Black or Blue

The End is Nearer:  The impeachment hearing is almost over. Though the vote on witnesses hasn’t taken place yet, the odds of witnesses being called is between zero and nil as only two Republican Senators, Romney and Collins, have publicly stated that they will vote for calling witnesses. Last night, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, the Republican Senator who is retiring at the end of his term who some hoped might vote for witnesses announced that he won’t.  Alexander didn’t let Trump off scot free, he tweeted, because even octogenarian Senators are now into social media. Specifically, he said that he didn’t need more witnesses to prove that Trump had pressured Ukraine’s Zelensky to open an investigation into Hunter and Joe Biden in exchange for aid because the Democrats had already more than adequately proved that he had.  Alexander added that there was no question that Trump had acted inappropriately, that asking a foreign official to interfere in a US election was a bad thing and that doing so “undermines the principal of equal justice under the law,” but justified his decision to vote against calling witnesses and against removing Trump from office by saying that he just doesn’t think that Trump’s bad deeds provide a good enough reason for removing him, particularly in the run up to an election.  Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is believed to be the sole remaining possible pro-witness Republican voter, is expected to announce her decision this morning. If she votes yes, Chief Justice Roberts will then have to decide whether or not he wants to break the resulting 50-50 tie, something he is loath to do.  If she votes no, or Roberts leaves the vote in a tie, the trial will quickly move to an end. If Roberts breaks the tie by weighing in for witnesses, all hell will break lose, with Republicans calling him a turncoat and doing their best to overturn his decision which is one of the reasons that it is unlikely that he’ll weigh in. For her part, Speaker Pelosi is on record saying that absent witnesses the trial isn’t a trial and as such Trump won’t really be acquitted even if he is, but Teflon Trump, the messenger in chief will scream full exoneration and his pulpit really is a bully so his message will prevail. 

And…: In other related news, after his efforts to name the Whistleblower were again squashed by the Chief Justice, Senator Rand Paul went outside the Senate chamber, complained about being censored and disclosed the Whistleblower’s name, or at least the name that has been floating around in right wing circles and in the twitterverse anyway.  In the Senate chamber, Trump’s lawyers continued to argue that he’d done nothing wrong, that if he had it wasn’t wrong and that the real criminals are and continue to be those nefarious Bidens.  Pam Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General/Trump lawyer, actually cited a Biden family fishing trip as proof that Joe Biden had colluded with his son Hunter.  State Department career officer Jennifer Williams, the aide to Vice President Pence whose cooperation with House investigators has made her a persona non grata in the White House, plans to leave her position ahead of schedule. Yesterday, Adam Schiff confirmed that the supplemental information that she provided but that Pence still refuses to declassify contains information about how the Russians promoted the conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine rather than those devious Putin controlled Russian bots and army technology experts who were responsible for the 2016 election interference.  And because even Attorney General Barr’s Justice department can provide a source of amusement, the Senate chamber erupted in laughter after Adam Schiff pointed out the irony that yesterday, while Trump’s impeachment lawyers were slamming the Democratic impeachment managers for not pursuing the enforcement of their ignored subpoenas in the courts, Justice Department lawyers were busy arguing in court that the remedy for Congress for the White House’s ignoring of subpoenas is …. impeachment.         

Et Cetera:  Secretary of State Pompeo spent the day in Ukraine where he met with and embraced his good friend President Zelensky.  That had to be a bit awkward since just a few days ago he told an NPR reporter that no one in America really cares about anything or anyone Ukrainian.  Anyway, Zelensky may finally be having the last laugh; because it would be optically bad to do otherwise, the Trump administration now plans to provide Ukraine with a substantial amount of aid next year even though earlier plans had been to cut the embattled country’s allotment.  Trump has now made Health Secretary Azar, whose continued employment in the Trump cabinet was already in jeopardy, his Coronavirus Czar, what could go wrong?  As to that deadly virus, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross says it could be a good thing for American workers claiming they stand to  benefit if corporations shift jobs from China to the US.  Not only is that an inappropriately callous remark to make while people are dying but it fails to acknowledge that the virus isn’t a good thing for people or economies.  The virus’s impact is already negatively impacting China’s growth and a decrease in demand from China will negatively impact economic growth here and abroad. As to borders, a large chunk of newly built wall on the Mexican border fell down this week, the victim of a gust of wind, so much for Trump’s building skills.  At about the same time it was reported that gates in another section of the wall will have to be kept open at times to manage seasonal water flows. Our tax dollars at work?  Lastly, E Jean Carroll, or at least the dress she was wearing the evening that she asserts that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room, is back in the news.  Though this time the dress is Donna Karan black rather than Gap blue, it shares something with the Clinton era in that it has some fragments of male DNA on it.  Carroll is now seeking a sample of Trump’s DNA to determine if those fragments are his.  Could history be repeating itself?                             

