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani, according to two acquaintances in whom Parnas confided right after the meeting.

    Word of the encounter in the White House last December, which has not been previously reported, is further indication that Trump knew Parnas and Fruman, despite Trump publicly stating that he did not on the day after the two men were arrested at Dulles International Airport last month.

    Eventually, according to what Parnas told his confidants, the topic turned to Ukraine that night. According to those two confidants, Parnas said that “the big guy,” as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and Fruman with what Parnas described as “a secret mission” to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

    …

    In the days immediately following the meeting, Parnas insinuated to the two people he confided in that he clearly believed he’d been given a special assignment by the President; like some sort of “James Bond mission,” according to one of the people.

    To Parnas, the chain of command was clear: Giuliani would issue the President’s directives while Parnas, who speaks fluent Russian, would be an on-the-ground investigator alongside Fruman, who has numerous business contacts in Ukraine.

    “Parnas viewed the assignment as a great crusade,” says one of the people in whom Parnas confided. “He believed he was doing the right thing for Trump.”

    …

    Ken McCallion, a former federal prosecutor with numerous high-level clients in Ukraine, including former and current government officials, told CNN that he’s heard a similar story about the Hanukkah party encounter. Parnas told some of McCallion’s clients and contacts in Ukraine about the encounter. “Parnas told everyone in Ukraine about the White House meeting. He was adamant he was ‘their guy’ — that they chose him to be their ambassador in Ukraine,” McCallion said.

    And in February this year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Parnas and Fruman met with the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and then Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko. During that meeting, they extended Poroshenko an invitation for a State dinner at the White House, if he would commit to publicly opening investigations in Ukraine.

    …

    A separate encounter — also not previously disclosed — between Parnas and the President could provide further evidence that Parnas and Trump knew each other….

    …

    These meetings add further understanding of the extent to which Parnas and Fruman, aided by Giuliani, entered into the President’s inner-circle. CNN has recently reported that since 2014 there are eight documented times when Parnas and the President were with each other, including taking pictures together at campaign events and attending high-dollar fundraisers.

    Parnas, a prolific user of social media, tended to post those encounters with Trump. But the photo of Trump and Parnas together at the White House in December is the last encounter that Parnas posted of himself with the President.

    The two sources who Parnas confided in about the Hanukkah meeting at the White House tell CNN that they were often with Parnas over the past eighteen months, and that he “worshipped” the President.

    …

    However he felt back then, those two sources say Parnas now feels quite differently about Trump. The day after Parnas and Fruman were arrested on October 9 and charged with criminal campaign finance violations, Trump publicly denied ever knowing them, a move that was enormously upsetting to Parnas, according to three sources close to him.

    …

    In the weeks since his arrest, Parnas has become disenchanted with Trump, these sources say. He’s even signaled that he’s willing to cooperate with the Congressional impeachment inquiry. Parnas’ lawyer Bondy said his client would comply with a Congressional subpoena for documents and testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry in a manner that would allow him to protect his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

    …

    Parnas’ relationship with Giuliani and Fruman has also been strained, Parnas’ two confidants tell CNN. That’s a far cry from the days when the trio frequently met at the Trump Hotel and chartered a flight together.

    …

    Unlike Fruman, Parnas is no longer represented by one of the President’s former lawyers, John Dowd. “Igor has much more money than Parnas and can afford a strong defense team,” says one of their confidants, trying to explain the split.

    Meanwhile Parnas is trapped without his phones (in the possession of the government) in his house in Boca Raton, Florida. His former friends don’t reach out, not wanting to get involved in the multiple investigations that plague him.

    “In a strange way I feel sorry for Lev, for the mess he is now in” says one of his confidantes. “He never thought he did anything wrong; he was working for a President he really believed in. He was a hustler but also a nice man who gave people nice gifts. I would think all this is deeply upsetting for him.”

  246. says

    Daniel Dale at CNN – “Fact check: A list of 45 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment”:

    President Donald Trump is dishonest about a whole lot of things. But he is rarely as comprehensively dishonest as he has been about his dealings with Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry they have triggered.

    Relentless deceit has seemed to be his primary defense strategy in the court of public opinion. Trump has made false claims about almost every separate component of the story, from his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the whistleblower who complained about the call to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry hearings.

    The President is dissembling about so many different topics at once that it can be difficult to keep track of what is true and what isn’t. To help you fight Trump-induced dizziness, here are brief fact checks of 45 separate false claims Trump has made on the subject of Ukraine or impeachment….

  247. says

    Austin Ramzy, NYT (all links except this one to Ramzy’s thread are to the NYT):

    More than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents detail the origins and growth of the indoctrination program in Xinjiang, where a million or more predominately Muslim minorities have been held in a vast network of detention centers

    “‘Absolutely No Mercy’: Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims”: “More than 400 pages of internal Chinese documents provide an unprecedented inside look at the crackdown on ethnic minorities in the Xinjiang region.”

    Not going to be able to explain it all in a thread. We put months of reporting, analysis and translation work into this story. I’ve disappeared from Hong Kong coverage a few times recently (including this past week) with only mumbled excuses for my absence (Sorry!)

    There were many days of huge protests here while I was holed up contemplating internal party speeches. As much as I wanted to see the action on the streets, my editors realized the significance of this material and gave us the time to sort it all out

    The material was brought to light by a member of the Chinese political establishment who requested anonymity and expressed hope that the disclosure would prevent party leaders, including Xi Jinping, from escaping culpability for the mass detentions

    There are nearly 200 pages of speeches by Xi Jinping, XJ party secretary Chen Quanguo and security boss Zhu Hailun. There’s another 150+ pages of directives and orders on controlling the Muslim population. I’ve reported on China since 2003, and can’t recall a leak like this

    It is stunning to hear party leaders in their own words ordering a drastic crackdown on extremism, including mass detentions, and the cold calculations with which they weigh the consequences

    The speeches record Xi in 2014 ordering an all-out “struggle against terrorism, infiltration and separatism” using the “organs of dictatorship” and showing “absolutely no mercy”

    Chen redistributes Xi’s speeches after he goes to Xinjiang in 2016, and calls for a “smashing, obliterating offensive” and issues a vague order to “round up everyone who should be rounded up”

    But perhaps the most telling document is a guide for officials to explain the camps to children of detainees. It is full of veiled threats, pseudomedical language of psychological infection and assurances the party will take care of you

    “Document: What Chinese Officials Told Children Whose Families Were Put in Camps.”

    I don’t you usually say this about my stories, but please read, please share and please let us know what you think. Here’s a condensed version with the key takeaways

    “5 Takeaways From the Leaked Files on China’s Mass Detention of Muslims”: “Hundreds of pages of internal papers offer new insight into how the program began, how it was justified even as the damage it caused was clear, and how some officials resisted it.”

    The sources of information on Xinjiang are still very limited, so it is very welcome to have a leak like this. If you know of other things we should look for, please let me know

  249. says

    More re #241:

    Reporter gets pepper-sprayed in the middle of a live hit (by those forces of democracy) in Bolivia and plows right through it. This is impressive stuff, and helps reveal what’s going on there…

    She calls it tear gas and I don’t wanna line edit a hit she pulled off while suffering a chemical weapon attack…but that looks like pepper spray

    5 coca growers were shot and killed by the military yesterday in Cochabamba, with another 22 wounded.

    Here are the names of those shot and wounded by coup backers. I’ll also share photos, some graphic, so be warned if you continue with this thread. But the US media is ignoring this slaughter and it’s important to understand what’s happening.

    This is information and documentation being collected by human rights activists and forwarded by @AndeanInfoNet. The protest march was peaceful until the military opened fire from the air and ground…

    Photos and videos atl.

  250. says

    Adam Serwer:

    The big takeaway from the Barr [Federalist Society] speech is that he believes GOP dominance of government and the rule of law are synonymous, because liberals are inherently malign and lawless actors. No need to share power with, or recognize the legitimacy of such opponents.

    Defending partisan GOP prerogatives then, is defending the Republic. It’s a logic that helps Trump toadies rationalize their contempt for the rule of law by telling themselves that it is their opponents who share this quality, and so defending Trump is really defending America.

    Describing opposition as “progressive holy war” is more than ridicule, it is the rhetoric of the war on terror applied to political opponents. Trump critics are but liberal jihadists; perhaps Republicans, the champions of Real America, may need to go to the Dark Side to save it.

    This is ideologically distinct from the authoritarian cult of personality present on Fox News, but its only purpose is to bring self-styled intellectual sophisticates to the same conclusion.

  252. says

    Craig Unger tweeted: “Remember that Pete Sessions father, William Sessions, was former director of FBI but ended up representing the powerful Russian mobster Semion Mogilevich.”

    Susan Hennessey:

    Amazing! I did not know this. William Sessions was the only FBI Director to ever be fired prior to Comey, for major corruption issues. His case is where [] the legal analysis that a president CAN fire an FBI director come from.

    The report that Clinton used to fire Sessions was authored by the Attorney General in the outgoing Bush administration: Bill Barr.

    Ironically, the “major corruption” was stuff like misuse of FBI plane for personal trips. It would seem positively quaint by Trump standards. I actually don’t know if the full internal ethics report Barr wrote has ever been released. Would be a fun read!

    Anyway, I had no idea he was the father of Pete Sessions, who is now embroiled in Trump’s latest fiasco. What a lovely full circle moment of generations of bad people abusing and profiting off of the public trust.

    And working on behalf of the Russian mob for pay.

  253. says

    Reuters – “Turkey replaces four more Kurdish mayors over alleged terror links”:

    Turkey removed four more mayors from their posts on Saturday as part of a widening government crackdown against the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and replaced them with state appointees.

    President Tayyip Erdogan and his government accuse the HDP of having links to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militant group, leading to prosecutions of thousands of its members and some leaders. The HDP denies such links.

    On Saturday, the mayors of Mazidag, Savur and Derik in the southeastern province of Mardin were replaced with appointees, while the mayor of the Suruc district in the Sanliurfa province was also removed, bringing to 24 the number of mayors who have been dismissed after being elected earlier this year.

    The HDP governs many cities in the largely Kurdish southeast of Turkey, and says it is the target of a systematic government plot to deplete its ranks.

    The former co-leaders of the HDP have both been jailed since 2016 on terrorism charges, with several other prominent members accused of supporting terrorism over what the government says are links to the PKK….

  254. says

    “Netanyahu in conference call w/top Likud figures: ‘Set everything on fire’ to prevent Gantz from forming minority govt – that is, leaving Likud out of govt and Netanyahu out of PM office.

    Filling in context: a) Reports that Likud expects indictment of Netanyahu on Tues, just b/f Gantz’s mandate to form govt runs out.
    Netanyahu fears that combination means Gantz’s chance of creating govt w/out Likud has improved greatly.

    Netanyahu is warning that Gantz will form govt including Joint List, alliance of Arab-backed parties.
    This is cover for what Netanyahu sees as real threat: that he will lose power – and stand trial.”

  255. says

    Artnet – “Why Did the US Deny Kurdish Artist Zehra Doğan’s Visa? She Doesn’t Know—and She’s Not the Only One Affected”:

    The Kurdish artist and journalist Zehra Doğan, who was imprisoned for nearly three years for making art that offended the Turkish government, was denied entry to the US last month when she attempted to attend the opening of a show at the Drawing Center that includes her work.

    The exhibition, “The Pencil Is a Key: Drawings by Incarcerated Artists,” features the work of incarcerated artists, including political prisoners and concentration camp detainees. Doğan was accused of being part of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist group, after she painted a photo of a Kurdish area that had been destroyed by Turkish security forces.

    Doğan believes her time behind bars was a factor in the US’s decision to deny her visa application, she told Artnet News.

    During her application interview, she was asked about her conviction and imprisonment….

    Doğan’s imprisonment was widely publicized, in part thanks to the British street artist Banksy, who painted a mural in tribute to her on New York’s Houston Bowery Wall. Afterward, she wrote a letter thanking him, saying that his support helped raised awareness of her work, and that “my painting now accomplished its mission of showing the atrocities.”

    Doğan’s inability to attend the Drawing Center show was “a significant loss,” Rosario Güiraldes, one of the exhibition’s curators, told Artnet News in an email. “Her work is central to the exhibition, and demonstrates the ways in which drawing can be such a powerful tool for those who are surviving imprisonment or struggling against it.”

    Both the Drawing Center and PEN America, the nonprofit that defends international freedom of speech in literature, had written letters in support of Doğan’s visa application, and were ready to help the artist appeal the verdict. But the artist told them not to.

    “I personally don’t want to go to the US anymore,” Doğan said. The application process demanded a 15-year history, including all of her social media use, travels, residences, and employment, she said. “This is a terrible approach. This doesn’t serve anything but to diminish the US in the eyes of the artists and intellectuals,” she added, noting that she had planned other events in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles.

    Doğan is the latest of several artists who have been denied entry into the US recently. A group of Middle Eastern artists were also prevented from attending the opening of a MoMA PS1 exhibition in Queens about art made during the Gulf Wars, due in part to President Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban.

    Turkey is not one of the countries targeted in the ban, however, and the authorities did not offer a reason for denying Doğan’s visa. It seems to be just one of “a number of instances in which artists and scholars either of Kurdish identity or working on Kurdish issues have had their visa applications denied in recent months,” said Julie Trébault, director of PEN America’s Artists at Risk Connection program, in an email to Artnet News.

    Doğan also suspects that her ethnicity was the problem. “They simply did not want to issue a visa to me because I am a Kurd and a struggling woman,” she said….

  256. says

    Guardian – “Classes move to Vienna as Hungary makes rare decision to oust university”:

    A trumpet fanfare, a wine reception and celebratory speeches, but alongside it all, an undertone of melancholy: the opening of Central European University’s Vienna campus on Friday also marked the first time for decades that a university has been forced out of a European country.

    CEU, founded by the billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros in 1991, has provided free or cheap English-language graduate education in Budapest to thousands of students from eastern Europe and beyond, and is regarded as one of the best universities in the region.

    But the Hungarian government has revoked CEU’s ability to issue US-accredited degrees in the country, leading to the exodus to Vienna. The university fell victim to a sustained campaign against Soros by Hungary’s far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, who has painted the Hungarian-born Soros as the mastermind of a plan to destroy Europe with liberal values and increased migration.

    “There’s no other university in Europe or the US that has been forced out on the political whim of a leader,” said CEU’s rector, Michael Ignatieff, in an interview prior to the ceremony. He said the lack of support from Donald Trump’s administration for a US institution under attack abroad could have serious consequences for US universities across the globe.

    Soros, now 89, travelled to Vienna to attend the inauguration of the new campus and said he was pledging €750m of additional funds to the university going forward, which Ignatieff said would secure its future for many years to come. Soros referred to CEU’s battle with Orbán as “an epic struggle against a repressive regime”.

    In a recent interview with the Guardian, Soros said he was unlikely to return to his home country as long as Orbán remained in power. “It’s quite dangerous because he has got some blind followers, just like Trump, and they may try to get me,” he said.

    …

    Ignatieff said the focus on Soros by the Hungarian government is a red herring, and criticised the controversial US ambassador David Cornstein for accepting Orbán’s line: “The fact that George Soros supports this university is irrelevant to the fact of whether you defend its academic freedom. And the American ambassador doesn’t think that.”

    Cornstein, an octogenarian jewellery magnate who is longstanding friend of Trump and has no diplomatic experience, arrived in Budapest vowing to persuade Orbán to keep CEU in the country. In the end, however, he gave up, portraying the battle as a personal fight between Orbán and Soros and publicly lavishing praise on Orbán as a “perfect partner” for the US.

    Last month he told the New York Times how, after helping to secure Orbán a much-coveted meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, he flew back to Budapest with Orbán and the two men stripped to their underwear and relaxed on couches at the back of Orbán’s plane….

  259. says

    AP – “US commander: Partnership with Kurds against IS still strong”:

    A senior U.S. coalition commander said Friday the partnership with Syrian Kurdish forces remains strong and focused on fighting the Islamic State group, despite an expanding Turkish incursion into areas under Kurdish control.

    The U.S.-Syrian Kurdish relationship, which dates back to 2014, was strained after President Donald Trump last month ordered American troops out of northern Syria, making way for a Turkish invasion of Kurdish-held towns and villages along a stretch of the border.

    On Friday, reports said U.S. forces completed their withdrawal from Kobani, a border region where the partnership against IS was cemented in 2014, and that Russians moved into to replace them.

    The commander’s comments to The Associated Press reflect how troops on the ground are trying to stick to the original aims of the Syria mission despite a reduced and changed footprint. They say they are staying to fight alongside Kurdish forces against the Islamic State group, as well as deny IS the oil fields as a source of revenue while showing support for the Kurdish fighters who have lost a sizeable part of the 30 percent of syria they once controlled. Their words however come as Trump says the mission now is focused on securing oil fields and infrastructure.

    Air Force Maj. Gen. Eric T. Hill told the AP on Friday that Islamic State militants remain “a global threat” and that the partnership with the Kurds and international action is still needed against it.

