Asylum?

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  Though a lot of attention is now being focused on whether or not Senate Majority Leader McConnell will allow any witnesses during the upcoming Senate impeachment hearing and, if he does, who they will be, action in the House isn’t over yet.  Today, the usually obscure House Rules committee will start the process of determining how much debate time the House will spend on the articles, whether or not amendments will be allowed and voting procedures.  The Committee is also expected to loosen up House rules as to what can be said about Trump on the House floor.  Ironically, though Trump gets to say nasty things and frequently does, usually Congresspeople aren’t allowed to say anything personally offensive to a president, but given that “criticism of the president is inherent to the impeachment process” they’ll get to say more of what they’re actually thinking than usual.  That said don’t expect any of them to call out Trump’s teeth even though the very juvenile Trump slammed Speaker Pelosi by saying her “teeth were falling out” over the weekend.  The rules process is likely to be more animated and contentious than usual so things could take longer than planned, but once finished the Rules Committee will pass the impeachment process to the House floor in anticipation of an impeachment vote on Wednesday or Thursday.  To that end, yesterday, more of the vulnerable freshman Democrats, including Utah’s Ben McAdams, South Carolina’s Joe Cunningham, Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin and Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and Elaine Luria put their seats in jeopardy by announcing that they will vote for impeachment, notable because some of them eked out slim victories in very, very Republican pro-Trump districts.  And then there is Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard, the disruptive presidential candidate who has nothing to fear since she comes from a Democratic district and in any case isn’t running for reelection. She announced that she’s still not sure how she is going to vote, an indication that she will probably vote against impeachment.  Anyone who doubted that Hillary Clinton was wrong about Gabbard being this election’s Jill Stein should apologize now.  Anyway, getting back to those vulnerable Congresspeople, though Mike Bloomberg has pledged $10 million to help their campaigns, they will need all the help they can get so if you are so inclined, consider going to Actblue.com, every little bit helps.

McConnell’s Domain:  Moving back to the Senate, no Republican Senators have shown any guts, yet.  Mitt Romney told reporters that he “wants to talk to his colleagues about whether witnesses are necessary, saying he has a point of view on the topic but didn’t want to talk about it yet.”  The pearl clutching Susan Collins dissed Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s plan to let Trump’s legal team dictate his actions saying that “would not be the approach that I’ve taken,” but then criticized Democratic leader Chuck Schumer for making his letter to McConnell about process and witnesses public. Iowa’s vulnerable Senator Joni Ernst more or less confirmed that she’s sticking with McConnell and Team Trump by saying that she saw no need for any witnesses, she just wants to see the impeachment trial go as quickly as possible. Not much was heard from the other vulnerable Republicans, but the NY Times suggests that some more of those retiring Senators including Kansas’ Pat Roberts might be worth watching, as they might support having witnesses testify.  That’s not to say that any of these Republicans will do anything rash like vote for impeachment.

Rudy, Rudy, Flynn:  Rudy Giuliani continues to confound.  He admitted to the New Yorker that he was behind  Ambassador to Ukraine Maria Yovanovitch’s ouster, saying he needed her out because she was standing in the way of his Biden and Crowdstrike dirt digging activities.  In addition to the New Yorker interview, Giuliani got more air time as his so called “Ukraine documentary” aired on the super conservative, One America News (OAN) Saturday and Sunday. Of course, he pushed his increasingly “convoluted conspiracy” theories about the Biden family and Ukraine.  He then doubled down on Fox telling Laura Ingraham that Yovanovitch, widely recognized as a capable diplomat, was corrupt because she had impeded his efforts, all of which were being done on behalf of Trump who knew what he was up to because the two chatted about it frequently.  He also implicated Secretary of State Pompeo saying that, as instructed by Trump, he kept him in the loop too.  As to that loop, it continues to spin, yesterday when asked, Trump acknowledged that Giuliani had spoken with him about his most recent Kiev dirt digging trip saying that though he hadn’t shared “too much” he’s a  “very great crimefighter. He was probably the greatest crimefighter over the last 50 years, very smart. He was the best mayor of the city of New York, he’s a great person who loves our country, and he does this out of love, believe me.”  So like Giuliani said a few weeks ago, he has some “insurance” in his files, and whatever it is, it’s enough for Trump to want to keep him very close.  Mike Flynn, Trump’s national security advisor for a minute best known for leading Trump’s campaign rallies in “lock her up” chants and for getting caught lying to the FBI will be sentenced on January 28.  “Lock him up?” Emmet Sullivan, the judge overseeing his case rejected Flynn’s requests to compel prosecutors to turn over additional evidence, saying his lawyers had “failed to explain” why any of it would be relevant to the crime he has already admitted.  Additionally, the exasperated Sullivan said that Flynn’s new defense lawyers had “failed to establish a single” violation by prosecutors of the rule requiring them to disclose to defendants evidence that could help exonerate him adding that he had “ethical concerns” with a legal brief that they had provided.  Who would have guessed that Flynn’s current lawyers, recommended by team Trump were ethically compromised? It’s not a stretch to believe that assuming the Senate hearing goes his way, a depressingly realistic assumption, Trump will grant the lying Flynn one of those coveted golden pardons.  

Etcetera:  Over the weekend the NY Times joined the list of newspapers endorsing impeachment by saying that they agree with the House Judiciary Committee’s conclusion that Trump “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-governance and the rule of law.”   Yesterday, William Webster, a former head of both the CIA and the FBI under Democratic and Republican presidents, scorched Trump and AG Barr’s treatment of the FBI, expressing outrage at Trump for calling them out as scum and adding that Barr’s  “charges of bias within the FBI, made without providing any evidence and in direct dispute of the findings of the nonpartisan inspector general, risk inflicting enduring damage on this critically important institution.”  Webster isn’t the only Republican and former official disgusted by current events. Tom Ridge, the former Pennsylvania governor and Homeland Security Secretary told a Harrisburg audience that he is “disappointed and troubled by the very fact that my president – and he is my president – would ask a foreign leader of a troubled country who’s been besieged by an enemy of the United States, to do him a political favor.”  Adding that “as far as I’m concerned, it is abuse of power.”  All that said, polls appear to be bouncing around.  A Fox poll shows support for impeachment up to 54% while a CNN poll shows it at 45%. Don’t be surprised if Trump who expressed fury at Fox by tweeting “The @foxnewsPolls  always inaccurate, are heavily weighted toward Dems. So ridiculous - same thing happened in 2016. They got it all wrong. Get a new pollster!” starts lavishing praise on CNN, well for a minute. And, it’s not just Thursday’s Democratic debate that’s up in the air, Trump is now threatening to boycott the presidential debates, not because he isn’t super confident of his innate debate skills but because “"The problem is that the so-called Commission on Presidential Debates is stacked with Trump Haters & Never Trumpers.”  Trump is trolling us but he’s being trolled too.  Gloating over the picture of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov standing next to Trump during their most recent Oval Office meeting, Russian media agreed with Congressman Eric Swalwell’s assessment by calling Trump out as Russia’s agent and saying that when Democrats come back into power they would welcome him to follow former Ukraine President Yanukovych’s by seeking asylum in Russia.