GOATS

The End is Near:  The impeachment saga took another bizarre twist yesterday when during the first day of the question and answer period, Alan Dershowitz, Trump’s defense attorney/Constitutional law expert asserted that a president could do virtually anything, including engaging in a quid pro quo for a purely political benefit, as long as it's in service of winning reelection.  He actually said that if a president says “I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was. And if I’m not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly, that cannot be an impeachable offense.” Since Trump clearly thinks that he is the GOAT of presidents, Dershowitz’s view would give him carte blanche to continue breaking laws in order to stay in office for another four years, or longer as for the right price Dershowitz, who also acknowledged that some of his views on impeachment have changed since the Clinton days because he’s done more “reading” up on the subject, could probably come up with a suitable justification for converting the presidency into a Putinesque autocracy. The rest of the day went about as expected with House impeachment managers sticking to their message: that Trump is a president run amok, that the Ukraine qui pro quo had nothing to do with Trump fighting corruption but everything to do with tarnishing Joe Biden and that the White House has been engaging in an epic amount of obstruction.  Aided by some of the questions posed by Republican Senators, Trump’s lawyers pulled out every conspiracy theory possible, from the Crowdstrike fantasy on down to defend his actions, taking the position that seeking aid from a foreign government was and is totally copacetic and that he didn't do anything wrong but if he did it wasn't wrong.  Chief Justice Roberts spoke but, with one notable exception that involved his refusal to let Rand Paul call out the Whistleblower by name, he served merely as a moderator. 

Blocking Bolton: Former national security advisor/author John Bolton’s name came up often, with Trump’s team arguing that he shouldn’t be called to testify in front of the Senate while the Democratic impeachment managers answered many questions by virtually screaming that a witness such as JOHN BOLTON could shed further light on the facts of the case.  While the hearing was in process, the White House issued a formal threat to Bolton to keep him from publishing his book.  That threat came in the form of a letter from the National Security Council that asserted that his manuscript “appears to contain significant amounts of classified information,” a spurious assertion given that Bolton, the author of many books on national security, has been down this road before and knows what can and cannot be disclosed. Bolton’s lawyer shot back at the NSC essentially calling their claim out as bull.  Bolton’s The Room Where it Happened is still available for presale on Amazon, due to be released on March 17.  It’s looking highly unlikely that Bolton will be called into testify because though it’s hard to tell for sure, only three Republican Senators, Romney, Collins, and Murkowski, have expressed a strong interest in hearing witnesses. Of those three, Romney’s vote seems the most solid, the not so reliable Collins seems almost there and Murkowski appears to be in the “witness curious” category.  Notably Collins and Murkowski teamed up on one question, asking whether or not Trump had expressed any interest in combating corruption before Joe Biden started ascending in the polls.  Assuming the three Senators stay strong and are the only three to join the Democrats in voting for witnesses, a 50-50 tie could result.  Theoretically, Chief Justice Roberts could break that tie, but it’s not clear that he’d be willing to stick his neck out.  In any case, in the unlikely event that more Republicans move into the pro-witness camp, Trump’s team would likely sue to prevent any they don’t want to hear from testifying to throw more wrenches into the already wrought process.  To be clear that would mean that the same crowd that insists that the Democrats should have called more witnesses in the House when they had the chance, will do their best to continue impeding any witnesses or evidence from showing up. Though it’s not clear that Lev Parnas, the indicted Giuliani crony, is really on anyone’s witness list, he did show up yesterday.  However, he was unable to take a seat in the Senate’s viewing section because like phones, ankle monitors are not allowed into the chamber. The unfortunate bottom line, is that it’s highly likely that Trump will be “exonerated” in time for his Fox Super Bowl interview.

Et Cetera:  Another day and another Iowa poll, this one from Monmouth University shows Joe Biden gaining a little, taking over the lead from a slightly slipping Bernie Sanders.  Basically the Iowa race is in a statistical tie.  Trump held a signing tete-a-tete at the White House to celebrate the new-NAFTA, or as he’s renamed it the not so catchy USMCA.  Despite the bi-partisan effort to get the trade deal passed, he shunned the Democrats, inviting none of them to the attend the signing but apparently Robert Lighthizer, his trade representative, didn’t get the message.  He actually called Speaker Pelosi to thank her for her significant help in getting the pact to the finish line.  And though the details are still to be resolved, Brexit begins tomorrow.   

Deal of the Century?

Witnesses? Trump’s lawyers wound up their case yesterday using only a fraction of the hours allotted to them, not surprising since Trump wants the trial wrapped up ASAP, the Super Bowl and the State of the Union address beckon. The legal team didn’t spend much, if any, time claiming that Trump hadn’t committed the bad deeds that got him impeached in the first place, only that those deeds don’t justify impeachment.  Yesterday Trump’s lawyers did address former national security advisor John Bolton’s book manuscript and the possibility of calling him as a witness, with Jay Sekulow dismissing Bolton’s value by saying that his book would be inadmissible and that anyway  “You can’t impeach the president on an unsourced allegation.”  That last statement making no sense whatsoever because Bolton is alive and has plenty of contemporaneous notes which would make for great sources.  Apparently, Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly is alive too.  He’s weighed in on Bolton’s revelations, telling a Sarasota audience that if John Bolton said that Trump was holding up aid to Ukraine for his own benefit, he believes it implying he’d believe Bolton over Trump any day.  He added that he thinks that calling witnesses should be allowed.  If only John Kelly knew a former Chief of Staff/Homeland Security Secretary who was available to reveal more about what went on during his time on the Trump team?!?  As to witnesses, the “will they or won’t they be called” question dominated the news more than the substance of yesterday’s trial presentation.   At one point in the afternoon it looked like Senate Leader McConnell had threatened and/or cajoled enough of his caucus to squash witness calling but then last night, after an all hands meeting of his Republican Senators, the Wall Street Journal was the first to report that the issue remains unresolved meaning that as of last night McConnell didn’t have the 51 votes he needs to block witnesses. That said, with many of the Republicans still falling into the “maybe” category and only Mitt Romney and Susan Collins and possibly Lisa Murkowski in the pro-witness group, its still possible that McConnell will prevail because he usually does.  