    “So, I don’t think the work is complete. We still have to pursue them and eliminate them everywhere we can find them,” he told the AP in a telephone interview from Baghdad.

    …

    Kurdish and American forces are now operating in a region that is more complicated and crowded with troops since the Turks began their attack on northeast Syria in early October, aimed at pushing the Kurdish fighters away from the border.

    Turkish forces have consolidated control over a stretch of the border running 120 kilometers (70 miles) wide and 30 kilometers (20 miles) deep into Syria. They have also kept up pressure outside that area, fighting with Kurdish forces on the edges.

    Syrian government forces and their Russian allies have moved into other parts of the border under a Russian-Turkish deal.

    U.S. officials emphasize that they will not fight Turkey, a NATO ally.

    But Hill underscored that the U.S. was standing by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. “We have been working with (the SDF) for a long time and we continue to train and work with them now,” Hill said. “So I think the partnership is strong.”

    He said the SDF are “the lead on the ground” in fighting IS. “They know the land, they know the people, and they know the players. They are the best force to fight Daesh, ” he said.

    While IS has lost its territorial control in Iraq and Syria, its militants continue to wage insurgent attacks.

    Hill said his troops continue to train, advise and equip the Kurdish-led forces. The SDF is guarding the oil fields, and the U.S. is providing them help in doing so, as well as in securing some 11,000 IS prisoners held in SDF-run facilities, he said.

    Both sides have sought to show the U.S.-Kurdish partnership never waned. One American commando who works closely with the SDF said at no one point there was any drop in communication between the two sides, even as U.S. forces were pulling out from border areas ahead of the Turkish invasion.

    “The friendship didn’t end to restart. It continues. We hope it also reaps political results to find a political solution,” Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesman, told AP earlier this week.

    …

    During a recent visit to two U.S. bases in eastern Syria, AP journalists saw beefed up forces that focused on holding ground, such as Bradley armored vehicles and Marines forces who could secure bases. There was no sign that Americans were directly guarding oil installations.

    …

    Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad repeated warnings that the American presence in Syria will lead to armed “resistance” that “will exact losses among the Americans, and consequently force them to leave.”

    Speaking with Russia24 TV and Rossiya Segodnya news agency, Assad said Americans should remember the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that “Syria will not be an exception.”

    He also criticized Kurdish groups seeking to set up an autonomous region inside Syria. “We shall never accept any separatist propositions under any circumstances,” he said….

    OIR officials are commenting extensively for these pieces, and the official OIR accounts are tweeting links to them.

  262. says

    Guardian Observer – “Priti Patel blocks rescue of British Isis children”:

    Home secretary Priti Patel intervened to block a recent rescue operation to bring British orphans and unaccompanied minors home from Syria, sources have revealed.

    During National Security Council meetings last month and internal discussions, Patel, backed by several other ministers including defence secretary Ben Wallace, objected to the extraction of British children from the war-ravaged country, sources say.

    Their opposition meant that a discussed late October rescue operation was abandoned at the last minute because Patel, Wallace and chancellor Sajid Javid felt the children posed “security concerns”.

    More than 60 British minors, including at least three orphans, had been identified, and a quick and safe route identified to take them out of north-east Syria and then to Erbil, Iraq, where they would be flown home direct to the UK.

    It has also emerged that not only had the extraction plan been prepared but that a number of councils in the UK had offered the care package and reintegration programme necessary for the children following their arrival in the UK.

    The charity Save the Children, which has officials working in north-east Syria, described the resistance from ministers such as Patel as “grievous irresponsibility” and said that “playing politics” with children’s lives was unacceptable.

    …

    [James] Denselow [of Save the Children] said that the security situation in north-east Syria had deteriorated since the UK rescue operation was planned. “There was a window of opportunity that was wider, and now it is narrowing,” he said.

    …

    The inaction means the UK now has one of the most hardline policies towards repatriating nationals linked to Isis, with Uzbekistan recently among those announcing it would bring home Isis women and children.

    Recently, lieutenant-general Sir Graeme Lamb, former director of special forces and commander of the field army who led British forces in the Iraq war, said: “Children should not be punished for their parents’ actions and decisions – most were forcibly taken to Isis territories, or born into them, and made to live according to its hardline doctrine.”

    Turkey, however [?], has started sending Britons back to the UK. On Thursday, a 26-year-old man was arrested at Heathrow airport after being sent back by Turkey. The country said the man was among eight Islamic State suspects it had deported as part of a controversial push to repatriate foreign Isis suspects held in Turkish jails.

  263. says

    New Yorker – “After Six Decades, Turkey Is Now a U.S. Ally in Name Only”:

    After a tirade of tweets condemning the House impeachment hearings on the future of his Presidency, Donald Trump spent the rest of Wednesday trying to cajole his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, into coöperating—on anything. “We’ve been friends for a long time,” Trump told reporters, with the Turkish leader at his side, in the Oval Office. “I’m a big fan of the President,” he said later, at their joint press conference. Never mind that Trump repeatedly mangled Erdoğan’s name, as he also did during Erdoğan’s last visit, in 2017, albeit mispronouncing it in different ways.

    Trump made no tangible headway, even though he dangled the bait of a trade deal worth a hundred billion dollars. The President’s latest foreign-policy flop was not all of his making, however. Under Erdoğan, Turkey has become increasingly brazen in defying the United States, the West, and even the NATO alliance to which it contributes the second-largest force.

    In recent years, U.S. officials have complained that Turkey allowed jihadis to slip across its southern border to join ISIS, an Al Qaeda faction, and other militant groups in Syria. Turkey then invaded Syria, this fall, to fight the U.S.-backed Kurdish militia that defeated ISIS. Turkey has also cozied up to Russia militarily. It has coöperated with Iran, and a state-owned bank facilitated a multibillion-dollar Iranian scheme to evade U.S. sanctions. At home, Erdoğan has cracked down on political opponents, the media, business leaders, academics, and even his own military to consolidate his rule. Thousands have been arrested in violation of the human-rights principles of the European Union, which Turkey long sought to join.

    “It is fair to ask if Turkey is still really an ally of the United States in anything more than name,” Phil Gordon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as the Obama Administration’s White House coördinator on Middle East policy, told me. “Ten years ago, we saw Turkey as a country moving toward the United States and the West, reforming and growing economically, democratizing and getting the military out of politics, seeking to join the European Union, and working with the United States in NATO from Afghanistan to the Balkans.” But in the past few years, he said, Turkey has moved in the opposite direction. “Turkey remains an important potential partner of the United States, but the days when the United States aspired to a ‘model partnership’ based on common values and interests are over.”

    The crisis is the worst in the modern history of relations between Washington and Ankara, Gönül Tol, the director of Turkish studies at the Middle East Institute, in Washington, told me. “Anti-Americanism has always been there, but it has peaked in the last few years,” she said. “An overwhelming majority of people in Turkey think that Russia is a better ally, and that the bigger national-security threat comes from the U.S.”

    …

    Since the nineteen-sixties, the two nations—which represent the western and eastern flanks of NATO, the world’s largest military alliance—usually shared views on common threats, whether it was the Soviet Union or extremism. No longer. One of the most contentious disputes is Erdoğan’s decision to buy advanced S-400 missiles—an air-defense system—from Russia…. No other NATO member buys Russian military equipment, in no small part because the alliance was established to counter Moscow’s influence.

    By law, the White House is also mandated—under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, from 2017—to impose sanctions on countries that acquire Russian defense equipment. Trump has not yet imposed sanctions, on the grounds that the system will not be operational until April….

    …

    The deepening strategic divide between the U.S. and Turkey is reflected in their split over the status of two men with disparate ties to the two nations. For the United States, the most important figure in the five-year campaign to defeat ISIS was General Mazloum Kobani Abdi, the nom de guerre of the Kurdish leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces. Mazloum lost more than eleven thousand troops, men and women, fighting Islamic State jihadis in Syria, in a partnership with more than seventy nations in a U.S.-led coalition. Trump has spoken to Mazloum twice in recent weeks and praised him repeatedly. Last month, a bipartisan group of senators petitioned the State Department to expedite a visa for Mazloum to visit Washington.

    At Trump and Erdoğan’s joint press conference, however, Erdoğan called Mazloum—whose real name is Ferhat Abdi Sahin—a terrorist. “So a person like this should not be welcomed by a country such as the United States,” Erdoğan said. Turkey has invoked an Interpol “red notice” on Mazloum; it requires any member state to arrest a wanted person. Prospects of a visit by Mazloum to the U.S. now seem dim.

    Turkey and the United States also disagree on the status of an elderly Turkish cleric named Fetullah Gulen, who has lived in Pennsylvania’s Poconos for two decades…. At the press conference on Wednesday, Erdoğan again alleged that Gulen had tried to “destroy the constitutional order of Turkey.” He demanded that the Administration “eradicate” Gulen’s presence in the United States.

    …

    Congress has turned against Turkey. Last month, the House passed a bipartisan resolution, 354–60, that condemned Turkey’s invasion of Syria. On October 29th, the House passed the bipartisan Protect Against Conflict by Turkey Act, 403–16, which calls for sanctions on specific Turkish officials connected to the invasion of northern Syria and requires the State Department to estimate the worth of Erdoğan and his family.

    “These sanctions are specifically designed to target the Turkish officials and institutions responsible for the bloodshed in Syria without senselessly hurting the Turkish people,” Eliot Engel, a Democrat of New York and chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said, before the vote on the Protect Against Conflict by Turkey Act. “After all, it is Erdoğan—not the Turkish people—that is responsible for this horror. Erdoğan is an authoritarian thug.” A similar bill has been introduced by a bipartisan group in the Senate.

    …

    Whatever Turkey does, it cannot be expelled from NATO; the alliance of twenty-nine nations has no mechanism to oust members. Turkey offers strategic advantages for both U.S. and NATO interests because it straddles Europe, the Middle East, and countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. For decades, it offered one-stop strategic shopping. Yet the fraying of the U.S-Turkey alliance has led the U.S. to start “pre-positioning” its assets in other countries and reconfiguring strategy, Schenkkan said….

    Erdoğan, meanwhile, got much of what he wanted out of Trump. The Turkish leader received “the Presidential seal of approval of an Oval Office visit and a chance to press his perspective directly to a President,” Phil Gordon said. “Trump seems to revel in these personal, C.E.O.-to-C.E.O. relationships, though he has yet to demonstrate what the United States is getting out of this one.”

  265. says

    New Yorker – “Noel Ignatiev’s Long Fight Against Whiteness”:

    In 1995, Noel Ignatiev, a recent graduate of the doctoral program in history at Harvard, published his dissertation with Routledge, an academic press. Many such books appear, then disappear, subsumed into the endless paper shuffling of the academic credentialling process. But Ignatiev was not a typical graduate student, and his book, “How the Irish Became White,” was not meant to stay within the academy. A fifty-four-year-old Marxist radical, Ignatiev had come to the academy after two decades of work in steel mills and factories. The provocative argument at the center of his book—that whiteness was not a biological fact but rather a social construction with boundaries that shifted over time—had emerged, in large part, out of his observations of how workers from every conceivable background had interacted on the factory floor. Ignatiev wasn’t merely describing these dynamics; he wanted to change them. If whiteness could be created, it could also be destroyed.

    “How the Irish Became White” quickly broke out of the academic-publishing bubble. Writing in the Washington Post, the historian Nell Irvin Painter called it “the most interesting history book of 1995.” Mumia Abu-Jamal, the activist and death-row inmate, provided an enthusiastic back-cover blurb. Today, many of the ideas Ignatiev proposed or refined—about the nature of whiteness, and about the racial dynamics that unfold among immigrant workers—are taken for granted in classrooms; they influence films, literature, and art. But Ignatiev found it hard to accept the academic rewards that came with his book’s success. Committed to radicalism, he spent much of his time in academia doing what he had done on the factory floor: publishing leaflets and zines about the possibilities of revolutionary change.

    He was still at it on October 27th, when Hard Crackers, a journal that Ignatiev edited with a collection of friends and old collaborators, threw a launch party for its latest issue, at Freddy’s Bar, in Brooklyn. Wearing a white Panama hat and a loose-fitting suit, Ignatiev spoke briefly: Hard Crackers, he said, had been founded with the conviction that American society was a “time bomb,” and that its salvation could only come through the stories and actions of ordinary people. In that spirit, the journal published short, memoir-driven portraits of working Americans, in the style of Joseph Mitchell’s “Up in the Old Hotel.” This portraiture served a political purpose. Ignatiev and his fellow-editors hoped to provoke small but potentially explosive moments of revelation in their readers—to create instants of autonomy which, they thought, might allow those readers to forge coalitions with other seekers of “a new society.” This philosophy, inspired by the work of the Trinidadian writer C. L. R. James, had run through all of Ignatiev’s work as a radical youth, a radical factory worker, and then, finally, a radical scholar.

    Ignatiev’s speech was energetic, funny, and shot through with brio and irony. But it included a note of reflection. Ignatiev said that he had spent most of his life around people who vehemently disagreed with everything he said; he was confident that he had always been right, but also pretty sure that being right had amounted to nothing. He seemed to be posing a difficult question for those who believe, as Ignatiev did, in spontaneous revolutionary change: How do you measure success if the revolution hasn’t yet come? A few days later, Ignatiev flew out to Arizona to see his daughter and grandchildren. On November 9th, he died, at the age of seventy-eight.

    …

    …In his conception, white privilege wasn’t an accounting tool used to compile inequalities; it was a shunt hammered into the minds of the white working class to make its members side with their masters instead of rising up with their black comrades. White privilege was a deceptive tactic wielded by bosses—a way of tricking exploited workers into believing that they were “white.”…

    Much more atl.

  266. says

    “NEW: Jennifer Williams, Trump’s Russia/Europe adviser, told impeachment investigators that she listened in on the July 25 Trump-Zelensky call and said it was ‘unusual and inappropriate’, and ‘shed some light on possible other motivations’ for freezing military aid.”

    “Some news from the Morrison deposition that will create more intrigue – Morrison says BOLTON had a one-on-one meeting with TRUMP about releasing Ukraine security assistance. Bolton told Morrison after Trump ‘wasn’t ready to do it’.

    BOLTON also had very specific advice about what to do about anything SONDLAND-related: ‘Do not get involved, and make sure the lawyers are tracking’.”

    Because the most important thing is to minimize your own personal legal exposure, not to put a stop to the criminal scheme and inform the public.

  269. says

    “New: Gordon Sondland, US envoy to the EU, was acting at President Trump’s instruction in his dealings with Ukraine, according to a former NSC official. Tim Morrison said Sondland ‘believed and at least related to me that the President was giving him instruction’.”

  271. says

    NPR – “Louisiana Democrat, Gov. John Bel Edwards, Keeps Seat Despite Trump’s Opposition”:

    Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, held onto his seat Saturday after a tough challenge from his Republican opponent, Eddie Rispone, a wealthy businessman and political newcomer who was supported by President Trump.

    …

    This is the third and final gubernatorial election of 2019 and the second loss for President Trump, who campaigned for all three candidates. The president was in Louisiana this past week and framed the race as a personal referendum, urging voters to unseat Edwards. Trump traveled to Louisiana three times to support Rispone.

    …

    Edwards’ second term may be a bitter pill for Trump, who had much invested in this year’s elections ahead of his own election in 2020.

  273. says

    “From Stephanie Grisham: ‘After a quick exam and labs, the President is headed back downtown.
    The President remains healthy and energetic without complaints, as demonstrated by his repeated vigorous rally performances in front of thousands of Americans several times a week’.”

    “White House Press Secretary says Trump has ‘more energy than anybody else in the White House’ and Jeanine Pirro says ‘he’s almost superhuman’.”

    LOL.

  275. says

    Guardian – “Revealed: ex-KGB agent met Boris Johnson at Italian party”:

    Boris Johnson met an ex-KGB agent during a highly controversial trip to attend a party two days after attending a high-level Nato summit that focused on Russia, the Observer can reveal.

    The prime minister, who was foreign secretary at the time, met Russian billionaire businessman Alexander Lebedev, whose family owns Britain’s Independent and Evening Standard newspapers, following a summit of foreign ministers in Brussels staged in the wake of the poisoning of ex-Russian agent Sergei Skripal.

    The two met in Italy in April 2018, a month after the attack using the novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, when Johnson, in what appears to be a highly unusual break with protocol, apparently left behind his personal security detail and flew to a lavish party at a palazzo near Perugia hosted by Lebedev’s son Evgeny.

    While the meeting with Evgeny Lebedev was confirmed to the Guardian in September, Alexander Lebedev denied meeting Johnson.

    However a spokesman has gone on to acknowledge that the meeting between Johnson and Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB officer, did take place, though he insisted there was nothing was out of the ordinary.

    …

    It is not known what was discussed or how long the meeting between Moscow-based Alexander Lebedev and Johnson lasted. When asked to comment, Downing Street declined.

