Toga!

Animal House: Earlier this week Trump complained that Congressional Republicans weren’t doing enough to protect his interests so a group of about 25 House Republicans reviewed their options and decided that acting out a scene from Animal House was the best way to defend Trump’s presidency.  Led by Florida’s Matt Gaetz, a Trump mini me who has become one of Trump’s most ardent defenders, the crowd, including Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise, the second most senior member of Republican leadership,  forced their way into the House SCIF, the security facility where all that incriminating testimony about Trump and his Ukraine Quid Pro Quo is taking place.  As if storming the facility wasn’t enough, the crowd also brought in their cell phones because given the choice between violating the SCIF ban on electronic equipment and taking selfies, the crowd determined that documentation of their invasion was far more important, and it probably was to Trump who knew about their sophomoric act in advance.  Upon arrival, the crowd ordered pizzas, leaving boxes and crusts strewn about the facility because who has time to clean up when leading an insurrection against Democracy? Though the purported reason for their disruptive action was to protest Democratic leadership’s lack of transparency, about 130 or ¼ of the House, those who make up the committees conducting the impeachment inquiry, are allowed to sit in on the testimony taking place in the SKIF and around twelve of the “demonstrators” didn’t need to storm the SKIF as they are members of those committees. Notably back when Republican’s controlled the House, then Congressman Darrel Issa, a Republican, was prevented from attending a Benghazi related hearing taking place in the SKIF by his Republican colleague Trey Gowdy because he wasn’t a member of one of the hosting committees, but everyone knows that precedent doesn’t count now because the Democrats are in charge.  It’s no coincidence that the invasion took place while Speaker Pelosi was out of pocket, attending her brother’s funeral where she was busy delivering a eulogy.  Despite the invading hordes best efforts, Laura Cooper the Pentagon official responsible for overseeing Ukraine policy was not deterred.  She stuck around, testified for three hours and detailed how the process related to the hold up of aid to Ukraine deviated from normal practice. Her willingness to testify was notable because like the various State Department employees who have stepped up to share what they know about the Ukraine affair, she had been instructed by her bosses at the Pentagon to stay away.  For his part Trump made it clear that he’s less than pleased about those who are testifying, he called them a bunch of “never Trumper Republicans” who are nothing more than “human scum,” going on to tweet that it would be really great if the people within his administration, could stop hiring those never Trumpers who he further slammed as “worse than the Do Nothing Democrats” because “nothing good will ever come from them.”  Later in the day, during a speech at a Shale Insight Conference in Pittsburgh, the increasingly panicked Trump bragged about building his wall in Colorado because he’s either crazy, geographically ignorant, or thinks that Coloradans need to be protected from the invading hordes crossing from their border state, New Mexico.      

Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine:  Trump has reasons to panic as more and more of his defenses are falling away.  He and his spokespeople have been claiming that because the Ukrainians didn’t know that their aid was being held up at the time that they were being pressured to investigate “corruption,” there was no “Quo” in the Quid Pro Quo, whatever that means.  However, that argument has now fallen by the wayside as the NY Times reports that Ukrainian officials were aware that Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid by August, when they were told to reach out to acting White House Chief of Staff Mulvaney about it.  In other words the “Quo” has been there for some time.  Also, the AP reports that Ukrainian President Zelensky was well aware of what Trump wanted him to do for longer than was previously known.  Apparently he met with his advisers on May 7, after his election but before he was inaugurated,  to discuss how to “navigate” requests from Trump and Rudy Giuliani that would “push Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 presidential elections.”  Additionally, it’s now reported that Trump had still another Ukraine whisperer named Kash Patel.  Patel, who previously helped Congressman Devon Nunes disrupt the Russia investigation, filled Trump’s ear with so much anti-Ukraine fodder that Trump thought that he was the National Security Council person responsible for all things Ukraine even though he wasn’t.   

The Legal Front:  While arguing before a federal appeals court against Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance who has subpoenaed Trump’s tax returns from accounting firm Mazars, Trump’s lawyer William Consovoy claimed that that as president Trump has “temporary presidential immunity” so that even if he shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, New York authorities could not punish him while he is in office.  When the presiding judge asked if his position was that “Local authorities couldn’t investigate? They couldn’t do anything about it?” Consovoy replied, “That is correct.” This claim is the legal version of Trump’s now infamous assertion that his political support was so strong he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters.”  In other legal news Trump lawyer and sometime surrogate Secretary of State Rudy Giuliani, who ended his relationship with his last lawyer sometime last week, is now shopping around for a lawyer because he really needs one.  Giuliani’s buddies Lev Parnass and Igor Fruman pleaded not guilty yesterday with Lev’s lawyer, Ed MacMahon, asserting executive immunity for Parnass since he  "worked for Giuliani and Giuliani worked for him" while also working for Trump.  As crazy as that sounds, federal prosecutors appear to have anticipated the request, they told the judge that they already have a filter team in place to independently review  and sort evidence.  The implication of this can’t be good for Trump who has been trying to distance himself from the Lev and Igor show.

Sayonara Syria:  Trump took to the podium yesterday to brag about his unqualified success in Syria.  Saying that he had extricated the US, leaving it to someone else to “fight over” that “bloodstained land.”  He cancelled the sanctions that he had promised to levy against Turkey because they’ve promised, wink wink, to treat the Kurds well going forward, although everyone knows he doesn’t believe or care about that because the Kurds are so yesterday. When asked about this, Texas Senator John Cornyn responded well, if Turkey was planning to do some ethnic cleansing, it’s good that we got our troops out of harm’s way.  Cornyn’s view is not widely shared by his Republican cohorts, most of whom recognize that just the presence of US troops in the region served as a valuable deterrent.  As to those US troops, some of them are being redeployed to protect Syrian oil fields from ISIS attacks.  The US soldiers will be doing that alongside Kurdish forces, because there’s now so much trust among those two groups?  As to ISIS, it appears that so far somewhere north of 100 of their fighters have escaped captivity.  Trump claims that there is nothing to worry about since they’ve all been recaptured.  However, the Defense Department says that they’ve disappeared into the wind.  Clearly, Trump who also takes personal credit for totally destroying ISIS and who is busy building a wall along the Colorado border knows better.  Right?