As to witnesses, individual Republican senators floated a lot of not so realistic ideas yesterday, with some saying that one solution would be to make Bolton’s manuscript available for Senators to read in their SCIF.  It’s hardly likely that the more than 70% of the public who believe that witnesses should be called would be all that satisfied with a solution that involves letting Senators read a book that is already up for presale on Amazon in a super secure reading room.  Other suggestions involve calling in the Bidens and possibly even their pets, who probably have as much to contribute about what they know about Trump’s Ukraine quid pro quo fiasco as their humans, in exchange for permitting Bolton’s testimony.  Then there are Senators Gardner, Tillis and McSally. You’d think that the very vulnerable threesome would want to placate their constituents by calling Bolton to testify, but no, according to the WSJ, they just want the hearing to end quickly because they can’t bare the pressure and all the negative attack ads that have been launched against them.  On the Democratic front, while Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reports that all of the members of his caucus will vote for witnesses, it’s not clear that all will ultimately vote to convict Trump.  Three, including Alabama’s Doug Jones who is the most vulnerable Senator up for reelection, West Virginia’s Joe Manchin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, appear to be on the fence.  At one point yesterday it looked like California’s Diane Feinstein was also wavering, but it turns out that her rambling answer to a question was just misconstrued.  Today, while the witness issue remains unresolved, the trial will move into  what is expected to be a two day contentious question and answer period.      

International Front:  If you had plans to travel to China, pick a new destination. Most flights to China are now suspended, part of an effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus.  Arriving evacuated passengers are being temporarily quarantined.  On the Middle East front, the two state solution to the long simmering Israel – Palestine situation has been resuscitated, somewhat.  Jared Kushner’s long awaited Middle East plan was announced yesterday to muted fanfare.  With Bibi Netanyahu by his side Trump provided the details of the “deal of the century” which calls for a demilitarized Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza; for Jerusalem, including the Old City, to be either the undivided capital of Israel or both countries’ capitals, it wasn’t clear, and for Israel to annex all of its existing West Bank settlements.  The discontiguous Palestinian state will eventually be connected by a tunnel of some sort and Trump promised $50 billion in aid over a ten year period assuming that the Palestinians meet some of his “performance” targets.  Although Trump claimed that this plan was the first one to ever include such extensive details, that’s not really correct.  There have been other detailed plans and there have plans that were more favorable to the Palestinians, however none of them have ever come to pass and there’s little reason to think that this one, which is more one side than previously rejected plans, will either as the Palestinians who were not involved in its development aren’t on board.  The plan may however, provide a boost to Netanyahu who faces still another runoff election in early March.  Did I mention that he was indicted for corruption yesterday?  Of course, Trump hopes it will help him too, mostly with the evangelical community who is likely to be more wowed by his “solution” than most American Jews.

Et Cetera:  Trump held another rally last night, this one in Wildwood, New Jersey; though the 7400 capacity facility was filled, contrary to his assertion there weren’t tens of thousands of people outside clamoring to get in.  He did his usual shtick, insulting the usual Democratic suspects calling them deranged and disgusting hoax perpetrators. He congratulated Jeff Van Drew, the Democrat turned Republican for seeing the light.  Earlier in the day, during his peace plan announcement he was equally “impressive” when he praised Secretary of State Pompeo for his nasty confrontation with an NPR journalist and his decision to ban NPR from his upcoming trip, saying Pompeo "did a good job on her," a statement sure to help him win back suburban women voters.  On the Democratic front, moderate Democrats and Republicans turned Independents appear really nervous about Bernie Sanders rising poll numbers and Bernie’s supporters are responding to their alarm in their usual fashion because that’s the best way to project Democratic unity.  And then there is the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office announced it will top $1 trillion this year.  

The Room Where it Happened 

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach: Putting aside whether it was okay for former national security advisor/author John Bolton to appropriate the title of his soon to be published book from Lin Manuel Miranda, it, like Hamilton, is now the talk of the town only this time the town in Washington, DC rather than NYC.  With the exception of Constitutional law expert/Epstein buddy Alan Dershowitz, none of Trump’s lawyers referred to the Bolton bombshell during yesterday’s hearings but everywhere else it was the subject of discussion, gleeful for Democrats, panicky for Republicans.  Though he’d earlier said that he was working hand in glove with the White House, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell now asserts that he’d been kept in the dark about the Bolton manuscript.  Referencing Bolton’s reminiscences of his days at the White House, Senator Mitt Romney said that he thinks “it's increasingly likely that other Republicans will ... join those of us who think we should hear from John Bolton and whether there are other witnesses and documents," pretty much an assertion that, at least for now and probably for the duration, he’s in the pro-witness camp.  By taking the lead he’s giving cover to other Republicans, Susan Collins already appears to be following his lead and if the pundits are right there may be as many as ten others ready to join them, well maybe.  One of those might be Pennsylvania’s  Pat Toomey who suggested a one-for-one witness swap during yesterday’s Republican Senate luncheon gathering, the implication being that Hunter and/or Joe Biden would be offered up as a “quid pro quo” for Bolton.  So far, neither McConnell nor Chuck Schumer are on board for that. 