    The 59-year-old Russian is a high-profile media mogul who has argued that western sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine have been ridiculous and ineffective, and whose stint in the KGB is well documented.

    The development arrives amid ongoing disquiet over why Downing Street last month elected to suppress a secret intelligence report on the threats posed to UK democracy by illicit Russian activities in Britain.

    …

    On Friday Johnson insisted there was “no evidence” of Russian interference in the UK democratic process as pressure mounted for him to publish the report on the subject ahead of the general election.

    Yesterday, shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, joined the calls for the findings to be made public. She said: “He should simply publish the report in full. If not, the British public will be left to draw their own conclusions.”

    …

    According to his Instagram account, Alexander Lebedev had been in Russian-occupied Crimea – he has been a vocal proponent of Russia’s occupation of the peninsula – a few days before travelling to Italy where he met Johnson.

  283. tomh says

    Newsweek:
    Planned Parenthood wins lawsuit against anti-abortion activists alleging fraud and illegal recording
    By Aila Slisco 11/15/19 AT 7:10 PM EST

    Planned Parenthood won a lawsuit worth $2 million Friday, after a jury found that an anti-abortion group had broken multiple laws by secretly recording and releasing manipulatively edited video footage of doctors and staff.

    The Center for Medical Progress and its founder David Daleiden were found guilty of fraud, trespassing and illegal secret recording. Lawyers for the plaintiff alleged that the anti-abortion activists used underhanded and illegal tactics to advance their agenda, and the federal jury in San Francisco agreed.

    Planned Parenthood says that clandestinely recorded video footage was manipulated and edited to make it appear as though they were attempting to profit off of fetal tissue donations, something they deny has ever taken place.

    The videos were taken between 2013 and 2015, and apparently feature Daleiden and co-defendant Sandra Merritt pretending to be representatives of a fake company called “BioMax.”

    Planned Parenthood alleges that Daleiden and Merritt’s alter egos “Robert Sarkis” and “Susan Tannenbaum” surreptitiously recorded conversations with company officials. The videos were recorded at clinics and industry conferences, and featured the pair seeking tissue from abortions for “medical research.”

    The footage was then allegedly edited to make it appear as though the group was selling the tissue for a profit. Planned Parenthood says they do not sell tissue, but at the time they did engage in the legal practice of taking fees to cover procurement. In 2018, they stopped accepting fees to cover procurement costs. The organization claims discussions about fees were manipulated to make it seem as though they were “selling” the tissue.

    The edited videos were then released to the public and quickly became popular in anti-abortion circles, before ending up being used by politicians in congressional investigations that began in 2015.

    “We are thrilled with today’s verdict. David Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress intentionally waged a multi-year illegal effort to manufacture a malicious campaign against Planned Parenthood,” said Planned Parenthood acting president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in a statement. “The jury recognized today that those behind the campaign broke the law in order to advance their goals of banning safe, legal abortion in this country, and to prevent Planned Parenthood from serving the patients who depend on us.”

    Daleiden denies any wrongdoing and claims the judge was acting unfairly, telling The San Francisco Chronicle a “biased judge with close Planned Parenthood ties spent six weeks trying to influence the jury with pre-determined rulings and suppressed the video evidence.”

    Daleiden and Merritt are also facing criminal charges related to the allegations. The pair are set to attend a court hearing on December 6 that will decide whether a possible trial for invasion of privacy and eavesdropping will move forward.

  284. says

    Shimon Prokupecz: “Mystery continues: CNN: Typically, Walter Reed’s medical staff would get a general notice about a ‘VIP’ visit to the medical center ahead of a presidential visit. That did not happen this time, indicating the visit was a non-routine visit and scheduled last minute.”

  285. says

    SC, your link in comment 259 does not work.

    In other news, this is from Josh Marshall, (an essay discussing how close Ukrainian President Zelensky came to announcing on CNN that he was going ahead with Trump’s “investigations):

    […] It had seemed that the interview was likely scheduled for September 13th and canceled as late as the morning of that day. But according to Zakaria it was only canceled on the 18th or the 19th of September.

    This isn’t just a matter of a few days difference.

    Zelensky’s team, it seems, did not rule out the announcement until as long as a week until after the aid was released. Zelensky or his staffers told Zakaria when they met for an off-camera chat on the September 13th that they knew the aid had finally been released.

    Even though they were obviously happy that the aid had finally been released, it seems they weren’t quite sure what it meant. Should they still make the announcement? Was it released based on the understanding the announcement would be forthcoming? Could canceling the announcement cause more still problems?

    From the perspective of November we can see pretty clearly that the aid was released on September 11th because the plot was finally being exposed. Everyone was running to ground. That seems to have been clear to Zelensky and his advisors by the 18th or 19th. But at first it wasn’t entirely clear. Indeed, considering their bizarre interactions with the US government over the preceding months and the stakes involved for Ukraine, it’s no surprise that they couldn’t be sure and kept their options open.

    This part is purely my speculation. But I wonder whether we will eventually learn that some person or persons within the US government were counseling Zelensky on what the bewildering news meant. […]

    Link

  286. says

    How consistently do Trumpers lie? Ian Reifowitz found out through personal experience:

    It’s always good to try new things. My new experience this week was to debate an actual Trumper on live television. When I was asked on Wednesday afternoon—a mere 40 minutes before it was going to start—to join a panel debate on France24 News, I didn’t know that one of the participants would be Marc Porter, the president of Republicans Overseas France and a member of the Trump 2020 campaign advisory board. […]

    Porter began lying in response to the very first question we discussed, namely whether acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor’s testimony on Wednesday would “have a major impact”? Porter opined: “I doubt it,” and then moved straight to gaslighting:

    We first of all know that there’s a treaty that allows the President to speak about these things. It’s the treaty with Ukraine on mutual legal assistance and criminal matters.

    It’s important to recognize that this is a talking point other Trumpers are pushing as well. He is referring to a real treaty—although if we’re giving him credit for not flat-out making up a treaty that doesn’t exist, we aren’t really setting a very high bar, are we? […]

    What Trump did in the July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in no way comports with what the treaty Porter mentioned actually deals with, as Samantha Vinograd, who worked under both Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, explained last month in an aptly titled piece called “This Is What a Legitimate Anti-Corruption Effort in Ukraine Would Look Like”:

    Trump and his team have another tool at their disposal to investigate corruption in Ukraine related to an ongoing criminal case: the United States’ Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) with the country. MLATs are international agreements that establish a formal process for one country to gather evidence in another country for a criminal investigation.

    If there were an actual U.S. government investigation into alleged criminal activity by Americans in Ukraine, or foreigners suspected of violating U.S. laws, a request for cooperation could have been made through a formal process that’s run by DOJ’s Office of International Affairs. Once MLAT requests are vetted by the DOJ, they are transmitted to a foreign country’s “central authority”—in this case, Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice. If granted in the foreign country, this arrangement could allow the DOJ to obtain documents, locate people, take testimony, request searches and seizures, freeze assets and more. If the United States were actually pursuing criminal investigations into corruption in Ukraine, U.S. officials would have made a request under our MLAT for cooperation.

    Trump asking Zelensky for “a favor, though”—as he did on July 25—is clearly not that. […]

    Then, speaking of muddying the waters, Porter went right to claiming that “Ukraine meddled in the elections as much as anybody else,” and stated that that’s what the Senate “plans to take up”—a reference to U.S. Attorney General William Barr’s bogus goose chase, which some Republican senators are also apparently going to be promoting soon enough as another attempt to distract from what Trump actually did. […]

    Time for a fact-check: Ukraine did not interfere with the 2016 election. That is a conspiracy theory pushed by the Trump White House, in particular Rudy Giuliani. It has been completely debunked. […]

    So, Trumper Marc Porter lied about Ukraine and 2016, and then lied about the fact that a treaty gives Trump the right to extort Ukraine’s president in order to get him to investigate that lie. And this is all without even bringing up the matter of extorting Zelensky to get him to investigate Joe Biden and his son. And, to recap, this is all in Porter’s first round of comments. […]

    Later on, we got to Porter lying about Vice President Biden. Porter lied by claiming that Biden said he was withdrawing aid to Ukraine until the prosecutor who was investigating his son and the company on whose board he served, Burisma, was fired. The prosecutor in question was Viktor Shokin. Presumably, Porter is referencing comments Biden made about the matter in January 2018. This is a Trump talking point. It has also been thoroughly debunked, as USA Today explained:

    Sources ranging from former Obama administration officials to an anti-corruption advocate in Ukraine say the official, Viktor Shokin, was ousted for the opposite reason Trump and his allies claim.

    It wasn’t because Shokin was investigating a natural gas company tied to Biden’s son; it was because Shokin wasn’t pursuing corruption among the country’s politicians […].

    The reality is that Burisma was not even being investigated when, in late 2015 and early 2016, Biden […] along with much of the international community was trying to get Shokin fired. The whole thing is a bunch of malarkey.

    […] one side that has made lying central to its messaging, and that is the Republican side […]

    Link

    Much more at the link.

  287. says

    Attorney General Bill Barr Is Getting Roasted for His Outrageous Speech Blasting Progressives

    “Conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means.”

    […] Barr on Friday trash-talked Democrats for attempting to “drown the executive branch with oversight demands,” saying they were working for political gain without thinking of the consequences.

    “In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law,” Barr told a room of attorneys at the annual gathering of the Federalist Society […]

    Barr criticized Democrats for launching a “holy war” and using “any means necessary to gain momentary advantage,” while he said conservatives “tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means.” He said:

    In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. […] They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. […]

    Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing. This means that we naturally test the propriety and wisdom of action under a “rule of law” standard. The essence of this standard is to ask what the overall impact on society over the long run if the action we are taking, or principle we are applying, in a given circumstance was universalized—that is, would it be good for society over the long haul if this was done in all like circumstances?

    For these reasons, conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means. And this is as it should be, but there is no getting around the fact that this puts conservatives at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy far, especially when doing so under the weight of a hyper-partisan media.

    […]

    “Yesterday AG Barr addressed a radical political group and gave one of the most vicious partisan screeds ever uttered by a US cabinet officer,” Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) tweeted Saturday morning. “Barr says trump should have king-like powers. Barr is a liar and a fanatic and should be impeached and stripped of his law licenses.” […]

    From Mimi Rocah:

    This is so outrageously inappropriate for an AG to be saying. You are the head of the DOJ for all Americans not just the ones in the Federalist Society. Please start acting like it.

    From Charles Pierce:

    I read Bill Barr’s speech to the FedSoc just now. I think it is best delivered while wearing a uniform and mirrored shades, and while standing on a balcony.

  288. says

    How a bad-faith attack on Schiff made its way from Twitter to Trump’s lips

    Rep. Elise Stefanik accused the House intel chair of treating Republicans unfairly, but all he did was try to enforce the rules.

    At one point during Friday’s impeachment hearing with former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) shut down Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY). He did so not to silence her, but because she was violating the rules the House approved to guide the impeachment hearing. […]

    The impeachment inquiry rules specify that both Democrats and Republicans have 45-minute blocks of time during which the chair or ranking member and their counsels can ask witnesses questions. Other members are not allowed to ask questions during that time, but do have individual five-minute questioning periods afterward.

    Nonetheless, when the Republican 45-minute block began, intelligence committee ranking member Devin Nunes (R-CA) almost immediately tried to delegate his time to Stefanik. Schiff quickly stepped in to point out that Republicans were violating the rules.

    “Under the House Resolution 660, you’re not allowed to yield time except to minority counsel,” Schiff said.

    “You’re gagging the young lady from New York?” Nunes replied, indignantly. […]

    (In case you’re interested, Schiff was right about the rules — members can defer their five-minute questioning block to another lawmaker, but the 45-minute blocks are only for the two parties’ ranking members and their staff. […])

    This might not seem like a big deal in a vacuum. But within minutes, Stefanik posted a tweet characterizing a situation in which Schiff was merely trying to enforce the rules as one where Republicans were being singled out. […]

    A short time later, the Schiff-Stefanik exchange was the top story on Fox News’s webpage […]

    The story soon found its way onto TV when Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy criticized Schiff’s move to enforce the rules as “a tactical error.” Later, Trump himself got in on the act, retweeting a post from House Republicans that asked, “Why is Chairman Schiff afraid of @RepStefanik?” And during a media availability a short time later, Trump lamented that “they’ve taken away the Republicans’ rights” because “they weren’t able to ask questions.” […]

    The episode illustrates how bad-faith attacks can quickly make their way from Twitter to Fox News to the president’s lips. […] Instead of making a case that Trump was right to oust Yovanovitch earlier this year from her post as US ambassador to Ukraine during a time in which he tried to leverage diplomacy into political favors, they’re attacking the process and suggesting that Schiff is simply a bad dude with partisan motives.

    It’s misleading — but it provides a useful way for Republicans to cry foul about impeachment without having to actually defend Trump. […]

    Link

  289. says

    From Wonkette:

    […] In an address to a whole bunch of right-wing lawyers in the Federalist Society on Friday, Barr railed against those #resisting Trump and refusing to accept that the American people elected him knowing that he was not going to follow the rules. No, really. […]

    Via The New York Times:

    “While the president has certainly thrown out the traditional Beltway playbook and punctilio, he was up front about what he wanted to do and the people decided they wanted him to serve as president,” Mr. Barr said in a speech at a conference hosted by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group influential in Republican politics.

    Mr. Trump’s opponents “essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple by any means necessary a duly elected government,” Mr. Barr added.

    So yeah, he’s basically arguing that the people who elected [Trump] wanted him to not have to obey the law, and that punishing him for not obeying the law is thus a subversion of their will. I’m not sure things work that way, ever. […]

    Barr continued, claiming that it was super mean of people on the left to go around calling themselves The Resistance, like Trump is not a legitimate president or something […]

    “Resistance is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power,” Mr. Barr said. He added that it connotes that the government is not legitimate. “This is a very dangerous and indeed incendiary notion.”

    [ Mainstream Democrats] usually sit back and go “Well, I didn’t vote for him but he is the president, so what are you going to do? He really, really wants to invade that country!” when a Republican is in office.

    Republicans are the ones who get to say things like “We’re going to do everything — and I mean everything we can do — to kill it, stop it, slow it down, whatever we can,” [John Boehner said that] scream about birth certificates, and have ridiculous conniption fits about tan suits and mustard when a Democrat is in office. […]

    If Republicans don’t want things to be this way, they are more than welcome to show us all how it’s done and let the next Democratic president do whatever she wants without any “resistance” of their own.

    Link

  290. says

    George Conway and Kellyanne Conway news:

    Things are apparently getting even more tense in the Conway household.

    As impeachment hearings heat up, the relationship between George Conway and his wife Kellyanne Conway have “become increasingly distant,” writes Gabriel Sherman in Vanity Fair.

    A Republican who speaks frequently with George Conway claims that he “tells people she’s in a cult.” The word cult is apparently bandied about quite a bit in George Conway’s circles. “It’s not going to get better until she’s cast out of the cult,” a “person close to George” told Sherman. […]

    Link

  303. says

    Ian Dunt:

    Really depressing data put out by the Electoral Commission on ethnic minorities voter registration levels: 25% of black voters unregistered, 24% of Asian voters, 31% of people with mixed ethnicity.

    If you want to help, this website was set up to try and get people on the register before the deadline next Tuesday…

    Link atl.

  304. says

    NBC – “Trump’s impeachment ire turns on Pompeo amid diplomats’ starring roles”:

    The impeachment inquiry has created the first rift between President Donald Trump and the Cabinet member who has been his closest ally, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to four current and former senior administration officials.

    Trump has fumed for weeks that Pompeo is responsible for hiring State Department officials whose congressional testimony threatens to bring down his presidency, the officials said. The president confronted Pompeo about the officials — and what he believed was a lackluster effort by the secretary of state to block their testimony — during lunch at the White House on Oct. 29, those familiar with the matter said.

    Inside the White House, the view was that Trump “just felt like, ‘rein your people in,’” a senior administration official said.

    Trump particularly blames Pompeo for tapping Ambassador Bill Taylor in June to be the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, the current and former senior administration officials said.

    …

    A crack in the seemingly unbreakable bond between Trump and Pompeo is striking because Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, is viewed as the “Trump whisperer” who has survived — and thrived — working for a president who has routinely tired of and discarded senior members of his team.

    But the impeachment inquiry has put Pompeo in what one senior administration official described as an untenable position: trying to manage a bureaucracy of 75,000 people that has soured on his leadership and also please a boss with outsized expectations of loyalty.

    …

    Trump has hinted publicly at tensions with Pompeo, and while the comments might go unnoticed by the untrained ear they’ve been heard loudly by people close to the president.

    The first was on Oct. 23, officials said, when Trump wrote on Twitter: “It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats. Nothing good will ever come from them!”

    Trump followed up with another tweet specifically calling Taylor, and his lawyer, “Never Trumpers.”

    Two days later, Trump said Pompeo “made a mistake” in hiring Taylor.

