Excrement Everywhere

Get Over It:  Last week Fiona Hill, the preeminent expert on all things Putin reiterated that Russia, not Ukraine, was responsible for intervening in our 2016 election.  She went on to say that every time anyone, politician or news pundit, says otherwise they are just falling for more of Putin’s nefarious propaganda.  We also learned that US intelligence agencies recently updated a bipartisan group of Senators on the Kremlin’s “blame Ukraine game,” a strategy that achieves two of Putin’s objectives, chipping away at the underpinnings of our democracy while destabilizing the already very vulnerable Ukraine.  Nevertheless, on Friday morning Trump called into Fox and Friends to once again push the debunked Crowdstrike conspiracy theory, the myth that the FBI helped the Crowdstrike computer security company, a company that the RNC actually employs for their computer security, hide the DNC server in the Ukrainian woods.  And because that wasn’t enough conspiracy mongering for one weekend, when asked by Fox News Host Chris Wallace who he believed was to blame for hacking the DNC and Clinton campaign computers: Ukraine, or Russia, Republican Senator John Kennedy responded “"I don't know, nor do you, nor do any others." Though the exasperated Wallace responded "Let me just interrupt to say the entire intelligence community says it was Russia," the message had been delivered to Fox viewers:  believe Trump and his fanboys, because as Energy Secretary Rick Perry says in a soon to be released interview, “Trump is God’s Chosen One.” We are now two weeks into public impeachment inquiry hearings, the facts are damning, Trump has been and is likely to continue demanding help from vulnerable foreign governments and those who think Trump is the lord their king or who just like his tax cuts and judges insist he did nothing wrong and if he did, it’s not a bigly deal. And to drive that point home one of the Republican’s newest Senators, Tennessee’s Martha Blackburn, tweet attacked Lt Col Alexander Vindman saying “Vindictive Vindman is the “whistleblower’s” handler” because when you are in Trump’s camp, it’s important to participate in throwing hate and not so subtle anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic trope spreading.   

More Twists and Turns:  It’s not clear that there will be more testimony as important witnesses such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney refuse to cooperate and former national security advisor John Bolton appears much more concerned about regaining access to his blocked for a while twitter account than talking truth to Congress but details of more behind the scenes dealing and obfuscation continue to emerge.  Though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s State Department still refuses to provide House investigators with any of the documents that they have requested some 100 pages were released late Friday as the result of a successful lawsuit by government ethics group American Oversight.  That’s how crazy this is, an oversight group got the documents that Congress couldn’t.  Those newly released documents include emails confirming multiple March 2019 contacts between Pompeo and Trump lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani, at least one of which was facilitated by Trump’s personal assistant Madeleine Westerhout.  They reveal that while Pompeo has been pretending that he had nothing to do with the smearing and ouster of the highly respected Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch, he  knew all about it from the start and not only didn’t he try to stop it, he appears to have been in on it.  

Pompeo isn’t the only one who’s been knee deep in all this Trump/Giuliani excrement, so is Congressman Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee.  According to Giuliani sidekick Lev Parnas, Nunes and some members of his staff traveled to Vienna in late 2018 where they met with Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who has emerged as a key figure in Republican attacks on Joe Biden and his son Hunter. Shokin was dismissed from his position at the urging of then VP Biden and our European allies because he failed to undertake promised corruption probes but Trump and his cronies continue to try to attribute his ouster to efforts by Biden to help his son and the Burisma gas company, a demonstrably false accusation.  Nunes, who is currently suing the person responsible for the @DevinCow parody twitter account says that he now plans to sue CNN too, for publishing the report of his meeting with Shokin, but has failed to explain those expense reports that show that he did in fact spend $60,000 of our tax dollars traveling to Vienna during the time period in question.  He may now find himself subject to an ethics investigation.  He should also be recused from the Ukraine investigation but that’s probably not going to happen any time soon.  And then there’s Mulvaney, the Washington Post reports that a confidential review by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone of Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal.  The review turned up numerous August email exchanges between Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after Trump had already ordered a hold in mid-July on the nearly $400 million in security assistance.  Note that this “confidential review” is no longer confidential, that may be because Cipollone covets Mulvaney’s Chief of Staff position.  And let’s not forget Rudy, at one point this week he claimed that Trump couldn’t throw him under the bus because he’s got “insurance,” only to say he meant that if anything happens to him he’s got lots of proof of decades of Biden corruption.  It’s fair to say two things, there is no evidence of “decades” of Biden corruption because if there was it would have been released by now but Rudy probably has lots and lots of Trump stuff.  

Codes and Honor: Notably Trump hasn’t played any golf since last week’s rush trip to Walter Reed Medical Center.  Although he did travel during the week, contrary to usual practice he was at all times accompanied by the White House doctor, causing some to believe that he is not the healthiest president ever to grace the  office, to state the obvious. Healthy or not he’s still finding time to be disruptive, not just on the impeachment inquiry but also with regard to the military code of behavior.  Over the weekend Navy Secretary Richard Spencer was forced out or resigned, depending on who’s talking,  for questioning Trump’s decision not to have disgraced Navy SEAL Edward Gallaher’s SEAL Trident badge removed.  Gallagher was tried for war crimes earlier this year and while he was acquitted of murder after a key witness recanted some testimony, under rather questionable circumstances, he was found guilty of posing with the body of a dead prisoner, an bigly no no.  Trump and Spencer had been engaged in a dispute over whether Gallagher should be allowed to retain his Trident, the removal of the badge is about far more than the badge, it’s about things like honor, ethical behavior and military discipline.  Quite a few things are disturbing about this story.  First Gallagher’s actions were really bad, second Trump’s defense of his actions were even worse, and third Secretary of defense Mike Esper’s decision to stand by Trump on this one is hugely disappointing and provides another example of a senior official refusing to stand up to the so-called chosen one. As to health, distressingly, Trump isn’t the only one facing health problems, the Notorious RBG spent some time at Johns Hopkins Hospital this weekend fighting off an infection. The fragile Justice Ginsburg is back home now. Obviously, she is needed now more than ever. Decisions about the release of Trump’s tax returns and former White House Counsel Don McGahn’s subpoena to testify are imminent and decisions on DACA and the Affordable Care Act, not to mention all those percolating up reproductive rights issues, are on this year’s docket.

2020:  Mike Bloomberg is now officially in the race.  I have no idea why he thinks that he can prevail over all of his Democratic rivals but he’s a super smart and competent guy who is very data driven so maybe he knows something that the rest of us don’t.  As to those rivals, a few of them commented by saying that billionaires shouldn’t be allowed to do what he’s doing, kind of an acknowledgement that they wish that instead of running, he’d throw some of his funds their way.