Bad Apples:  As to the trial, I’ll admit that I intentionally caught only snippets but from what I heard and what was reported it can be summarized as follows:  Ken Starr who spent years hunting down Bill Clinton before successfully impeaching him for lying about his sexual shenanigans now thinks that impeachment is hell, should be rarely applied and that Trump asking a vulnerable leader for personal help falls far short of screwing around in the Oval office.  Alan Dershowitz just doesn’t think that it’s okay to impeach, especially if no “crime” has been committed and he’s confident that Trump didn’t commit a crime. Senator Elizabeth Warren, also a former Harvard law professor spoke for many saying Dershowitz’s argument was both “contrary to law and fact.“  Pam Bondi, the former Florida Attorney General who accepted payments from Trump’s now defunct charity and then “mysteriously” concluded that Trump University was an above board institution, argued that, the problem is and always has been the Bidens, especially that sleazy Hunter, and that no family member should ever benefit from his or her parents’ connections, a good point, one that she should discuss with her boss. And while she’s at it, she could also apply her standard to Rudy Giuliani, who got little mention despite his involvement in the Ukraine mess.  Giuliani’s son Andrew who was dumped from the Duke golf team for throwing an apple at a team mate and breaking a golf club “earns” an annual salary of $95,000 serving as Trump’s sports liaison.   Of course, Bondi and the rest of the team also slammed Joe Biden for pushing for the ouster of  Viktor Shokin, the corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor that everyone wanted ousted for his failure to pursue corruption.  As to VP Biden, Iowa’s Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection this year, tied herself further to Trump and his quid pro quo Biden attack by saying that she’s “really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters. Will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point? Not sure about that."  She’s not the only one trying to cozy up to Trump, Georgia’s recently appointed Senator Kelly Loeffler lashed out at Mitt Romney tweeting “Sadly, my colleague @SenatorRomney  wants to appease the left by calling witnesses who will slander  @realDonaldTrump  during their 15 minutes of fame.”  Her Trump defense was probably motivated by House Judiciary ranking member/Trump fanboy  Doug Collins’ announcement that he plans to run for her seat.  Notably Trump wanted Georgia’s governor to appoint Collins in the first place.  To round out the day, VP Pence’s Chief of Staff Marc Short issued a carefully worded statement saying that he’d never heard Trump tell Pence that he was tying financial aid for Ukraine to investigations of the Biden family or Burisma and Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney denied being aware of anything.  The trial will go on today, at some point later in the week things will get interesting when a vote will be held on whether or not to call witnesses and then, if that vote passes, votes will be taken on each of the witnesses proposed.   

Et Cetera:  Secretary of State Pompeo is still angry about his NPR interview, the one where he came off looking like the creep that he is, so he has retaliated by having the State Department boot another NPR reporter from serving as the pool radio reporter from his upcoming trip to Ukraine and other countries in Europe and Central Asia.  Last night the NY Times reported on another revelation included in Bolton’s manuscript.  In this one Bolton asserts that he privately told Attorney General Barr that he was concerned that Trump was granting favors to the autocratic leaders of China and Turkey and that Barr shared his concern.  Although no one has yet admitted sharing the Bolton book excerpts with the Times, it's thought that the White House made several copies of the one that they were given to review and that someone there is the likely source, because as much as Trump rails against leakers, the leaking almost always comes from the White House.  As to John Bolton, the party line as voiced by Fox pundit Lou Dobbs is that Bolton, the former conservative darling is now a tool for radical Democrats.  With Israeli Prime Minister for now Netanyahu by his side Trump is going to announce his and Jared Kushner's Mideast peace plan today. And yesterday by a 5 to 4 ruling across the usual lines, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration’s public charge rule to go into effect.  That means that immigrants who rely on public assistance while they are making their way up the ladder, including most forms of Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers, will find it harder, if not impossible, to get Green cards.  So much for that Emma Lazarus “give me your tired, your poor” thing.        

Bolton's Back

Number 24:  Yesterday afternoon’s Kobe Bryant tragedy sucked the air out of the news cycle, displacing the impeachment saga from the airwaves. Or at least it did for a few hours, but then the NY Times released some of the details included in former national security advisor John Bolton’s upcoming book.  Though it had been kept secret, the book, or at least a draft of it, had been shared with appropriate authorities at the White House’s National Security Council for routine review on December 30. Bolton’s lawyer asserts that no one other than the White House and the publishers were privy to its contents.  Of course Trump, his closest advisors, and most likely some, if not all of his impeachment lawyers were aware of what Bolton wrote but the book’s contents are so damning that according to Axios even the White House press shop was kept in in the dark about it, but obviously someone felt it was vital and worth leaking.  As to those damning parts, in addition to putting Acting Chief of Staff Mulvaney, AG Barr and Secretary of State Pompeo into the Ukraine loop,  Bolton alleges that Trump explicitly told him “he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens.” Going into the weekend, with Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins expressing faux outrage over some of the things that the Democratic impeachment team had to say about the Republicans fealty to their exalted leader and only Mitt Romney leaning towards supporting the calling of witnesses, it had been looking more and more likely that the Republican controlled Senate was well on its way to rushing the impeachment trial to a quick end, giving Trump the “total” vindication that he claims he deserves.  Now, due to the publication of the Bolton tidbits, all bets are off.  