    “Here’s the problem: He’s a never Trumper, and his lawyer is,” the president told reporters about Taylor. “The other problem is — hey, everyone makes mistakes — Mike Pompeo. Everybody makes mistakes.”

    The next day, Oct. 26, Pompeo was notably absent as the president sat with his national security team during the U.S. military raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pompeo was not informed about the raid until late Friday after he was home in Kansas for his son’s friend’s wedding, officials said.

    …

    The tension with Trump comes as Pompeo weighs whether to leave the administration to run for Kansas’ open Senate seat.

    …

    Initially when the Ukraine controversy became public, Trump wanted Pompeo to publicly defend him against the State Department bureaucracy, officials said. But the White House thought Pompeo appeared unprepared in his television interviews, and his performance only fueled the president’s frustrations, they said.

    …

    His decision last week, however, to allow the State Department to help pay for the legal fees that officials ensnared in the impeachment inquiry are accruing could further strain his relationship with the president….

    This report is equal parts hilarious and horrifying.

  305. says

    Greg Sargent:

    New ABC/Ipsos poll:

    51% of Americans say Trump should be impeached *and removed*

    58% say they’re following impeachment hearings closely

    70% say it was wrong to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival (i.e., the call was not “perfect”)

  307. says

    “New: Emails reviewed by @WSJ show that in the lead-up to the Trump-Zelensky call, Sondland kept officials including Mulvaney apprised of the push for investigations. Mulvaney replied that he would schedule the call—which he then didn’t listen in on.”

    WSJ link atl. If anyone can excerpt, would be much appreciated.

  308. says

    CNN – “25 times Trump was soft on Russia.”

    And there are many more (endless attempts to obstruct and sabotage the Mueller investigation, hollowing out the top levels of Russia specialists at the FBI, bizarre comments about Montenegro, rage over the expulsions following the Salisbury novichok attack, silence about other attacks in Europe, refusal to acknowledge Putin’s responsibility for MH17,…).

    I don’t like this sentence: “Over the years, he’s made no secret that he has a soft spot for the country and its authoritarian leader, President Vladimir Putin.” These are contradictory – Putin’s interest is in oppressing, deceiving, and looting the country; the country’s interest is in not being oppressed, deceived, or looted. The title should really be “25 times Trump was soft on Putin and his kleptocrats.”

  309. says

    Reuters – “Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party mulls pulling MPs from parliament”:

    A pro-Kurdish opposition party is considering withdrawing lawmakers from Turkey’s parliament due to mounting pressure it is facing, and as an act of protest against the government’s decision to oust 24 of its mayors in the past three months.

    Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) lawmakers, mayors and local officials will gather on Wednesday in Ankara to discuss the situation and make a decision on how to respond, HDP’s deputy chairman told reporters.

    “We will continue our struggle against the removal of our mayors in every platform. One of the questions we will answer is whether to withdraw our deputies from the parliament,” Saruhan Oluc told a news conference in the parliament….

    Honestly, it makes me nervous that they’re gathering in one place.

  310. says

    Rojava Information Center:

    A female civilian protester has been run over by the latest joint Turkish-Russian patrol in the Kobane countryside, and transferred to hospital.

    Local anger continues to grow against these patrols, with molotov cocktails thrown by protesters today for the first time.

    Footage from the latest protest, provided to @RojavaIC, shows stones and molotov cocktails striking a Turkish armoured vehicle, as local anger mounts against these joint patrols through previously peaceful countryside.

    This local woman raises her voice in protest against the latest joint patrol: “Fascists, the blood of our children is shed by you… Let the people resist for Rojava…”

    Another woman was taken to hospital with a broken foot after it was run over by the Turkish-Russian convoy.

    Videos atl.

  311. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 303

    So, according to this poll, most Americans think that what Trump did is wrong, he just shouldn’t be punished for it.

    This country doesn’t deserve to exist anymore.

  312. says

    Update to #296: “A day after Trump tweeted ‘see you soon!’ and the US canceled another joint military exercise, North Korea says it is not “interested” in further meetings with US.

    ‘We will no longer give the US president something to boast about for nothing in return’, says NK For. Ministry.”

  314. Akira MacKenzie says

    SC @ 311

    Yes, but that same poll says: 70% say it was wrong to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival (i.e., the call was not “perfect”). There is a 29% rift between those who believe in the rule of law in theory and the rule of law in practice.

  316. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 312

    WHOOPS! That should be 19%. Sorry, it’s still early, my morning coffee and Adderall hasn’t kicked in, and I’m too depressed to do simple maths.

  317. says

    Akira MacKenzie, well, I’m more a a glass-half-full kind of person, so 51% favoring impeachment and removal and another 19% who recognize that what they know of what he did was wrong and so are at least potentially swayable with more information is a decent finding to me.

  318. says

    CNN – “Prosecutors in Giuliani investigation interested in talking to Ukrainian energy company”:

    Federal prosecutors in New York who are investigating Rudy Giuliani are seeking to interview people with knowledge of Ukraine’s state-run oil-and-gas company, Naftogaz, according to two people familiar with the matter, suggesting investigators have opened a line of inquiry into whether Giuliani and his associates sought to secure energy deals by asserting influence on the company.

    Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have contacted people associated with the company in recent weeks, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. A spokesman for SDNY declined to comment. There is no indication of wrongdoing by Naftogaz.

    Naftogaz stands at the center of an effort by Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and their purported natural-gas company, Global Energy Producers, to replace Naftogaz’s chief executive officer with someone who would be more beneficial to their own business interests earlier this year.

    They pursued that outcome, CNN has reported, around the same time they were working with Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, to encourage Ukranian officials to investigate Trump’s political rival, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. They were also actively pushing to have the US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, removed.

    An American energy consultant who operates in Ukraine, Dale Perry, described the efforts to oust Naftogaz’s CEO, Andriy Kobolyev, who is known for his anti-corruption reforms at the company. At an energy conference in Houston last March, Parnas and Fruman asked a senior Naftogaz executive Andrew Favorov if he would go along with their plan to oust the company’s current CEO and become its head, according to Perry, who is Favorov’s former business partner.

    “(Parnas and Fruman) basically just flat out said to him, hey, to do the deals we want to do, we were not able to get through to your CEO, and we think that the business needs a new CEO,” Perry told CNN.

    Parnas and Fruman also told Favorov that Trump would soon replace the then-US ambassador to Ukraine, and that an ambassador more amenable to their energy-business interest would be appointed, according to Perry.

    “What they said was, not that we can, but they are removing her, and that has already been agreed at the highest level of the US government,” Perry said.

    …

    Perry believes Parnas and Fruman, who have no prior experience in the gas business, may have had assistance from indicted Ukranian oligarch Dmitri Firtash, who made his fortune being the intermediary between Naftogaz and Gazprom, Russia’s state-owned energy corporation. The two men mentioned Firtash in their meeting with Favorov, according to Perry, saying Firtash believed Naftogaz owed him money. Firtash has been fighting extradition into the United States since he was indicted on bribery charges in 2013. Firtash’s spokesperson told CNN Parnas was just a translator for Firtash, and the two have no business arrangement.

    …

    As they pursue interviews with associates of Naftogaz, prosecutors in New York are also investigating Giuliani’s ties to Global Energy Producers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Wall Street Journal first reported prosecutors’ examination of whether Giuliani stood to personally profit from GEP.

    …

    Parnas, Fruman and Giuliani’s activities have been raised multiple times in Congressional testimony in the impeachment inquiry into Trump.

    Fiona Hill, Trump’s former top Russia adviser, said an American member of Naftogaz’s board told her in May that a number of Ukrainians had complained to him about Giuliani discussing investigations and pushing to change the board of Naftogaz.

    Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, testified before congress that the board member was aware of effort by Giuliani to “facilitate financial transactions.”

    …

    Prosecutors’ interest Naftogaz indicates they may be conducting an examination far beyond the campaign-finance scheme with which they charged Parnas and Fruman in October….

  319. says

    Eamon Javers, CNBC:

    Woah – Fed discloses previously unknowon meeting between Powell and President Trump this morning:…

    This meeting was not on the president’s official schedule for today. The fed’s language here – and that the Fed is first to disclose the meeting – will be seen as a brush back pitch by Powell to President Trump.

    This will prompt curiousity: “Finally, Chair Powell said that he and his colleagues … will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective and non-political analysis.

  320. says

    SC @296 and 310, I saw some headlines claiming that Trump “defended” Joe Biden. I don’t think calling Joe Biden somewhat better than a rabid dog constitutes a defense against insults coming from North Korea.

    Coverage of Trump’s latest farcical interactions with North Korea has not met good journalism standards in some cases.

  322. says

    A followup of sorts to comment 318, with this report focusing on South Korea.

    Another shakedown (two shakedowns, actually) from the Trump administration:

    U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper on Friday pressed Washington’s case that longtime ally South Korea must pay a bigger share of the cost of having U.S. troops on its soil.

    “This is a very strong alliance we have, but Korea is a wealthy country and could and should pay more to help offset the cost of defense,” Esper told a joint news conference with his South Korean counterpart, Jeong Kyeong-doo.

    Esper said that while South Korea has provided “a fair amount of support in the past,” it is important to point out that “most of that money stays here in this country — easily over 90% of that money stays here in Korea, it does not go to the United States.”

    Associated Press link

    Commentary:

    […] Trump has spent much of his presidency alienating and insulting our South Korean allies. […] Trump lied about dispatching an “armada,” led by an aircraft carrier, towards the peninsula, and South Koreans weren’t pleased. When Trump falsely said the Korean Peninsula “used to be a part of China,” that didn’t go over especially well, either.

    In May 2017, Trump made matters vastly worse, condemning the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, known as Korus, and threatening to trash the deal. He then said he wanted to deploy a missile-defense system – Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense (Thaad) – in South Korea to help protect against a North Korean attack, but only if South Korea pays for the technology. (Then-White House National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster quietly let officials in Seoul know they should ignore the American president’s bluster.)

    A year and a half ago, Trump said at a fundraiser, in reference to South Korea, “Our allies care about themselves. They don’t care about us.” […]

    this year, Seoul will pay nearly $1 billion for the presence of roughly 28,000 U.S. troops. Trump wants to hike that figure to around $4.7 billion — a figure that CNN’s report said “came out of thin air.”

    Yeah, that figures. Trump pulled numbers out of his ass, and then he proceeded to use those numbers as part of a shakedown effort.

    […] “The price hike has frustrated Pentagon officials and deeply concerned Republican and Democratic lawmakers, according to military officials and congressional aides. It has angered and unnerved Seoul, where leaders are questioning U.S. commitment to their alliance and wondering whether Trump will pull U.S. forces if they don’t pay up.”

    Vipin Narang, an associate professor at MIT who follows the Korean peninsula, summarizing South Korean uncertainty about the U.S., was quoted saying, “Nothing says I love you like a shakedown.”

    […] South Korea isn’t the only one: the Trump administration has reportedly “asked Tokyo to pay roughly four times as much per year to offset the costs of stationing more than 50,000 U.S. troops there.”

    And there’s the second shakedown effort, (the first one aimed at South Korea, and the second one at Tokyo.)

    Trump appears to be approaching some of our closest allies in the Asia-Pacific region and talking to them as if the United States is running a protection racket. At a time when the Republican White House seems overly eager to make North Korea happy – including indefinitely postponing a joint military exercise with South Korea as an “act of goodwill” toward the rogue nuclear-armed dictatorship […]

    […] In June 2018, Rachel spoke on the air to retired four-star Navy Admiral James Stavridis, a former supreme allied commander of NATO, and he said something I found memorable.

    “We ought to remember,” Stavridis explained, “our troops are there, not as an act of goodwill toward South Korea, they’re there to enhance U.S. influence in the region, to ensure that we keep those sea-lanes of communication open, that our trade can flow freely, that we have a voice in the events there…. They’re not there as an act of goodwill; they’re there to accomplish U.S. national security objectives.” […]

    It’s going to take time and no small amount of diplomatic effort to undo damage like this.

    Link

  323. says

    Just Security – “Chart: Side-by-Side Comparison of Kurt Volker’s vs Other Witnesses’ Testimony in Impeachment Inquiry”:

    Ambassador Kurt Volker faces a serious credibility problem for having denied knowledge or involvement in President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to press Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden. He also appears to have lied about a crucial July 10 meeting at the White House and other related matters. Volker faces a serious legal liability problem too. He made these apparent false statements to Congress in his deposition under penalty of law. The Chart below presents detailed information comparing Volker’s testimony to the testimony of at least eleven other current and former U.S. officials whose statements contradict what Volker told Congress.

    Volker was included in Ranking Member Devin Nunes’ (R-Ca) final list of minority witnesses for the public hearings on impeachment. He is scheduled to appear on Tuesday afternoon.

    …

    Volker’s testimony was unfavorable to the President and Giuliani in many respects. However in other important instances, Volker denied allegations about his own wrongdoing and the existence of the alleged pressure campaign against Ukraine. Sondland’s original testimony (on Oct. 17) was more closely aligned with Volker’s accounts, until Sondland broke from that message and issued a supplemental deposition nearly three weeks later (on Nov. 4).

    Comparing Volker’s testimony to other witnesses raises very serious concerns about Volker’s truthfulness before Congress. To be more specific, it appears that Mr. Volker lied to Congress in violation of federal criminal law (18 USC 1001). The most serious instances include his flat denial that the Ukraine “investigations” were discussed in a July 10 meeting at the White House, his denial of his own knowledge or involvement in efforts to urge Ukraine to investigate Biden, his denial of his own knowledge or involvement in a quid pro quo scheme, and his claim that efforts to get Ukraine to make a public statement about the investigations ended in mid-to-late August.

    Volker now has a choice to make before he appears before Congress and the public on Tuesday. He might be best advised to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. Alternatively, he may want to issue a supplemental declaration of his own. Or he could include a “clarification” related to his prior statements during his prepared opening remarks at the Tuesday afternoon hearing.

    None of this necessarily casts blame on Volker for his actions on behalf of the United States. It appears he was caught in the middle of a complex problem not of his own making. As a seasoned diplomat he tried to steer the situation toward an endpoint in which Ukraine could meet the demands of the President to maintain U.S. support. As Volker said in his prepared remarks last month, “I therefore faced a choice: do nothing, and allow this situation to fester; or try to fix it. I tried to fix it.” With Congress now in a full blown impeachment inquiry, Volker has a second opportunity to explain with complete candor what really happened over the course of the past several months.

    I believe any fair-minded assessment of the record will reach a similar conclusion about Volker’s credibility and legal liability problems….

    Vox – “The wolves are coming for Kurt Volker”:

    House impeachment investigators are probing whether President Donald Trump, or anyone in his inner circle, directed the president’s former special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, to press Ukrainian senior officials to shut down a criminal investigation of ex-President Petro Poroshenko, according to sources close to the impeachment inquiry and committee records.

    If House investigators are able to uncover evidence that Trump — or anyone close to him — directed Volker to shut down the legitimate investigation of a former head of state as conducted by a sovereign foreign nation, that might constitute a new abuse of power to be included in the articles of impeachment that Democrats are looking to bring against Trump, said one of the sources.

    Volker’s role is considered critical in President Trump’s effort to pressure the Ukrainian government to open a formal investigation into alleged corruption regarding a political rival and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections. Neither charge has been found to have merit. Volker was one of the so-called “three amigos” — along with Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and Energy Secretary Rick Perry — who had direct access to Trump and worked closely with the US president’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, on the Ukraine pressure campaign.

    …

    Perhaps because the stakes are so high, the White House and congressional Republicans have devised an aggressive plan to discredit Volker if he were to more directly implicate the administration in this effort, according to two people with first-hand knowledge.

    They plan to paint Volker as someone who was acting on his own, freelancing in his attempts to shut down the Poroshenko investigation — pointing out that Volker worked for a lobbying firm that only two years ago received a $600,000 contract to represent the Poroshenko regime in the United States, the sources said.

    Poroshenko — a confectionary and media oligarch — served as president of Ukraine from 2014 until May 2019, when he lost a reelection bid to the reform-minded Volodymyr Zelensky. The new Zelensky administration subsequently opened a wide-ranging criminal investigation of Poroshenko for alleged corruption and abuse of his presidential office for personal financial gain. That investigation is ongoing….

    Much more at both links.

  324. says

    Followup to comments 232 and 237.

    To summarize previously posted information:

    […] Trump has intervened in three high-profile murder cases involving U.S. service members, dismissing charges against a Green Beret accused of killing an Afghan man, pardoning a former Army officer serving 19 years for ordering soldiers to fire on unarmed Afghan men, and promoting a Navy SEAL who was convicted of posing with a dead body but acquitted of more serious charges. […]

    NBC News link

    Trump’s explanation, via Twitter:

    Our great warfighters must be allowed to fight.

    They are not only “allowed to fight,” they are trained to fight and encouraged to fight. What they are not supposed to do is commit war crimes and/or ignore the military code of conduct. Too fine a nuance for Trump to understand, I guess.

