They Shoot Horses Don't They

Something’s Up:  The impeachment war, or the COUP attempt as Trump is now repeatedly calling it, is on and something bigly is about to happen. We know that because late yesterday Steve Linick, the Inspector General for the State Department whose appointment predates the Trump administration, requested the scheduling of an “urgent” briefing with a number of Senate and House committees "to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine." Those documents were provided to him by the State Department’s acting Legal Advisor, particularly curious since Secretary of State Pompeo spent much of yesterday pushing back hard against the investigation into Trump’s “quid pro quo” call with Ukraine President Zelensky. Assuming Linick doesn’t get arrested or otherwise detained, the urgent meeting is scheduled to take place later today with members and staff from the House and Senate Intelligence, Foreign Relations, Appropriations and Oversight Committees.  Notably, although some committees are working on impeachment related activities, Congress is on recess right now so this meeting must be really urgent for the Inspector General to take such an unusual step during a break.  Getting back to Pompeo, although he’s off in Italy he found the time to call the requests by Adam Schiff, Eliot Engel and Elijah Cummings, the Chairs of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, respectively, for the immediate scheduling of depositions with five of his State Department officials an effort to “bully” his diplomats. Although Pompeo didn’t come out and say that he would prevent his people from ever showing up, he did try to put the brakes on their appearances, another example of the stalling tactic frequently and, at least to date, effectively employed by members of the Trump administration.  Nevertheless two of Pompeo’s diplomats believe that he is the bully and don’t view the House requests as a problem.  Kurt Volker, the former Special Envoy to Ukraine, who resigned last week in part because he wants to control his own destiny, plans to sit down with Congress tomorrow and Marie Yovanovitch, the former Ambassador to Ukraine who was forced out of her position but is still an employee of the State Department appears to be throwing caution and perhaps her continued employment at State to the wind.  She has hired her own lawyer and plans to testify on October 11. The three house Chairs responded to Pompeo’s stall tactics and accusations of bullying by sending him a harshly worded letter pointing out that “any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking with Congress is illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry."  Later in the day, they doubled down, by sending another letter to Pompeo’s deputy, stating that they believed Pompeo had an “obvious conflict of interest” since it appears that he listened in on Trump’s Zelensky call.  They added that going forward they would no longer communicate with Pompeo about other witnesses related to this investigation.  As to Trump he’s continued to question the motives of the Whistleblower, claiming that the forms he used were inappropriately altered to facilitate his complaint, something that isn’t true and suggesting that he has a right to unmask him meet and meet him face to face, also not true.  Though a number of Trump’s Congressional supporters and the usual Fox talking heads are on board with Trump’s assertions, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the most senior sitting Republican Senator disagrees.  Without naming Trump, he called out attacks against the Whistleblower saying “this person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected. We should always work to respect whistleblowers.”  A number of Trump’s cronies are now attacking Grassley.  As to retention of lawyers, Trump’s erstwhile lawyer and BFF Giuliani has now hired one of his own.

Roman Holiday:  We now know why so many of Trump’s cabinet members are hanging out in Italy,  Apparently Attorney General Barr went there to listen to a tape made by the mysterious Professor Mifsud for Italian investigators.  In case you’ve forgotten, Mifsud is the “shadowy Maltese professor,” possibly a Russian plant, whose conversation with “coffee boy” George Papadopoulos about the “missing” Hillary Clinton emails helped trigger the Russia investigation. Barr took along US Federal Attorney John Durham who’s been assigned the task of investigating the investigation.  For the record John Durham is an experienced and capable guy with a good reputation.  It’s unlikely that he needed Barr to escort him to Italy, so to the extent that there is anything there to find, he could find it all by himself but failing to find anything damning wouldn’t fit the Trump narrative so Barr is thought to be on the case to make sure that they come up with something, anything.  It can’t be a coincidence that Pompeo, who certainly has his hands full with other more pressing issues like the Ukraine fiasco and negotiations with characters like North Korea’s Kim Jong un, is also in Italy right now.  By the way, there’s talk once again of more meetings with the wily North Korean, but that hasn’t stopped him from shooting off more sub launched missiles.  If House investigators ever manage to get a look inside Trump’s super secret server, the one where he’s being stashing transcripts of his most secret calls, they may want to find out what he’s promised North Korea in exchange for all that “denuclearization.”  But they better do that before someone starts “acid washing” the server.  According to Buzzfeed, Federal Judge Amy Berman is so concerned that some file erasure is in the offing that she’s considering issuing a preservation order.

Moats, Snakes and Alligators:  Because the scheduling of urgent meetings and the discovery that the Secretary of State and the Attorney General are off in Italy chasing conspiracy theories weren’t enough news for one day, yesterday evening the NY Times revealed that last March, in addition to wanting to completely shut down the border with Mexico regardless of the consequences for trade and other stuff like humanity, Trump wanted to build a moat stocked with alligators and poisonous snakes in order to deter refugees and other migrants from crossing into the US.  Well at least brown migrants, he still has no plans for dealing with the larger number of people who arrive on airplanes and overstay their visas.  Trump also wanted to start shooting anyone crossing illegally.  Not to worry, he didn’t want to kill people, he just wanted them kneecapped.  Apparently, he was so insistent about the moat part that his staff actually tried to quantify its cost.  His plans were halted by a number of now mostly former Homeland Security officials  who are probably the sources for this story including Kirstjen Nielsen who he berated because she questioned the legality and practicality of his plans, didn’t have the right look for her job and Ann Coulter and Lou Dobbs didn’t like her.  He also reported called her “honey” when he accused her of failing to hear and act upon his demands. Hardly his worse offense, but still incredibly offensive.

Other News:  A few more Republican Congressmen are jumping ship.  New York Representative Chris Collins, Trump’s first congressional supporter, quit yesterday moments before pleading guilty to insider trading charges, the charges that he earlier denied as just one of those witch hunt things.  And though he’s not being indicted, long term Texas Congressman Mac Thornberry announced that he will not be running for reelection.  He’s the sixth Republican Congressman from Texas to throw in the towel.  Yesterday, despite the recent shooting of a Hong Kong demonstrator and the tear gassing of many others and those Uighurs in concentration camps, Trump congratulated China’s President Xi on the 70^th anniversary of Communist rule, something that upset a few Republican Senators enough for them to squawk quietly.  And notwithstanding  all of Trump’s problems and the impending impeachment proceedings he’s still raising boatloads of money for his reelection, because he can and because his really rich supporters don’t care much about his moral failings and what he’s doing to the world order because of that tax cut,  the rest of his supporters are apparently all in on the moat.