As to the trial, Trump’s lawyers provided their opening arguments on Saturday.  They kept their presentation short in part because few if any of their targeted viewers were likely to be watching TV on Saturday, arguing that the House impeachment inquiry was nothing more than a partisan ploy that ignored real facts in order to cast Trump’s actions in the worst possible light.  To make their points they peppered their presentation with some of their usual lies, asserting that Republican House members had been kept out of the House SCIF even though they hadn’t been.  Among other things they asserted that despite testimony from Defense Department aide Laura Cooper to the contrary, that there was no quid pro quo because the Ukrainians had no idea that their aid had been withheld.  Basically their argument is that Trump did nothing wrong even if he did do wrong things and that nothing matters because he’s the president and that whole impeachment part of the Constitution is so silly. A group of Republican Senators including James Lankford and Mike Braun were sent out on the Sunday talk shows to push that narrative.  Braun appeared particularly twisted in knots when he had the misfortune of showing up on an evening show right after the Bolton draft segments were released.

Heads on Pikes: As to silly, though Trump’s weekend tweets including one in which he slammed and threatened House Impeachment manager Adam Schiff by tweeting “Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT politician and probably a very sick man.  He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our country” didn’t offend any Republican members of the Senate quite a few, including those snowflakes, Murkowski and Collins, expressed what can only be interpreted as disingenuous outrage over Schiff citing a CBS story that said that key senators had been warned that if they voted against Trump their “head will be on a pike” even though they probably were warned and anyway Schiff explicitly stated that he wasn’t sure if the story was true.  This is the same crew who were “stunned” earlier last week when House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler said that they would be cooperating in a White House cover-up if they didn’t vote for calling witnesses and admitting more testimony.  Speaking of Nadler, over the weekend he tweeted that he won’t be at today’s hearing since he will be accompanying his wife who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer to a series of doctor’s appointments.  Virtually every one of his Democratic colleagues tweeted out their thoughts and prayers but if there were any similar concerns from Trump or any of the Republicans I missed them.  Getting back to the “head on pike” threat, whether Trump said it or not, it was certainly the kind of thing he might have said.  Over the weekend, Lev Parnas, who keeps sharing pictures of himself with Trump and other members of the Trump team and family over twitter, released a phone video of a 2018 donor dinner that he attended.  During that dinner  Trump  who was in attendance for well over an hour is heard saying “get rid of her” after being told that former Ambassador to the Ukraine Yovanovitch wasn’t a Trump devotee.  Last night the NY Times reported that the dinner was about as swampy as an event could get, that almost all the attendees spent their paid for time with Trump pitching their business interests.  Curiously, last night Rudy Giuliani, said that he wasn’t at that dinner and that he didn’t even know the Lev/Oleg team at the time it was held.  Circular firing squad time?   

Secretary Pompous:  And then there’s Mike Pompeo.  Maybe it’s because he knew that his name came up in Bolton’s draft, and not in a good way, or maybe it’s because he’s just a horrible person, but for some reason he decided to pick an ugly, pointless fight with a respected NPR reporter.  After the reporter,  Mary Louise Kelly, had the nerve to ask him questions about Ukraine, a subject that she told his aides she would cover, and pushed him about his failure to defend Marie Yovanovitch during an on the record interview that she taped, he ripped into her, asserting the interview was supposed to be off the record, calling her a liar and insisting that no one in America cares about Ukraine and that she was so stupid that she wouldn’t be able to find Ukraine on a map. To prove his point, he pulled out a map with no legends and asked her to prove that she knew where Ukraine was located.  Spoiler alert, she did.  Later he insisted that she had failed his “test” by instead pointing to Bangladesh which was  a needlessly bold faced lie that made him look like even more of a jerk.  Pompeo, the astute diplomat that he isn’t, is supposed to travel to Ukraine this week. He may want to read the op-ed that William Taylor, the former Ukraine acting ambassador wrote for today’s NY Times, it provides a primer on why Ukraine is strategically important.  Trump responded by asking why NPR even exists.

Democrats:  The polls are all over the place but as of now it appears that Bernie Sanders is on the top in Iowa and in New Hampshire even though the cranky fellow has been complaining that it’s not fair that VP Biden gets to campaign while he’s stuck in the Senate hearing room. It’s still not clear how Iowa will turn out as the rules there dictate that anyone supporting a candidate who earns less than the 15%  threshold has to shift their support to their second choice. Elizabeth Warren who is now polling fourth in Iowa  received an endorsement from the influential Des Moines Register over the weekend.  Mike Bloomberg, who continues to climb slowly in the national polls has no presence in Iowa but has been busy in Florida where he’s been out and about physically and on twitter bragging about his support for Israel to voters who would probably be happy to vote for him over Trump were he the Democratic candidate.  That’s got to be getting under Trump’s skin bigly. As to Israel, Trump has both Bibi Netanyahu and his opponent the reluctant Benny Gantz coming to the White House this week where he plans to announce the details of his long awaited peace plan, the one that the Palestinians want nothing to do with.      