    From Benjamin Haas, writing for the New York Times:

    […] Mr. Trump’s meddling undermines the military’s institutional values, risks endangering American service members, and disrespects the honorable service of the overwhelming majority of veterans.

    The military strives to ensure that its members adhere to the laws of war and respect human rights…. The lessons service members learn about the laws of war are not an afterthought. Rather, they are central, emphasized time and again — from training sessions and exercises, to military ethics discussions, to actual combat deployments. The Army’s official values, after all, demand that soldiers “do what’s right, legally and morally” and “treat others with dignity and respect,” making no exceptions for civilians or even enemies.

    The military requires its members to operate in accordance with the laws of war for good reason. Disregarding the laws of war – which Mr. Trump has done by intervening in these cases – jeopardizes mission accomplishment and the safety of service members; excessive civilian casualties, for example, can stimulate further violence, turn local populations against American forces, and discourage allies from collaborating with the United States. Mr. Trump should realize that the laws of war actually serve to benefit our armed forces.

    Nixon intervened in Lt. William Calley’s case in 1971.

  325. says

    Breaking from CNN – “House investigating whether Trump lied to Mueller”:

    The House of Representatives is now investigating whether President Donald Trump lied to special counsel Robert Mueller in written answers he provided in the Russia investigation, the House’s general counsel said in federal court Monday.

    “Did the President lie? Was the President not truthful in his responses to the Mueller investigation?” House general counsel Douglas Letter told the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit about why the House now needs access to grand jury material Mueller collected in his investigation.

  328. says

    Trump Ditches Flavored Vape Ban After Learning His Supporters Like to Vape

    Just two months ago, […] Trump responded to the growing health crisis fueled by e-cigarette use, particularly among teens, by calling for a ban on flavored vaping products. Six weeks later, however, Trump indicated—without giving his reasoning—a softening in his stance on e-cigarettes. Now, just over two months after his initial statement, the initiative to ban flavored products favored by teens appears to have been completely snuffed out. Why? “As he had done so many times before,” the Washington Post reports, “Trump reversed course—this time on a plan to address a major public health problem because of worries that apoplectic vape shop owners and their customers might hurt his reelection prospects.” […]

  329. Akira MacKenzie says

    <

    blockquote>Our great warfighters must be allowed to fight.

    <

    blockquote>

    I’m sorry… warfighters?

    “All the best words” my pale, corpulent ass!

  330. says

    Bobby Lewis, MMFA:

    On Fox & Friends, pardoned war criminal Clint Lorance speaks directly to President Trump: “I love you, sir. You’re awesome. I wish you had a better team around you. You need more people watching your back, and I think you don’t have a lot of that.”

    Pardoned war criminal Clint Lorance says he knew Trump’s election was good news for his pardon chances: “President Trump is someone who sees something that’s wrong and fixes it and doesn’t care whose feelings it hurts.”

    ICYMI, Fox News is not just rehabbing these men — Fox News got them clemency in the first place….

    Video and link to MMFA report on the last point atl.

  331. says

    John Oliver Counts the Reasons to Participate in the 2020 Census

    […] There are plenty of good reasons to participate, Oliver explains, including that census data is used to determine government funding and the distribution of political power in the country. Unfortunately, that means there are also incentives for politicians to meddle with the questionnaire, as the Trump administration did by recommending adding a citizenship question that could discourage certain minority groups from participating. Those efforts failed, so there will not be a citizenship question on the 2020 census after all. But as Oliver points out, some Latinos and immigrants may have been scared off by the mere suggestion of the question, and experts are expecting an undercount.

    If you don’t want to participate in the census for the sake of yourself or your community, do it to irritate the president, pleaded Oliver. “His administration already clearly thinks that certain people don’t count, so there’s no better way to get back at him than to make sure that you do and make the census count you,” he said. […]

    Video available at the link.

  332. says

    Followup to comment 329.

    Trump thinks that the census will ask how many toilets you have. Wrong.

    Conservative stories of census workers that “come back and rape and kill people” are being passed around.

  333. Akira MacKenzie says

    Meanwhile: from the “Joe-Biden-Is-A-Totally-Out-Of-Touch-Old-Fart” File:

    Biden, the lone top 2020 Democrat to oppose federal marijuana legalization, cites ‘gateway drug’ concern:

    Former Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday that more study is needed to determine if marijuana is “a gateway drug,” making him the only one of the leading Democratic presidential primary candidates to oppose legalization on the federal level.

    Biden – who said in 2010, “I still believe it’s a gateway drug,” and that “legalization is a mistake” – was asked at a town hall in Las Vegas if his position on the issue had changed.

    “No, it hasn’t changed,” Biden said. He explained that while he supports allowing states to determine their own marijuana policies, “the truth of the matter is, there has not been nearly enough evidence acquired as to whether or not it’s a gateway drug.”

    Hey Joe, the 80s called, they want their Reagan-Era anti-drug bullshit back.

  334. says

    Circling back around:

    On Fox & Friends, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law says the impeachment attempt against Nixon was a “completely partisan” power grab by Democrats who wanted to “depose a powerful president … [and] get back power.”

    Video atl. CNN showed “Nixon on Nixon: In His Own Words” again over the weekend, and I very much recommend it. In addition to the rampant criminality and duplicity, the racism, misogyny, and antisemitism are still just breathtaking. I still haven’t read They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power but I did see the author Michael Koncewicz give a talk about it on BookTV, which is incredibly pertinent.

  336. says

    AP – “AP Exclusive: US softens position on Israeli settlements”:

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is expected to announce on Monday that the U.S. is softening its position on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, the latest in a series of Trump administration moves that weaken Palestinian claims to statehood.

    Pompeo plans to repudiate a 1978 State Department legal opinion that held that civilian settlements in the occupied territories are “inconsistent with international law.” The move will likely anger Palestinians and put the U.S. at odds with other nations working to end the conflict.

    The Trump administration views the opinion, the basis for long-standing U.S. opposition to expanding the settlements, as a distraction and believes any legal questions about the issue should be addressed by Israeli courts, according to a draft of Pompeo’s remarks on the policy obtained by The Associated Press.

    “Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” Pompeo says in the draft. “The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”

    U.S. administration moves that have weakened Palestinian efforts to achieve statehood have included President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the movement of the U.S. Embassy to that city and the closure of the Palestinian diplomatic office in Washington.

    Even though the decision is largely symbolic, it could also give a boost to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is fighting for his political survival after he was unable to form a coalition government following recent elections.

    In addition, it could spell further trouble for the administration’s oft-promised peace plan, which is unlikely to gather much international support by endorsing a position contrary to the global consensus.

    The Netanyahu government was dealt a blow on settlements just last week when the European Court of Justice ruled products made in Israeli settlements must be labeled as such.

    The 1978 legal opinion on settlements is known as the Hansell Memorandum. It had been the basis for more than 40 years of carefully worded U.S. opposition to settlement construction that had varied in its tone and strength depending on the president’s position.

    The international community overwhelmingly considers the settlements illegal. This is based in part on the Fourth Geneva Convention, which bars an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population to occupied territory.

    In the final days of the Obama administration, the U.S. allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution declaring the settlements a “flagrant violation” of international law….

    That last resolution passed despite the fact that Israeli officials contacted Kushner who told Flynn to lobby several countries against the vote; this was one of the transition calls with Kislyak.

  337. says

    Hamid Karzai, former president of Afghanistan: “I most vehemently condemn US President @realDonaldTrump’s decision pardoning US soldiers convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan. The decision demonstrates complete disregard for the life and dignity of Afghans and negates the values the #US proclaims.”

  338. says

    Steve Vladeck re the SC administrative stay in the House tax returns case:

    A lot of the #SCOTUS headlines are overstating what the Chief Justice did today.

    An “administrative” stay is an uncontroversial procedural step that preserves the status quo only until the Justices can vote on the full request to freeze the subpoena pending appeal—prob. Friday.

    Not only does today’s order tell us nothing about whether the Court will end up taking this case; it tells us nothing about whether the full Court will agree to put the subpoena on hold past this Friday.

    That’s why the Chief Justice could enter it on his own—it’s housekeeping.

  339. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 333

    From the TPM story:

    The press secretary said Trump had “also stopped by to say hello to the medical staff” and “met with the family of a special forces soldier injured in Afghanistan.”

    Really? How nice of him. Quick question: What was the soldier’s name?

  341. says

    Democracy Now! – “Massacre in Cochabamba: Anti-Indigenous Violence Escalates as Mass Protests Denounce Coup in Bolivia”:

    In Bolivia, at least 23 people have died amid escalating violence since President Evo Morales, the country’s first indigenous president, resigned at the demand of the military last week. Growing unrest quickly turned to violent chaos on Friday outside Cochabamba when military forces opened fire on indigenous pro-Morales demonstrators, killing at least nine people and injuring more than 100. The violence began soon after thousands of protesters — many indigenous coca leaf growers — gathered for a peaceful march in the town of Sacaba and then attempted to cross a military checkpoint into Cochabamba. Amid this escalating violence and reports of widespread anti-indigenous racism, protesters are demanding self-declared interim President Jeanine Áñez step down. Áñez is a right-wing Bolivian legislator who named herself president at a legislative session without quorum last week. She said that exiled socialist President Morales, who fled to Mexico after he was deposed by the military on November 10, would not be allowed to compete in a new round of elections and would face prosecution if he returned to Bolivia, which has a majority indigenous population. U.N. special envoy Jean Arnault on Sunday called for talks between Jeanine Áñez and leaders of Morales’s political party Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, though a date has not been set. From Cochabamba, we speak with Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network and a researcher, activist and analyst with over two decades of experience in Bolivia….

    From the interview:

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the massacre coming one day after the self-proclaimed President Jeanine Áñez issued this decree protecting the military from prosecution for violent acts? And then tell us exactly who Áñez is.

    KATHRYN LEDEBUR: This decree — and this is very important to note — in periods, very undemocratic periods and periods of great violence in Bolivia, that this is a supreme decree that’s issued, that’s not public. It’s not published in the listing of decrees. And so it’s something that was passed without public knowledge. And then the movement for excessive use of force, and now their targeting MAS senators for sedition, is something that’s very shocking. It’s important to note that the Inter-American Human Rights Commission has called this licensed-to-kill, guaranteed-impunity decree a profound violation of human rights. It’s the kind of systematic step to smother democracy, to smother alternative voices. You have to understand that coca grower radio stations, that their Facebook pages, that other community radios have been burned, shut down, their frequency blocked. And so, what we’re seeing is a silencing, that’s systematic, of indigenous people and their rights in this process, and that all of the affected people in the massacre highlighted that focus against them as indigenous people.

    Jeanine Áñez is a senator. She was the second secretary — the second vice president of the Senate, and no constitutional right in the line of succession at all. This self-proclaimed senator from the lowland Beni region is focused on the extreme right, an extreme form of Christianity. Her tweets, that have been verified, although they’ve been erased, point to mocking indigenous people, mocking indigenous religions, very discriminatory things, as have her other ministers said. And this Cabinet and this focus is not behaving as a traditional — a transitional government should. We had a transitional government in 2005. They’re supposed to call elections, not change policy. I think it’s very dramatic that Áñez’s first act as self-proclaimed president was to name a new military high command. And now the military — the day after Morales resigned, the military has been out on the streets, and we have seen indigenous people killed and hundreds of indigenous people shot with live ammunition.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, can you talk more about the people who have filled the vacuum since Morales was forced out, now in Mexico? For example, can you talk about Luis Fernando Camacho, part of a group of people, fiercely anti-indigenous, a fundamentalist Christian, a pro-fascist — for example, Luis Fernando Camacho?

    KATHRYN LEDEBUR: I think it’s important to note that in the electoral process — and, you know, the opposition, although it was not united, the main candidate was Carlos Mesa, who was supposed to be a centrist opposition leader. Camacho was never a candidate. But Camacho, increasingly in the past few weeks, has begun to drive the discourse of the opposition. And you see these centrist leaders folding into this far-right extreme approach. It’s important to know that Camacho, a Santa Cruz leader, got his start as leader of the Santa Cruz Youth League. This is an organization that uses the Nazi salute in their meetings. This is something that’s terrifying. He then became president of the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee. He was elected by less than 250 people. You see a charismatic Christian gloss on a message of hate, a laying of hands on opposition leaders, statements that God has granted Mesa the right to be president, and a virtual control of Santa Cruz, where citizens are forced to obtain from this committee, that has no legal right, to get the permission to go from one place to the next and permission to actually go to the airport. This is a terrifying situation. And [inaudible] this coup, pitched in, been submitted, and people’s fundamental rights and due process and human rights have been smothered in a period of a week is really quite terrifying and something the international community needs to attend to.

  342. tomh says

    Good to know there will be a fair and impartial trial in the Senate.

    Speaking to reporters in Kentucky on Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he “can’t imagine a scenario” in which his chamber would vote to remove Trump if he is impeached by the House.

  343. Akira MacKenzie says

    @ 340

    Gee, it would have been nice if our freaking, sainted, Founding Fathers had thought of an Impeachment procedure that took the possibility of a corrupt party controlling the Senate. I suppose there were too busy raping their slaves and murdering Native American’s and just overlooked that scenario.

    I need to get fucking drunk.

  347. says

    Ukraine felt pressure from the Trump administration … and US officials knew it.

    […] Trump’s allies tried to defend the president’s Ukraine scheme by insisting that Ukraine didn’t know about the White House withholding military aid. […] in order to prove extortion, the target would need to know it was being extorted.

    This argument collapsed weeks ago, though it soon after morphed into a related talking point: Ukraine didn’t feel “pressure” from the Trump administration about the White House’s political scheme. Indeed, the president tweeted just yesterday that Ukrainian leaders “said that there was no pressure placed on them whatsoever.”

    As we’ve discussed, the public pronouncements from Ukrainian leaders should be taken with a grain of salt. We’re talking about a vulnerable ally, heavily dependent on the United States, struggling against Russian aggression. At least publicly, Ukraine has every reason to go out of its way to stay in the White House’s good graces, […]

    But privately, it’s a different story. The Associated Press had this report this morning:

    Despite his denials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was feeling pressure from the Trump Administration to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden before his July phone call with President Donald Trump that has led to impeachment hearings.

    In early May, staff at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, including then-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, were briefed on a meeting Zelenskiy held in which he sought advice on how to navigate the difficult position he was in, according to two people with knowledge of the briefings.

    He was concerned that Trump and associates were pressing him to take action that could affect the 2020 U.S. presidential race, the people said.

    […] the Associated Press reported weeks ago that Zelensky huddled with aides in May – before even taking office – expressing concern about Trump World political pressure about a Biden investigation.

    But what I found especially notable about the AP’s newest report is that Trump administration officials knew about the Ukrainian president’s concerns.

    Zelensky realized he was in a jam. He needed U.S. support; he couldn’t alienate the White House; and he wasn’t sure how best to deal with Team Trump’s corrupt requests. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv were briefed on all of this.

    If the takeaway from this is, “Zelensky didn’t tell the truth when he said he didn’t feel pressure,” that wildly misses the point. The Ukrainian president wasn’t – and still isn’t – in a position to speak candidly about the White House’s scheme.

    […] Zelensky knew about the pressure, and the Trump administration was aware of Zelensky’s concerns, creating an opportunity for the extortion scheme to work as intended.

    And with that, another pillar of the White House’s defense appears to be collapsing.

    Link

  348. johnson catman says

    Akira MacKenzie @343: Are you sure you aren’t drunk already? Your link must be borked. At least it doesn’t work for me.

  349. says

    U.S. officials knew Ukrainian president felt pressured by Trump long before the July 25 call

    Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may have said publicly that he never felt pressured by Donald Trump to investigate the Bidens, but privately he was fretting over it and U.S. officials learned of his anxiety early on.

    […] Zelensky and his top aides met in early May to strategize about how to handle Trump’s push. […] U.S. diplomats learned of that meeting around the time it took place. […]

    The contemporaneous notes taken by Jayanti and Pennington were also viewed by other officials within the State Department. Zelensky apparently attempted to disguise the focus of the May 7 meeting where he sought advice on Trump’s ask by billing it as a strategy session on energy concerns.

    The notes by U.S. officials completely blunt the argument by Trump and his Republican allies that Zelensky didn’t feel pressured to open the investigations into the Bidens. In fact, quite the opposite. Zelensky knew exactly what Trump wanted before he was even sworn into office on May 20 and he was already grappling with how to please Trump without getting Ukraine involved in the partisanship currently dominating U.S. politics.

  351. johnson catman says

    Akira MacKenzie @348: Well, it linked to a NYT page, but I don’t have a subscription, so all I could see was the headline. No worries though. Thanks for the correction. I will go have a drink for you!

  352. says

    Some text excerpted from Akira’s link in comment 348:

    After spending months in anxious passivity, staking their hopes on Joseph R. Biden Jr. and little else, moderate Democrats appear suddenly determined to fight for control of their party in the 2020 elections.

    The shift in attitude has come in fits and starts over the last few weeks, seemingly more as an organic turn in the political season than as a product of coordinated action by party leaders. But each assertive act has seemed to build on the one before, starting with a debate-stage clash last month over “Medicare for all” and culminating in recent days with the entry of two new moderate candidates into the primary, Michael R. Bloomberg and Deval Patrick, and a gentle warning from former President Barack Obama that Democrats should not overestimate voters’ appetite for drastic change.

    Most convincing to some Democrats may be the off-year elections this month in Kentucky and Louisiana, where moderate-to-conservative Democrats prevailed in governors’ races that President Trump worked strenuously to win for his party. The victories bolstered the argument, advanced by some leading Democrats, that the party could peel away some of Mr. Trump’s supporters in 2020 by avoiding “litmus test” battles and courting the political middle. […]

    Now the primary has become an increasingly jumbled contest, shaped by Democrats’ competing appetites for visionary ideas, tactical realism and sheer political novelty. Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., appears to be harnessing those tensions to his advantage, at least in Iowa, where for the first time he emerged as a clear front-runner in a CNN/Des Moines Register poll this weekend. […]

    While he is consistently leading national polls, Mr. Biden’s vulnerability in the primary appears to come, at least in part, from his seeming inability to inspire Democratic voters. He is seen as a sensible and safe option, and a conventionally steady hand for the presidency.

    At the Nevada Democrats’ dinner on Sunday evening, Mr. Biden urged primary voters to think cautiously: “We’d better be real careful about who we nominate,” he warned, “because the risk of nominating someone who wouldn’t beat Trump is a nation and a world that our children and our grandkids won’t want to live in.”

    For a good number of primary voters, that appeal is persuasive enough: At Mr. Biden’s town hall-style event in Las Vegas the night before, Phyllis Lind, a retired health care worker who is becoming a substitute teacher, explained her thinking about the race in terms that conveyed her party’s conflicting impulses. She said she was drawn to Ms. Warren because she was “for the common person,” and to Mr. Buttigieg because he had personal charisma “like Obama.” But at the moment, Ms. Lind, 73, said she was firmly supporting Mr. Biden.

    “We need to have a candidate that is going to also get the moderate Republicans,” Ms. Lind said. […]

  353. says

    southpaw:

    Kash Patel is suing POLITICO, its publisher, and @natashabertrand in VA state court.

    “From the beginning of recorded time, the law has faithfully protected a person’s “absolute” right to an unimpaired reputation,” his complaint says.

    What Patel alleges are POLITICO’s “false statements and defamatory implications” are largely things other people affirmed in sworn testimony–to the effect that he’s a very influential adviser to the president, incl on Ukraine, and he was key to Nunes’s pushback against Mueller.

    “She is also a contributor to extreme left-wing programs, such as those broadcast by MSNBC.”

    I can’t even.

    …

    The thing about this is the House Intel Committee released its transcripts, and they do show witnesses testifying about their understanding that Patel advised the president on Ukraine and gave him materials on Ukraine. Which is what Politico reported. See Fiona Hill’s deposition.

    I’m so tired of these skeevy people and their stupid stunts. Do your fucking job.

  355. says

    #ChickFilA is trending on Twitter. Twitter’s description of the trending hashtag: “ChickFilA says it will end donations to groups critical of the LGBTQ community.”

    Homophobic groups. Homophobic.

  357. says

    A tale of two parties…

    Michael McAuliff:

    Breaking: the House Judiciary Committee is going to mark up a bill Wednesday to decriminalize weed, expunge convictions, and make it easier for people harmed by the war on drugs to enter the pot industry.

    The legislation would remove pot from the Controlled Substances Act, and institute a 5% tax to help people incarcerated in the war on drugs get back into society, get treatment, and it would fund programs to help those disproportionately harmed start businesses.

    Would also create non-discrimination protections for marijuana use or possession, and for prior convictions; prohibit the denial of any federal public benefit based on pot use or convictions, and says weed use will have no adverse impact under the immigration laws.

    Here’s a longer write up, with a link to the bill, the MORE Act….

    (shoulda been called the SMORES act.)

    Frank Thorp:

    Just announced: Senate Judiciary Cmte will hold a hearing on December 11 titled: “Examining the Inspector General’s Report on Alleged Abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act”

    Witness: IG Michael E. Horowitz

  359. says

    Peter Oborne in the Guardian – “It’s not just Boris Johnson’s lying. It’s that the media let him get away with it.”:

    …Political correspondents are being taken for a ride by the Downing Street machine, which is as contemptuous of newspaper readers as it is of the truth.

    As someone who has voted Conservative pretty well all my life, this upsets me. As the philosopher Sissela Bok has explained, political lying is a form of theft. It means that voters make democratic judgments on the basis of falsehoods. Their rights are stripped away.

    This matters more than ever because this election is the most important in modern British history. If Johnson wins, Britain will leave the EU within a matter of weeks and Johnson himself will serve a five-year term as prime minister.

    In theory Johnson should not be able to get away with this scale of lying and deceit. In a properly functioning democracy, liars should be exposed and held to account. But that isn’t happening. As with Donald Trump, for Johnson there seems to be no political price to pay for deceit and falsehood. The mainstream media, as Washington’s response to Johnson’s speech shows, prefers to go along with his lies rather than expose them.

    Recently the hugely experienced broadcaster Andrew Marr allowed Johnson to go unchallenged in saying the Tories “don’t do deals with other political parties”. What about the coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in 2010? Or the £1bn “confidence and supply” deal struck with the Democratic Unionist party just two years ago? Marr let Johnson get away with it. So do many others.

    A big reason for Johnson’s easy ride is partisanship from the parts of the media determined to get him elected. I have talked to senior BBC executives, and they tell me they personally think it’s wrong to expose lies told by a British prime minister because it undermines trust in British politics. Is that a reason for giving Johnson free rein to make any false claim he wants?

    Others take the view that all politicians lie, and just shrug their shoulders. But it’s not true that all politicians lie. Treating all politicians as liars gives a licence for the total collapse of integrity of British politics, a collapse that habitual liars such as Johnson are delighted to exploit. The British media is not holding him to account for his repeated falsehoods. It’s time we journalists did our job, and started to regain our self-respect.

  361. johnson catman says

    from Lynna @350:

    We need to have a candidate that is going to also get the moderate Republicans,” Ms. Lind said

    Stupidity at its finest. The republicans WILL NOT vote for a democrat no matter how moderate he appears to be. That is a fallacy promoted by the oligarchs and the DNC because they do not want a REAL progressive running. FUCK THEM!!! And fuck Obama if that is what he is promoting. He promised change, and instead, he gave us more of the same. Yes, he was worlds better than The Orange Toddler-Tyrant, but this country needs and WANTS real change.

  363. tomh says

    WaPo:
    Johnson lays out road map for Vindman attacks

    Presenting a road map for the Republican strategy ahead of this week’s hearings, Johnson laid out a series of criticisms against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council official who is poised to give public testimony Tuesday morning.

    In a lengthy and wide-ranging letter to the top Republicans on the House Intelligence and Oversight Committees Monday, Johnson suggested, without evidence, that Vindman may be a member of the so-called deep state that “never accepted President Trump as legitimate” and purportedly works in secret to end his presidency.

    “I believe a significant number of bureaucrats … resent [Trump’s] unorthodox style and his intrusion on their ‘turf,’” Johnson wrote. “They react by leaking to the press and participating in the ongoing effort to sabotage his policies and, if possible, remove him from office. It is entirely possible that Vindman fits this profile.”

    Johnson’s letter intensifies a campaign of attacks on Vindman from Trump and his allies, which has included speculation by conservative commentators about Vindman’s patriotism and a White House statement Friday criticizing his job performance. The letter responded to a request from the two GOP lawmakers, Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio) and Devin Nunes (Calif.), who requested “any firsthand information you have about President Trump’s actions toward Ukraine between April and September 2019” on Saturday.

    In addition to its attack on Vindman, several points from Johnson’s 11-page letter stood out as relevant to the probe:

    > Johnson, who participated in a May 23 White House meeting in which a delegation that had just returned from Ukraine briefed Trump on the trip, wrote that he has “no recollection” of Trump directing thse group to work with his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Ukraine policy. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland and former special U.S. envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker testified that they heard Trump say this.

    > Johnson wrote that he spoke with Sondland on Aug. 30 about the hold on military aid, but that neither he nor Sondland recalls what was said.

    > Johnson wrote that he asked Trump on Aug. 31 for permission to tell Ukrainian officials that the hold on military aid had been lifted. In this conversation, Johnson has said he asked Trump about the alleged quid pro quo and Trump vehemently denied it.

    By Elise Viebeck

  366. says

    David Gura:

    An actual question from the transcript of David Holmes’s deposition:

    “Now, what led you to believe that the President didn’t give a shit about Ukraine?”

    Q: And [Amb. Gordon] Sondland agreed with you that the President did not give a shit about Ukraine. So his answer was to you, the President doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine?

    A: My recollection, he said, Nope, not at all, doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine.

  367. says

    More from the Holmes transcript from Eli Stokols:

    HOLMES: “I’ve never seen anything like this, someone calling the President from a mobile phone at a restaurant, and then having a conversation of this level of candor, colorful language. There’s just so much about the call that was so remarkable that I remember it vividly.”…

  372. says

    CNN – “Trump’s doctor releases memo on President’s health after surprise weekend hospital visit”:

    President Donald Trump’s physician released a memorandum Monday night stating the President’s recent visit to Walter Reed National Military Center was a “routine, planned interim checkup.”

    The news comes days after Trump’s trip to the hospital outside Washington drove speculation about the President’s health because it did not follow routine protocol for a presidential medical exam.

    “This past Saturday afternoon the President traveled up to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for a routine, planned interim checkup as part of the regular, primary preventative care he receives throughout the year,” Physician to the President Dr. Sean Conley said. “Due to scheduling uncertainties, the trip was kept off the record.”

    Conley states that “despite some of the speculation, the President has not had any chest pain, nor was he evaluated or treated for any urgent or acute issues.”

    “Specifically, he did not undergo any specialized cardiac or neurologic evaluations,” he said.

    The memorandum comes after medical staff at Walter Reed did not get a staff-wide notice about a presidential visit to the medical center in Bethesda, Maryland, ahead of Trump’s arrival, according to a person familiar with the matter….

    Doesn’t make sense. They shuffled him into a car (I understand that they would ordinarily take a helicopter) almost outside of camera range, and then the pool reporter caught a brief glance of him leaving Walter Reed (“shirt open, no tie”) and no one saw him re-enter the WH. The labs and such they’re claiming he had – which they won’t specify – can be done at the WH. Had he been going for a “routine, scheduled” checkup, he would without doubt have interacted with WH reporters when he was coming or going or both, and he certainly would have made a public appearance in the days since.

    (I’m not sure why CNN doesn’t mention it since it was on CNN, but the statement was released just after Obama’s former physician was on TV speculating that Trump might have had an MRI and saying he shows real signs of neurological issues, pointing to his speech and in particular his frequent inability to find words. Several people have noted that the word “specialized” could be carrying a lot of weight in the statement.)

  375. says

    Sanjay Gupta on CNN is quite skeptical of the WH statement. “It doesn’t add up.” Said he’s talked to former WH doctors and doctors in touch with the WH, and no one thinks it makes any sense. He noted previous efforts to conceal Trump’s medical information, and said he’s concerned that the WH physicians might be catering more to the patient’s whims than to his health.

  376. johnson catman says

    re SC @371:

    Doesn’t even include an intelligence briefing.

    Is it just me, or does “intelligence briefing” for The Orange Toddler-Tyrant sound like it involves him putting his underwear on his head (even though there is no intelligence in there)?

  377. says

    From Elise Stefanik’s local paper, the Post-Star – “EDITORIAL: Stefanik is sacrificing her integrity”:

    What a difference five years makes.

    In November 2014, Elise Stefanik became, at 30, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She was unpolished and unsure of herself.

    In August of that year, as she was campaigning, she held a press conference in front of the Glens Falls Senior Center to talk about her support for Social Security and Medicare. She took a few questions, then was asked to clarify her position. Abruptly, she walked away.

    The press conference, scheduled for half an hour, lasted just 8 minutes.

    Despite her inexperience and the occasional attack of nerves, she won the election and seemed to be working hard in Washington. In 2016, The Post-Star supported her for re-election.

    She had come to the newspaper earlier that year and expressed confidence the Republican nominee would not be Donald Trump, whom she seemed to hold in low regard.

    “I will support the nominee, and I’m sure that will not be Donald Trump,” she said.

    Things have changed for Stefanik, who now embraces a bad president to safeguard her job. She no longer gets flustered by tough questions — mostly, she doesn’t give anyone the chance to ask them. Instead, she parrots the Trump line on Fox News and lets her attack-dog spokesman argue with reporters on Twitter.

    If her integrity has been sacrificed, that isn’t worth a shrug. She calls for the whistleblower to be outed and avoids talking about the way Trump held military aid to Ukraine hostage to his demand for an investigation of Joe Biden.

    She will differ with Trump’s policies here and there. But when it comes to critical questions of presidential character and patriotism and job performance, she is a loyal mouthpiece for Trump’s talking points.

    …

    In a different time, she could have grown into a position of power and respect; instead, she is another Trump acolyte, tossing buzzwords to the mob and crying “fake news” at every fact she wishes would go away.

    It’s not too late for her to choose honesty and honor. But we fear that won’t happen, because she has been going the opposite way, becoming more partisan, more disingenuous and irrational.

    Someday, maybe, Elise Stefanik will be far enough removed from the Trump era that, like Paul Ryan, she will admit how bad it all was. But it won’t matter then. Now is the time to speak up. Later will be much too late.

  379. says

    The hearing with Vindman and Williams has begun. Nunes is in the midst of his opening rant.

    I’m not sure suggesting that it’s like the Dems put the whistleblower in “their own witness protection program” has precisely the sort of connotations Nunes wants here.

  384. says

    Schiff is asking about a September call Williams was on. Her lawyer says the Vice President’s office has said it’s classified and so she can’t answer questions about it here. Schiff asks if she can submit a classified response, and she says she can.

  386. says

    “This: ‘Dad, my sitting here today, in the US Capitol talking to our elected officials is proof that you made the right decision forty years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to United State of America in search of a better life for our family’.”

  389. says

    CNN – “Judge denies Trump’s request to dismiss Summer Zervos defamation case”:

    A Manhattan judge has again denied President Donald Trump’s request to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by former “Apprentice” contestant Summer Zervos against him, clearing the way for the President to be deposed by January 31.

    Trump’s legal team had argued that a stay is necessary “given the novel and important Constitutional issues involved,” the “special considerations due” their previous requests to dismiss the case, and to prevent “irreparable harm.”

    New York state Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Schecter on Monday, however, rejected the request, allowing for the case to move forward….

    More atl.

  390. says

    Nunes is asking Vindman with whom he spoke in the intelligence community in a sick attempt to out the whistleblower. Vindman’s lawyer is telling Nunes that his client won’t be answering those questions.

  392. Saad says

    My god, these republicans are absolute scum. I can’t listen to this much longer. I think I’ll go back to just reading.

  398. says

    Why do Democrats keep saying “policy” when they mean “politics”? It just confuses everyone. Rep. Sewell is a repeat offender of muddling her questions with weird language.

  402. Saad says

    And he keeps saying the ‘two guys on the call’ are saying nothing wrong happened. What the actual fuck.

  403. says

    Ilhan Omar:

    Sharing my full letter on the the sentencing of Patrick W. Carlineo, a man convicted of threatening my life.

    We must apply a system of compassion to criminal justice.

    Who are we as a nation if we respond to threats of political retribution with retribution ourselves?

    Letter at the link. Really beautiful.

  407. Saad says

    SC, #402

    I know. I was typing more after “what the actual fuck” but had hit “post comment” by mistake. My point was how the hell is that a defense. One of those two is the subject of the inquiry. Of course he would say (not under oath nonetheless) that there was nothing wrong.

    Krishnamoorthi’s comments to Vindman almost got me teary eyed.

  409. says

    Saad @ #405,

    Krishnamoorthi’s comments to Vindman almost got me teary eyed.

    Same. (Minus the almost. :))

    My point was how the hell is that a defense. One of those two is the subject of the inquiry. Of course he would say (not under oath nonetheless) that there was nothing wrong.

    He’s also a sociopath who just pardoned three war criminals. And Zelenskyy is under the same pressure he’s been for the past several months. No one here or in Ukraine believes his hostage statements. It’s a ridiculous defense.

  410. says

    “SCHIFF: Ukraine is fighting our fight against the Russians … That’s our fight, too. That’s why we support Ukraine with the military aid … The president may not care about it, but we do. We care about our defense … We darn well care about our Constitution. We are adjourned.”

    Morrison and Volker will be testifying in a bit.

  413. Akira MacKenzie says

    SC @ 410

    The case against Trump is ironclad.