Right Matters

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  The Trump impeachment hearing went on and on again yesterday as the Democrats focused on the abuse of power charge against Trump.  House Intel Chief/Impeachment Guru Adam Schiff again performed admirably, whatever happens here, and we kind of know what will happen, his star is rising, so much that portions of his closing statement went viral last night, cited as “gripping” and “a statement for the ages” particularly his ending remarks that "Colonel Vindman said here right matters. If right doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn't matter how brilliant the Framers were. It doesn't matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. Doesn't matter how well written the oath of impartiality is.  If right doesn't matter, we are lost. If the truth doesn't matter, we're lost."  #RightMatters

Praise and Agita: Even Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most ardent fanboys and a veteran of the Clinton impeachment squad, congratulated Schiff on the “good job” he’s been doing.  Well, at least he did that on Wednesday, yesterday Graham was noticeably distressed.  He exited the Senate chamber when House Judiciary Chair/Impeachment Manager Jerry Nadler played a 1999 video of him arguing that "high crimes" don't "even need to be a crime," a statement that “runs counter to a central Republican talking point this time around.” During that clip Graham said “when you start using your office and you're acting in a way that hurts people, you have committed a high crime."  Graham wasn’t the only Republican suffering impeachment agita, Wisconsin Republican Ron Johnson became visibly upset when, while pointing out that VP Biden’s efforts to see Ukraine’s former prosecutor general Viktor Shokin removed had nothing to do with his son’s role at Burisma but everything to do with the widely held view that Shokin was incredibly corrupt, Congresswoman Sylvia Garcia, another one of the impeachment managers, referenced a letter that he, Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman and a number of Democrats had signed calling for Shokin’s removal. Portman didn’t seem phased by the reference, but Johnson who continues to insist that he doesn’t remember signing the letter that he did sign, left the room, possibly to place a plea for mercy call to his orange haired leader.  And then there’s pearl clutching Senator Susan Collins, it was her note to Chief Justice Roberts, a complaint that Jerry Nadler had gone a step too far on Tuesday, violating Senate protocol, when he accused Republican Senators of “covering up” Trump’s criminal activity.  Collins’ note  prompted Roberts’ admonishment to both sides to tone down their rhetoric.  Notably, Collins wasn’t upset that Trump’s lawyers Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow lied during their opening statements, only that Nadler had insulted her and her colleagues.  Collins insists that despite her tattle tailing she is still giving serious consideration to voting for the admission of additional evidence, the release of more White House documents and witnesses.  It’s possible she’s telling the truth about that as Independent Angus King, Maine’s other Senator, reports that his office has been inundated with calls, 90% of which come from constituents who want to see that evidence and hear from those witnesses.  It’s fair to assume that the acutely sensitive and highly vulnerable Collins, who has gotten so skittish that she requested that the first row of the press seating area be kept vacant because she doesn’t want the media crowd hanging so close to her, is getting similarly bombarded. Getting back to witnesses, several Republican Senators and a view of Trump’s surrogates are now insisting that since the Democrats preemptively mentioned the Bidens, calling Hunter Biden as a witness is fair game.

The Democrats are due to wind up their presentations today turning things over to Trump’s defense team for a Saturday session that is supposed to go on all day but now may be truncated because even though Trump wants the whole trial wound up before next weekend’s Super Bowl, he believes that no one will waste a weekend day watching them prevaricate on his behalf. Right about now Trump may also be wishing that his crowd stays away from Fox, or at least stays far from listening to or reading anything by Fox Legal pundit Judge Andrew Napolitano who commented on the case presented by the Democrats and the behavior of the Republican “jury” saying “It leaves us with valid, lawful, constitutional arguments for Trump's impeachment that he ought to take seriously. That is, unless he knows he will be acquitted because Republican senators have told him so. Whoever may have whispered that into his ear is unworthy of sitting as a juror and has violated the oath of ‘impartial justice’ and fidelity to the Constitution and the law.” Adding “What is required for removal of the president? A demonstration of presidential commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, of which in Trump's case the evidence is ample and uncontradicted.”   

Et Cetera:  While in Davos Trump proved provided more proof that he is totally clueless and unqualified for his job when during a meeting with  Nechirvan Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, he launched into a defense of his Syria policy and the how much he was helping the Syrian Kurds, the guys that he’s been busy pushing into oblivion.  Barzani’s Kurdish government has no involvement with the Syria situation but to Trump, who doesn’t read his briefing materials, a Kurd is a Kurd is a Kurd, so he rambled on incoherently leaving the audience stunned and our remaining allies heading for the doors.  On the domestic front, when not tweeting endlessly about the impeachment hearings and calling out his foe du jour “shifty,” “pencil necked,” “crooked” Adam Schiff, Trump said that he would consider cuts to social safety-net programs like Medicare to reduce the federal deficit, the one imploded as a result of his corporate tax cuts, if he wins a second term.  Then after the Democrats jumped on his remarks, thanking him for still another election talking point, he tried to clean up his mess tweeting “Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security, I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!” As to health care, the Trump administration got their wish earlier this week when the Supreme Court rejected a request from Democratic state officials and the House to quickly consider whether to hear an appeal of a decision concerning the Republican State Attorneys General lawsuit that aims to wipe out the entire Affordable Care Act. That makes it unlikely that the case will be heard before the election.  It’s not that the Democrats want to see the ACA overturned this year, it’s just that they want voters to clearly understand that while their candidates are debating how best to provide health care, Republicans really are trying to eliminate it altogether.  The Iowa Caucuses take place on February 3. Michael Bloomberg who has risen in the polls into the second tier category isn’t even campaigning in Iowa, however, he is doing a great job of getting under Trump’s skin.  When asked whether the country wanted a race between two New York billionaires, Bloomberg threw shade at Trump by asking “who’s the second one.”