    Yeah, tell that to McConnell and the rest of the GOP. :(

  414. says

    Guardian – “‘Sardines against Salvini’: Italians pack squares in protest against far right”:

    An estimated 7,000 people have crammed together in the northern Italian city of Modena as part of a growing “sardines” movement against the politics of the far-right leader, Matteo Salvini, in which opponents attempt to beat the numbers he draws to his rallies.

    Protesters converged under the rain at Piazza Grande on Monday night as the former interior minister campaigned in the city before crucial regional elections in Emilia-Romagna, a leftwing stronghold.

    It followed a gathering of an estimated 12,000-15,000 people in Bologna last Thursday night amid a heavy downpour to counteract the launch of a campaign by the League candidate, Lucia Bergonzoni, to vie for the presidency of Emilia-Romagna as part of an alliance with the smaller far-right party Brothers of Italy, and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia.

    The next demonstration is planned in the coastal city of Rimini on Sunday, where Salvini will inaugurate the League’s regional headquarters.

    Salvini has pledged to “free Emilia-Romagna from the left” in the elections on 26 January. The administration is under the control of the centre-left Democratic party, which is ruling nationally alongside the Five Star Movement.

    The sardines protests were devised by four friends from Bologna as a riposte to Salvini’s boasts about filling Italy’s squares with supporters. His coalition launched its campaign at an indoor sports arena in Bologna with the capacity to accommodate about 5,700 people.

    “The limit was already defined and so we decided to try to gather 6,000 people at Piazza Maggiore,” Andrea Garreffa, one of the four friends, said. “In the end, between 12,000 and 15,000 people came. There were people of all ages, packed together like sardines in the rain. Their presence was a message of opposition to the hate that the far right is trying to bring to Emilia-Romagna.”

    The images of packed squares in Bologna and Modena were shared widely on social media, prompting similar initiatives in Florence and Benevento, a town in the southern Campania region.

    “Salvini said that Emilia-Romagna needed to be free of the left,” added Garreffa. “But the whole of Italy was freed from dark powers at the end of the second world war. We don’t need to be freed, we are a free people and as free individuals we are gathering together as the basic values of participation and democracy are at stake.”

    …

    Emilia-Romagna is one of Italy’s top industrial regions and the Salvini coalition has been targeting the business community as part of its campaigning. “I prefer businesses to sardines,” Salvini added….

  415. says

    Yahoo – “China signs defence agreement with South Korea as US angers Seoul with demand for $5bn troop payment”:

    The defence ministers of South Korea and China have agreed to develop their security ties to ensure stability in north-east Asia, the latest indication that Washington’s long-standing alliances in the region are fraying.

    On the sidelines of regional security talks in Bangkok on Sunday, Jeong Kyeong-doo, the South Korean minister of defence, and his Chinese counterpart, Wei Fenghe, agreed to set up more military hotlines and to push ahead with a visit by Mr Jeong to China next year to “foster bilateral exchanges and cooperation in defence”, South Korea’s defence ministry said.

    Seoul’s announcement coincided with growing resentment at the $5 billion (£3.9bn) annual fee that Washington is demanding to keep 28,500 US troops in South Korea.

    That figure is a sharp increase from the $923 million that Seoul paid this year, which was an 8 per cent increase on the previous year.

    An editorial in Monday’s edition of The Korea Times warned that the security alliance between the two countries “may fall apart due to Washington’s blatantly excessive demands”.

    Mr Trump has previously threatened to withdraw US troops if his demands are not met, with the editorial accusing the president of regarding the Korea-US mutual defence treaty “as a property deal to make money”.

    The vast majority of Koreans agree, with a recent survey by the Korea Institute for National Reunification showing that 96 per cent of people are opposed to Seoul paying more for the US military presence.

    There is also irritation at the pressure that Washington is applying to the South to make Seoul sign an extension to a three-way agreement on sharing military information with the US and Japan….

  417. says

    “Full Schumer quote:

    ‘I don’t have any idea what’s going on but if we learned anything at all from this administration it takes them several tries before they get their story straight and the truth comes out …

    ….So I think people are right to question the truthfulness of stories from the administration. In the meantime, I wish the president well from whatever he’s recovering from and whatever caused him to go to the hospital’.”

  421. says

    “NEW: House Judiciary Dems ask the federal judge weighing their lawsuit seeking former WH counsel Don McGahn’s testimony to speed up her ruling for their ‘quickly progressing’ impeachment inquiry.”

    Request atl.

  423. tomh says

    WaPo:
    Trump-friendly judges run out the clock on impeachment
    By Dana Milbank
    November 18, 2019 at 3:15 p.m. PST

    There’s not much the Trump administration and House Democrats agree on during these impeachment proceedings, but Judge Richard J. Leon brought them together — in opposition to him.

    President Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, Charles Kupperman, filed a lawsuit seeking a ruling on whether to testify before the impeachment inquiry, a case closely watched by Trump figures past and present, John Bolton, Kupperman’s former boss and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.

    But lawyers for the House, in a filing late last week, said Kupperman suffered no injury and therefore had no standing to sue. “This case is moot,” the House argued.

    At about the same time, the Justice Department filed an argument also saying Kupperman suffered no injury and had no standing. “This case is moot,” DOJ argued.

    It’s moot because Leon, a district court judge in D.C. , made it moot. The suit was filed late last month, but Leon said he wouldn’t hear arguments until Dec. 10 — after the investigative phase of impeachment is due to end — and rule in late December or early January, likely after a House impeachment vote. The House withdrew its subpoena of Kupperman because Leon’s timing made it pointless. Lawmakers instead pinned hopes on a related case involving a subpoena to former Trump counsel Donald McGahn, which another judge on Leon’s court is handling with more urgency.

    At this writing, Leon has yet to dismiss the now-meaningless suit. Why? My sources offer two explanations — neither benign. He may be keeping the case active so he’ll be assigned any other impeachment-related cases when filed. Or Leon, who led House GOP investigations of President Bill Clinton before George W. Bush appointed him to the court, recognizes the law does not support Trump’s monarchical view of absolute immunity from congressional inquiry — and therefore the best way to help Trump is to run out the clock on impeachment.

    The oft-overturned Leon — he has been reversed in cases involving pay protection for home health-care workers, housing discrimination, the government’s telephone surveillance program and others — isn’t the only one dragging his feet in a way that benefits Trump. Another judge on the D.C. district court, Trevor McFadden, a Trump transition volunteer and Trump DOJ official before Trump appointed him to the court, has been similarly unhurried.

    The House Ways & Means committee filed a lawsuit on July 2 requiring Trump to release his tax returns. The law is unequivocal; it says tax officials “shall” provide returns to the committee on request. But McFadden, who previously ruled against the House over Trump’s use of emergency funds for the border wall, still hasn’t heard arguments in the tax matter, 139 days after the suit was filed. Though not dismissing the case, he rejected the House’s request to expedite it.

    Compare that with a similar suit over Trump’s taxes filed in the same court by the House Oversight Committee. Judge Amit Mehta (an Obama appointee) ruled in that case 28 days after it was filed.

    McFadden is young and ambitious, and he benefits from not antagonizing Trump. Delay could be the safest option — because ruling in Trump’s favor would require some dubious legal reasoning.

    Trump’s legal record has been bleak. Longtime adviser Roger Stone was convicted last week, following Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos. Two associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani have been indicted in the Ukraine affair.

    Trump’s extraordinary claims of executive power have been smacked down resoundingly. Two appeals courts have ruled against Trump in his attempts to keep his tax records from Congress and a grand jury; Trump has appealed to the Supreme Court. He also lost a case in the D.C. district court last month to block Congress from access to grand jury materials from the Mueller investigation, and the administration’s argument that officials are immune from testifying received a skeptical hearing from a different judge.

    The official impeachment resolution makes Trump’s legal position even more precarious. In an earlier dissent on one of the tax-return cases, Neomi Rao, a Trump appellate-court appointee, argued that investigating wrongdoing by the president must be done through impeachment.

    House lawyers called Rao on that Monday. In the case involving Mueller’s grand-jury material, they told an appellate panel including Rao that the matter is “a key part of the impeachment inquiry.”

    Will Rao follow her own standard from last month? Or will she find some way to escape the obvious legal conclusion?

    The great district court Judge John Sirica, an Eisenhower appointee who held President Richard Nixon to account during Watergate, later explained why he rejected Nixon’s similarly specious claims of untouchable executive power. “I had no intention of sitting on the bench like a nincompoop and watching the parade go by,” he wrote.

    Some of his successors in that courthouse seem to lack such qualms.

  424. says

    It’s amazing how so many people blame others for feeding Trump the false narratives he fixates on rather than recognizing that Trump is responsible for choosing to spout Kremlin propaganda, racist lies, lunatic conspiracy theories, etc. over facts and evidence.

  428. says

    Matthew Miller: “Volker is a great example of how Trump corrupts people. I’m sure he convinced himself that his actions were appropriate as long as he maintained this fiction, but in fact he was giving in when he should’ve fought back.”

    Susan Hennessey: “It is reminiscent of Rod Rosenstein convincing himself it was ok to write the Comey firing memo with his own reasons even though he knew it would be used pretextually by Trump who had other reasons.”

  431. says

    SC @422, yeah, I agree. I couldn’t help but notice that they are thinking of Trump as if he were a gullible six-year-old.

    Trump is responsible. He should be impeached.

  432. says

    About the use of the word “policy”:

    […] Trump didn’t have a foreign policy, at least not by any coherent definition of the phrase. He had a scheme in which he intended to extort a vulnerable foreign ally into helping him cheat ahead of his re-election campaign, using congressionally approved military aid as leverage to advance his own interests over the United States’. […]

    The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent had a good piece along these lines this morning, noting that Trump’s gambit in no way reflected a foreign policy.

    [The] big lie is the idea that Trump’s actions in this scandal were rooted in some sort of conception of foreign policy shaped around the national interest, when in fact they were entirely about furthering his own profoundly corrupt personal and political ends.

    Quite right. In fact, as much as we’ve learned in recent weeks and months about how Trump’s scheme unfolded, a basic truth has been obvious from the outset. As the New York Times reported two months ago, Trump and Rudy Giuliani “ran what amounted to a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine.”

    Despite the findings of United States intelligence agencies and the Justice Department that Russia was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election, Mr. Trump was driven to seek proof that the meddling was linked to Ukraine and forces hostile to him, even fixating on a fringe conspiracy theory suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s missing emails might be found there.

    Backed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani, who once aspired to be secretary of state, sought to tar Mr. Biden with unsubstantiated accusations of impropriety, while he and associates working with him in Ukraine on the president’s agenda pursued their own personal business interests.

    In other words, there was an official U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine, which was legitimate and distinct from Trump’s agenda toward Ukraine. More than a few administration officials recognized the gap between two tracks, and some of them are now providing devastating information to Congress as part of its impeachment inquiry, offering details about the shadow policy.

    To see this as a dispute “over policy disagreements” is to miss the point of the entire controversy.

    Link

  433. says

    From Wonkette:

    […] HEY I JUST MET YOU AND THIS IS CRAZY, but as long as Zelenskyy promises to do investigations for Trump on the telephone, he will get to come to the White House! Have you met my friend Quid Pro Quo? You’re going to be seeing a lot of him in the near future!

    That, again, is a text from Kurt Volker. “Assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / “get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington. Good luck! See you tomorrow- kurt”

    Uh huh.

    3:32: Also too by the way, we know these are like the GOP’s star witnesses or something, but do remember that Volker went ahead and resigned about seven seconds after this scandal broke, and Morrison has also too resigned.

    3:33: Devin Nunes is such a dipshit goober. […]

    Devinnnnnn also said “no intelligent component whatsoever,” did somebody replace his desktop with a mirror? […]

    3:36: Devinnnnnn says “who knows what crime Democrats will accuse Trump of next week?” We dunno, he’s committed so many, it’s hard to decide.

    Some women have accused him of rape, for instance.

    So many to choose from.

    […] (A “Devin” is a very small unit of measurement, by the way. You all have at least two “Devins” in your IQ.)

    3:43: Morrison opening statement!

    1. He does not know who whistleblower is, do not ask him.

    2. Maybe he remembers some things different from other people, what of it?

    3. Russia sux, Ukraine good.

    4. He was very worried how Trump’s call would play in Washington. HIS WORST FEARS HAVE BEEN REALIZED. Does not mention how “extortion” would play in Ukraine, or for Trump’s audience of one in the Kremlin.

    3:45: Volker opening statement!

    “I would like to correct the following 86,071 lies.”

    HAHAHAHA we are kidding, he did not put a number on it, guess we gotta count ’em for ourselves. Everybody please pull out your abacus! […]

    3:48: Kurt Volker still swears he had NO IDEA any of this was about the Bidens until he READF TEHJ;TKALJSKJGF;JSTOIKDEAPCTIP! of Trump’s call with Zelenskyy. Uh huh. Says he did not do “irregular channel” of Ukrainian foreign policy. Said he did Official Channel! Uh huh. […]

    3:51: Dan Goldman is going to EAT these guys, and we don’t mean that in a hot way.

    3:54: This statement is really nice, except for how Donald Trump doesn’t think Ukraine is a real country and he doesn’t care about Ukraine except for if they’ll do fake investigations for him so he can steal the 2020 election.

    3:55: Kurt Volker was just trying to FIX everything. Rudy Giuliani was fucking EVVVVERYTHING up and poisoning Donald Trump’s brain […]

    Link

  434. says

    From Wonkette:

    9:50: Schiff asking Vindman about the April call between Trump and Zelenskyy, the one Trump wants everybody to read because it has a better READ TEH TRENEANJADPPCITP!!! and Trump didn’t commit any crimes on that call at all.

    SCHIFF: Did Trump ever mention “corruption” on that call, since he says he loves fighting corruption so much?

    VINDMAN: LOL no.

    This is notable because Vindman actually prepared talking points for that call, where Trump could have talked about REAL corruption issues, but, you see, Trump doesn’t actually care about REAL corruption issues. He just wants his fucking investigations, like he told Gordon Sondland on the phone that day after his crime call. […]

    9:55: VINDMAN: It was improper for Trump to “DEMAND” investigations from Ukraine.

    SCHIFF: Why you call it “demand”? What about the relationship between Ukraine and US makes it “demand”?

    VINDMAN; “The power disparity between the two leaders […] in order to get the White House meeting, President Zelenskyy would have to deliver these investigations.”

    SCHIFF: Ms. Williams, you found the call inappropriate and it “shed some light” on other reasons America might be putting hold on Ukraine military aid.

    WILLIAMS: Oh basically I started to figure it all out just then. Donald Trump was yapping his shithole about the same garbage Rudy Giuliani was saying on TV every night, and he was saying it TO THE UKRAINE PRESIDENT.

    9:59: Again, they both heard “Burisma” on that phone call. They are not ascribing necessarily nefarious motives to its omission from the transcript, but Vindman does note that his edits, where he tried to put it back in, were not taken.

    Says this suggested to him that Zelenskyy was prepped, or already just aware, that Trump would be wanting BURSISISISISISIMA BIIIIIIIDEN investigations.

    Now we go to Dan Goldman for questions!

    10:03: GOLDMAN: All the garbage Trump said on the call about his weird conspiracy theories about Ukraine having Hillary Clinton’s email server buried in the backyard, was that part of your official talking points?

    VINDMAN: LOL no.

    GOLDMAN: Have you heard of Trump’s weirdass conspiracy theory about Ukraine and the 2016 election?

    VINDMAN: Yep!

    GOLDMAN: Are you aware that’s Russian propaganda?

    VINDMAN: Sure am!

    10:05: GOLDMAN: All that crap about the call about investigating Joe Biden, did you put that in Trump’s notes?

    VINDMAN: Hell no.

    GOLDMAN: Is there any basis to Trump’s dumb shart conspiracy theories about Joe Biden?

    VINDMAN: Not that I know of!

    WILLIAMS: Nope! […]

    Link

  437. says

    Guardian – “Tories pretend to be factchecking service during leaders’ debate”:

    The Conservatives have been accused of misleading the public after they rebranded their official Twitter account as “factcheckUK” during the televised leaders’ debate and used it to publish anti-Labour posts.

    The public have increasingly turned to factchecking websites, such as the independent Full Fact, the BBC’s Reality Check, Channel 4 News’ FactCheck and the Guardian’s Factcheck, to verify claims made by politicians.

    During Tuesday night’s debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, the Conservative party renamed their main media account as “factcheckUK”, changed its logo to hide its political origins, and used it to push pro-Conservative material to the public.

    Although the Twitter handle remained as @CCHQPress, all other branding was changed to resemble an independent factchecking outlet, meaning it may not have been immediately apparent to an individual who saw the account’s tweets in their feed that it was a product of Conservative party HQ.

    On clicking through, they would have seen a disclaimer that factcheckUK was “fact checking Labour from CCHQ”, ” the acronym for Conservative campaign headquarters.

    Shortly after the debate finished the Twitter account name was changed from factcheckUK to CCHQ Press.