Now You Know

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  With the trial rules agreed to, the Democrats’ House Impeachment team started presenting their case yesterday.  To a certain extent their presentations were redundant, especially to those who have been following the Ukraine fiasco from the start.  The repetitiveness is intentional, the  team has two audiences, the Senate and the public.  With regard to the members of the Senate, there actually may be some Republican Senators who have studiously avoided getting up to date on all of Trump’s criminal activity and the Democratic presentation team’s hope is that, forced to sit still and limited to drinking only water and milk, they may actually pay attention, learning that Trump really is too dangerous to leave in place, a pipe dream but one that the presenters have to believe is real.  

As to the public, the Democrats know that few, if any, people are watching the hearing in its entirety or are totally up to date on all the details so they are doing their best to get the whole story to them during whatever time period they tune in.  And notably, in their own way, all of the members of the Democratic team are doing a great job detailing things like the Trump/Giuliani orchestrated character assassination of former Ambassador Yovanovitch, the quid pro quo hold-up of the aid to Ukraine which the non- partisan Government Accounting Office recently ruled really was illegal, the futile attempts to get Ukraine President Zelensky to publicly announce an investigation of the Bidens and all the obstructive refusals to release documents or allow testimony. In particular Adam Schiff is a master.  If this was a real trial and not a political exercise it would be time for Trump to hire one or more of those specialists who help prepare people to survive their prison sentences.  Sadly, despite his criminality and habit of making statements against interest Trump won’t need one.  As to those statements, yesterday Trump commented on Tuesday’s presentations by saying  “We’re doing very well.  I got to watch enough I thought our team did a very good job.  But honestly we have all the material.  They don’t have the material,” an admission that not only has he been obstructing the investigation but that he’s proud of it.  Yesterday Val Demings, the former sheriff who is now one of the members of the House impeachment team, noted Trump’s obstruction admission during her presentation, saying he “not only confessed to it, he bragged about it,” with Adam Schiff adding “nothing could be more dangerous to a democracy than a commander in chief who believed that he could operate with impunity,” and to be clear, Trump believes that he can which goes far towards  explaining why he so often does.  The Democrats are due to finish their arguments today and though they really don’t need all the time they are entitled to they probably will do their best to fill their timeslot because their intention is to keep the trial going through the Super Bowl and past the State of the Union address, a possibility only if the Senate ultimately votes to allow witnesses.  If we’re really lucky, NY’s Hakeem Jeffries, a member of the Democrat’s impeachment team, will get at least one more opportunity to quote departed rap star Notorious B.I.G as he did on Tuesday “and if you don’t know, now you know.”

In other impeachment related news, though the Trump administration continues to bar the release of any of the documents that the Democrats have requested, more information keeps showing up through the backdoor, from Freedom of Information Act requests.  Additionally, at the end of yesterday’s session Chief Justice Roberts ruled that senators  should be given access to a one-page classified document that contains supplemental testimony from Jennifer Williams, a national security aide to VP Pence. Schiff had been pressing Pence to declassify Williams’ supplement ever since it was delivered, arguing that nothing in it is at all top secret.  Unfortunately, while the Senators will get to see it, we won’t, or won’t until someone leaks its contents.  As to witnesses, yesterday’s big story was all about whether or not the Democrats would agree to calling Hunter Biden in exchange for the Republicans permitting John Bolton’s testimony.  That possible swap got lots of attention, in part because Texas charmer Ted Cruz is pushing for Hunter to testify, still it remains unlikely that the younger Biden, or the older Biden, will be called to appear because Mitch McConnell and a number of other Republicans don’t want to turn the trial into a spectacle. They just want to squash the possibility of any witnesses even though the number of Americans who want to hear from John Bolton and the other real fact witnesses is up to 71%.  And of course Lindsey Graham who is himself a spectacle continues to rant against the trial and express his adoration for all things Trump.    

Et Cetera:  Trump isn’t just saying stupid things about the impeachment hearing, he’s now also weighed in on head injuries.  Asked about the soldiers who were hurt during the Iranian attack on the US bases in Iraq, the attack that he previously claimed was no bigly deal because no Americans were hurt,  he said that their injuries didn’t count because he doesn’t consider “brain injuries to be as serious as physical combat wounds” because what’s a headache between friends and anyway it’s not like any of those soldiers are suffering from bone spurs.  Right?  Also, in an effort to further solidify his evangelical base Trump now plans to address the anti-abortion march for life, something that presidents have not done before.  Oh the irony, the guy who brags about grabbing crotches, and who has admitted to unprotected sex with porn stars and bunnies speaking to the anti-abortion crowd.  And to cap off the day, Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaiian Congresswoman who is still running for president, is taking a page from the litigious Devin Nunes “I’m suing a cow” playbook.  She’s now suing or thinking about suing, she won’t say specifically, Hillary Clinton for calling her a Russian asset, a bit of a stretch since Clinton didn’t really say that Gabbard was a knowing asset just that she’s a “favorite of the Russians, they have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her.”  Anyway, Gabbard has figured out that suing Clinton or threatening to do so is a good way to garner press for a dying campaign and sadly she’s right.