    Full Fact, which is run by a charity, said it had complained to Twitter and said the account should not be allowed to be used in this way while verified. “It is inappropriate and misleading for the Conservative press office to rename their Twitter account ‘factcheckUK’ during this debate. Please do not mistake it for an independent fact checking service.”

  443. says

    “US official: Navy Plans to remove Gallagher’s Trident, eject from SEALs, after Trump pardon. I am told Navy feels message of good order & discipline needed, even if it puts military leaders on collision course with President.”

  444. says

    Michael McFaul: “Volker is too smart and informed to ever believe that this crazy Crowdstrike-Ukraine conspiracy had any truth to it. Yet, he was happy to press the Ukrainians to investigate it? Odd.”

    He’s very much driven by the need to preserve his self-image.

  445. says

    Nancy Pelosi:

    The notes from the July 25th call corroborate that it wasn’t “perfect.” It was evidence of bribery.

    Republicans in Washington should end their cover up campaign and join the overwhelming 70% of Americans who are relying on us to #DefendOurDemocracy.

  454. says

    Democracy Now! – “Bolivian U.N. Ambassador: ‘Racist Elite’ Engineered Coup to Restore Neoliberalism in Bolivia”:

    Thousands marched across Bolivia Monday to demand the resignation of Jeanine Áñez, the right-wing senator who declared herself president of Bolivia last week after longtime socialist President Evo Morales resigned under pressure from the military. The coup d’état has thrown Bolivia into crisis, with violence across the country leaving at least 23 dead. On Friday, the military gunned down nine pro-Morales protesters outside Cochabamba, where indigenous people took to the streets again on Monday. Thousands more marched to the presidential palace in La Paz. The wave of protests are condemning the spike in anti-indigenous violence under interim President Áñez and demanding the return of Evo Morales. Áñez has a history of using racist, anti-indigenous language, and last week she issued a decree protecting the military from prosecution for violent acts and said that Morales would face prosecution if he returned to Bolivia. Morales is Bolivia’s first indigenous president, and Bolivia has a majority indigenous population. We speak with Sacha Llorenti, Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations since 2012. “We are going through not just a coup d’état, but a violent one,” Llorenti says….

    From the interview:

    AMY GOODMAN: So, it looks like there’s at least nine people dead, over a hundred injured. And you have the self-proclaimed president of Bolivia, Jeanine Áñez, previously calling indigenous communities “Satanic,” declaring her presidency will bring the Bible back to Bolivia. Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Llorenti, can you respond to who Jeanine Áñez is? And what is your role right now? I mean, can you walk into the consulate in New York where you resided?

    SACHA LLORENTI: Well, first of all, this is — there’s an elite, mainly in the eastern part of the country, with a lot, a lot of money, that in 2008, you might remember, Amy, they wanted to split the country. They wanted to — they started a movement of secession of that part of the country. It’s powerful people that were directly affected by Evo Morales’ policies, mainly in terms of land, of other — of the administration of other natural resources and also the banks. So, it is not just Senator Áñez, but behind her there is a class, there is a — there are economic interests. They already started different policies that want to restore neoliberalism in Bolivia. Just I’m going to give you one example. They want to privatize some of the endeavors that Evo Morales built during the last 14 years, and they want to get rid of all the regulations for exports in Bolivia. We used to regulate exports in order to keep the prices low in Bolivia and to guarantee that everyone gets those products in the country. But now they are getting rid of those regulations in order for them to get more, I mean, profit mainly. So, there is a clear economic project by these people. It is not just this senator that is now the self-proclaimed president of my country. There is a real path to destroy all the things that we have achieved in the past 14 years. That’s one thing.

    The second thing is that it is a racist elite. You know, one of the first things they’ve done, not just in one place, in many — in different cities in Bolivia, they burned down the Wiphala. That’s the indigenous flag. I remember that they’ve done that in 2008, and the U.N. clearly stated that that was a racist act, because that is an indigenous symbol, that is also recognized by the Constitution adopted by — in 2009. So, we are talking about an economic plan. They do have an economic project. They do have a social project, which is, I mean, the restoration of this racist way of running the state.

    But at the same time, they are aligned with the policies of the White House. The first things that they’ve done is to recognize the other self-proclaimed president of Venezuela, Guaidó. They expelled all the Venezuelan diplomats, and they expelled the medical workers, the Cuban medical workers, the Cuban staff that helped a great deal in terms of reaching the more isolated communities in Bolivia. So, this is what’s happening. And it’s no surprise that one of the first countries that recognized Senator Áñez was precisely the United States.

    SACHA LLORENTI: …And your other question about was mistakes. I think that, of course, I mean, we made mistakes. The process of change, as it is called, the Bolivian revolution, was made by human beings. And we made many mistakes along the way, but there were great successes, Juan. I mean, we have reduced poverty like no other, from 38% of extreme poverty to 15%. We have raised the quality of millions of people that now are part of the middle class — and, in parentheses, many of them are now protesting against the government that set all the conditions for them to improve in their lives. And also, in terms of child mortality, to protect — you know that Bolivia is the — according to the World Economic Forum, it is the 17th country in the world in terms of reducing gender gap, the 17th, way behind many, many European countries, because there were policies directed to that goal. So, we’ve done — of course there were mistakes, but I think that many, many, many, many, many good things were done correctly.

    AMY GOODMAN: Ambassador Llorenti, we only have 30 seconds. Do you think the U.S. was involved with the coup?

    SACHA LLORENTI: I mean, I think that the OAS is the pawn of the United States government, and of course they were involved. They were part of the coup, and also they acted in coordination with the calendar of the coup.

    AMY GOODMAN: And were you fired?

    SACHA LLORENTI: Well, they tried to fire me, but they can’t because I’m recognized by the Credentials Committee of the United Nations. I’m still the ambassador of Bolivia to the United Nations. I will not recognize that dictatorship, and I’ll continue to do my job in the best of my capacities.

    AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the president would be killed if he went to Bolivia?

    SACHA LLORENTI: They will try — they tried to kill him. They tried to him, for sure. And he saved his life because of he was protected by peasants in Cochabamba.

  455. KG says

    I must admit I didn’t watch the Johnson-Corbyn debate – I feel I have to limit my exposure to lying scumbags such as Johnson for the sake of my health. An immediate poll found that it was effectively a draw. Given his huge unpopularity, that’s a good result for Corbyn, but not nearly good enough. Apparently he refrained from attacking Johnson personally. That’s a principle he holds to, but the fact that the PM is a corrupt lying psychopath with close ties to Putinista Russian oligarchs ought to be a central issue in the election.

  456. johnson catman says

    re SC @452: SACHA LLORENTI

    There is a real path to destroy all the things that we have achieved in the past 14 years.

    Hmmmmmmm. That sounds oddly familiar with what the administration in Washington is doing also.

  460. says

    Gordon Sondland will testify in the impeachment inquiry at 9 AM ET. Really have no idea what he’ll do: try to continue with his (already revised) testimony, which is being progressively discredited; plead the Fifth; or tell the truth and fully implicate Trump.

    Also, tonight there’s a Democratic presidential debate, because of course there is. It’s at 9 PM ET in Atlanta. Here are the ten qualifying candidates:

    Joe Biden, former vice president
    Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey
    Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind.
    Tulsi Gabbard, representative from Hawaii
    Kamala Harris, senator from California
    Amy Klobuchar, senator from Minnesota
    Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont
    Tom Steyer, billionaire business executive and activist
    Elizabeth Warren, senator from Massachusetts
    Andrew Yang, founder of Venture for America

    I’m unhappy Castro didn’t make the cut (especially with Gabbard, Steyer, and Yang there). The moderators are all women: Maddow, Mitchell, Welker, and Parker.

    More information here.

  461. says

    “NEW: Pompeo knew about Sondland and Volker’s efforts to get the Ukrainians to put out a statement that they hoped would appease Trump. Pompeo also OKed a plan to have Zelensky make commitment to Trump in person to unlock logjam between the two countries [? – SC].”

    NYT link atl.

  462. says

    Daily Beast – “Nikki Haley Used System for Unclassified Material to Send ‘Confidential’ Information”:

    North Korea had just tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting Alaska, and the Trump administration was scrambling to react. But it seems Nikki Haley, Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, had lost her password for classified communications.

    That’s why on that fraught July 4, 2017, she was typing away on her BlackBerry 10 smartphone, sending “confidential” information over a system meant only for unclassified material.

    Haley was in a rush as she headed to her office—“On my way in”—shooting emails back and forth with top aides who’d been with her since she was governor of South Carolina. She needed to make a statement, and they were drafting it for her. “Let’s clean this up,” she writes after looking at some of the copy. “Pretty this up for me,” she says.

    The next day we discover what the problem is with her communications. “Can’t find my password for the high side,” she writes.

    The stylistic suggestions and the apparent explanation for using less secure messages was in a trove of emails recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the watchdog organization American Oversight.

    But most of the content is blanked out—and the redactions note various classification criteria as exempt from FOIA requests, including the B1 category: “classified national defense and foreign relations information”; 1.4(B) “foreign government information”; and 1.4(D) “foreign relations or foreign activities of the United States, including confidential sources.”

    For an administration obsessed with security lapses others have committed, and for a still-rising star in the Republican Party, this could be more than a little embarrassing.

    …

    Asked for comment, a spokesperson for Haley requested to see the emails in question and then did not respond further.

    …

    In July 2017, the issue Haley and her staffers were discussing over the State Department’s OpenNet system for unclassified communications was the clear and present danger of nuclear war with North Korea. “There was no time to waste,” Haley writes in her book. “The missile launches were ongoing and the regime’s capabilities were increasing with each launch.”

    Precisely because of the crisis atmosphere, Haley’s use of OpenNet for classified communications could be of serious concern. State Department communications often are targeted by hackers, and the Russians, Chinese, Iranians—and North Koreans—have some of the most effective….

  463. says

    “@ChrisMurphyCT sends letter to House Democratic leaders, detailing his own recollections of encounters with Zelenskiy and visit to Ukraine over the summer while aid was withheld.”

    At the link. Very good letter. Concluding paragraph:

    In my view, the one offense that cannot be tolerated from an American president is the use of the massive power entrusted to him to advance his personal political or financial interests. The sacred covenant that a president makes with the people he govern[s] is to use the levers of influence entrusted to them for the good of the country, not for his personal gain. President Trump preyed on a vulnerable foreign nation, dependent on the U.S. for its very survival, and used taxpayer money as leverage to get that nation to work for the personal political benefit of the president. This cannot be allowed in a democracy, and I am glad that this inquiry has been convened. I hope the information included in this letter aids the committee in your deliberation regarding what consequences are appropriate for this abuse of power.

  464. says

    “Gordon Sondland will blame Trump by saying ‘we followed the president’s orders’ in working with Giuliani and that it was Trump’s desire that the investigations into Burisma and the 2016 election be opened.”

    They’re reading from Sondland’s opening statement on MSNBC. Not just Trump but everyone. He appears to be going with choice C of #458 above.

  471. says

    Ari Melber:

    Holy cow Gordon Sondland going full John Dean in opening statement:

    Confirms his view the WH plot was “quid pro quo” bribery

    Implicates Giuliani

    Shows Pompeo in the loop with new evidence

    Implicates Trump, testifies this was on his orders

    Adds new emails and evidence

  483. says

    “Asked if, by September 9 (the date he sent the ‘President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s’ text), Sondland understood Trump required a public announcement of two investigations to get both a meeting and the security assistance, Sondland said, ‘I believe that is correct’.”

  485. says

    IANAL, but it’s amusing to me that the Trumpublicans have had this line about “due process” and how these hearings should be more like a court. If they had to follow courtroom rules in examining witnesses, the vast majority of their own questions would be objected to and those objections would be sustained. Especially the questions that assume fact not in evidence and that are misleadingly presented or just fabricated.

  486. says

    Yahoo – “FBI seeks interview with CIA whistleblower”:

    The FBI recently sought to question the CIA whistleblower who filed a complaint over President Trump’s July 25 Ukraine call — a move that came after a vigorous internal debate within the bureau over how to respond to some of the issues raised by the complaint’s allegations and whether they needed to be more thoroughly investigated, according to sources familiar with the matter.

    An FBI agent in the Washington field office in October reached out to one of the lawyers representing the whistleblower and asked to question the CIA analyst who triggered the congressional inquiry into the president’s conduct, one of the sources said.

    But no interview has yet to be scheduled. It is unclear what the intended scope of the interview would be or whether the whistleblower’s lawyers will agree to it. Mark Zaid, one of the lawyers for the whistleblower, said he and his co-counsel would have no comment. An FBI spokesperson also declined comment.

    The request from the FBI comes at a sensitive moment when Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are making repeated efforts to “out” the whistleblower in order to suggest he may have had political motivations hostile to the president when he filed his Aug. 12 complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general.

    It also comes after multiple threats have been made against the whistleblower and his lawyers — some of which have been separately passed along by the lawyers to other officials at the FBI. But the agent who sought to question the whistleblower made no reference to the threats as the purpose of the interview, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

    Any investigation by the FBI into the issues raised in the whistleblower complaint has the potential to introduce a new wild card into the debate over whether to impeach the president over his Ukraine dealings.

    In late September, the Justice Department confirmed that Brian Benczkowski, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division, and an appointee of Trump, had reviewed the whistleblower’s detailed complaint the previous month and determined there was no violation of campaign finance laws by the president when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open up an investigation into the gas company that once paid Hunter Biden, the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, to serve on its board.

    As a result, Kerri Kupec, chief of public affairs, said the Justice Department determined that “no further action was warranted.”

    But that decision, a Justice Department official said, was limited only to the question of potential campaign finance law violations and not to any other issues raised in the whistleblower complaint. “It was a very narrow issue,” the official said.

    Some officials within the FBI, which received its own copy of the whistleblower’s complaint in early September, chafed at a Justice Department move they believed was aimed at shutting down any inquiry at all, especially into potential counterintelligence issues raised by the allegations, according to a former senior U.S intelligence official who has discussed the matter with current FBI counterintelligence agents.

    There were “guys who wanted to run with it,” said the former senior official. “People were pissed off.”

    Others in the FBI were wary and “didn’t want to touch [the whistleblower complaint] with a 10-foot pole because of the Russia investigation,” said this former senior official.

    FBI counterintelligence officials were particularly concerned about the claims — detailed in the whistleblower’s complaint — that the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and two of his associates may have been manipulated by Russian interests, said the former senior official.

    The two associates in question are Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, both of whom were recently indicted by federal prosecutors for allegedly conspiring to funnel foreign money into U.S. elections.

    “There were guys within the [intelligence community] who believe this is another Russian attempt,” the former official said. “People think Giuliani is being led down the primrose path.”…

  493. says

    Newsweek – “Trump Regularly ‘Can’t Remember What He’s Said or Been Told,’ White House Insider Says”:

    President Donald Trump regularly struggles to “remember what he’s said or been told,” an anonymous senior government official behind a new exposé on the inner workings of the White House has claimed.

    Much of the nearly 260 pages of the anonymous official’s tome, A Warning, which hit bookshelves on Tuesday, has been dedicated to sounding the alarm about Trump’s alarming behavior.

    While the anonymous author, who is described only as a “senior official in the Trump administration” admits they are not “qualified to diagnose the president’s mental acuity,” they can say that “normal people who spend any time with Donald Trump are uncomfortable by what they witness.”

    “He stumbles, slurs, gets confused, is easily irritated, and has trouble synthesizing information, not occasionally but with regularity,” the official warns.

    Often, they say, “the president also can’t remember what he’s said or been told.”

    “Americans are used to him denying words that have come out of his mouth,” the senior official writes. “Sometimes this is to avoid responsibility.”

    However, they say it often “appears Trump genuinely doesn’t remember important facts.”

    …

    The official writes that while Trump has often claimed to be highly intelligent, they say they have “seen the president fall flat on his face when trying to speak intelligently” on a number of topics on which he claims to be an expert.

    “You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an ‘idiot’ and a ‘moron’ with the understanding of a ‘fifth or sixth grader,'” the unnamed senior official says.

    In addition to questioning Trump’s ability to recall basic terms that he has said or heard, the anonymous author also accuses the president of an “astounding” level of “intellectual laziness.”

    …

    While the anonymous official says some Trump defenders might be tempted to write their warnings off “as the musings of Never-Trumpers,” they say, “that is not the case.”

    Anyone who has spent time with Trump and “would claim otherwise” of their account, the official says, is “lying to themselves or to the country.”

  497. johnson catman says

    re SC @491:

    “You can see why behind closed doors his own top officials deride him as an ‘idiot’ and a ‘moron’ with the understanding of a ‘fifth or sixth grader,’” the unnamed senior official says.

    That is an insult to fifth and sixth graders.

  499. says

    “It’s important to watch these hearings without projecting personal desires that this will finally be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. That said, it is hard to overstate how catastrophically this hearing is going for Republicans. Castor has lost control of questioning.

    In response to Castor’s questions, Sondland is giving even more damaging information for Trump. As a lawyer, you never want to be in that position.”

    In fairness to Castor, he doesn’t have the information the so-called administration is hiding.