Only The Best

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach: The Impeachment trial is on.  The wily and malevolent Senate Majority Leader McConnell is doing his best to muddy up the works “Merrick Garland” style.  His objective is to speed the impeachment trial to its all but certain conclusion, positioning Trump to be able to loudly and repeatedly exhort that he’s been fully  exonerated during the State of the Union address scheduled to take place on February 4^th.  To that end McConnell’s original plan called for each side to get only two days to present their allotted 24 hours of arguments.  However after some of his more moderate, or moderate by Republican standards, caucus members pushed back, he relented just a smidge, giving each side three days instead of two to present their cases.  McConnell’s initial plan would have required a vote before any of the evidence from the House inquiry was admitted but under pressure from those moderates who don’t want the trial to look so obviously rigged he’s backed down from that as well and is now allowing evidence from the House inquiry to be admitted automatically though senators can still attempt to strike any evidence that they don’t like.  We know that both those changes were made at the very last minute because they were handwritten into the rules that are now guiding the impeachment trial.  As to the rest, the admission of additional evidence and the calling of witnesses, the Democrats spent yesterday putting up amendment after amendment, eleven in total, in an attempt to get some Republicans on board and to press their point to the public that there’s more there there.  Despite some pretty eloquent arguments from their team they were voted down each and every time on a party line basis.  No Republicans or Democrats crossed the aisle though Trump’s lawyers Pat Cipollone and Jay Sekulow did manage to toss a few lies and insult their Democratic counterparts. Presiding Chief Justice John Roberts, didn’t do much, but did admonish both sides to be civil.   

The voting down of all of the Democrats’ proposed amendments doesn’t mean that there will be no witnesses, some of those so-called Republican moderates, including the usual suspects Romney, Collins, Murkowski, Alexander and maybe even Portman, Gardner and whoever else cares about his or her future electability or legacies might vote for evidence and or witnesses after the cases are presented, but there are no guarantees, especially since McConnell is likely to throw as many impediments as possible into the works and Trump has already said that, at least with regard to John Bolton, the witness he most fears, he intends to claim executive privilege. As to Republicans, if you are into meltdowns, keep an eye on Arizona’s appointed Senator, Martha McSally, she’s already showing signs of imploding.  Last week she snapped at a CNN reporter, calling him a liberal hack for asking her a run of the mill, standard question. She followed up that unfortunate onscreen performance with another one on Fox where she bragged about her ugliness.  She is trailing her likely Democratic opponent, former astronaut Mark Kelly, in the polls and appears incredibly desperate. More entertaining fireworks are likely to follow.                      

Democrats: Following in the McSally mold some of the Democratic candidates are eating each other alive as well.  Bernie’s crowd of Berniacs are doing what they did in 2016, attacking his closest competitors but giving Bernie space to claim that they are doing so without his permission even though everyone knows he’s fully on board.  He’s followed up his did he or didn’t he say that a woman couldn’t win the election tiff with Elizabeth Warren with a doctored ad that made it seem like Joe Biden has long advocated  cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.  And then there’s Hillary Clinton who has decided to express her views of Bernie, saying that it’s not just her, no one likes him.  Though it’s understandable that Clinton feels burned and Berned from her 2016 experience, we’d all be better off if she saved her primal screams for the woods around her Westchester conclave.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t say anything about the NY Times and their dual endorsement of Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. Maybe they felt compelled to endorse a woman, their way of compensating for endlessly harping on Clinton’s email woes back in 2016?  But two, who are so far apart in their views?  And two who like them or not, absent a minor miracle, are unlikely to go the distance?  Sigh.

Et Cetera:  In other news Trump spent day one of the impeachment trial at the World Economic Forum in Davos bragging about his economy and his America first strategy and saying that he wasn’t all that concerned about the Chinese coronavirus that has already landed on our shores because he trusts his good friend Premier Xi and he, the scientist in chief,  has it under control, whatever that means.  Climate activist Greta Thunberg hit back at his climate ignorance.   And, though we still don’t have the details, late Friday Andrew Peek, the White House’s Russia expert who replaced Tim Morrison who replaced Fiona Hill, was “escorted” out of the White House and put on indefinite leave.  Something that may or may not have involved the kinds of indiscretions that Trump has himself committed.  #OnlyTheBest    

Everyone Knew Redux

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  Yesterday Speaker Pelosi appointed her house managers and, after a vote and a couple of speechlets from both the usual Democratic and Republican suspects, formally carried the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate.  As expected the House team will be headed up by House Intel Chair Adam Schiff, though the less articulate House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler will also have a senior position.  The rest of the team includes messaging guru NY’s Hakeem Jeffries, Colorado’s Jason Crow, Florida’s Val Demings, Texas’ Sylvia Garcia and California’s Zoe Lofgren. With the exception of Demings, Orlando’s former chief of police, the team is comprised of lawyers, two of whom, Nadler and Lofgren have prior impeachment experience.  The team is intentionally diverse, regionally and ethnically with all coming from safe districts.  Though Senate Leader Mitch McConnell keeps citing the Clinton impeachment process as his model, using it to justify his decision not to agree to any witnesses before the cases are presented, that’s mostly bunk.  At the time of the Clinton impeachment, there was bipartisan unanimity on the final rules package, this time around McConnell won’t even talk to his counterpart Chuck Schumer.  As to witnesses, there’s a good chance there will be some, but it’s not a done deal and Senate oddball Rand Paul says that he will do everything he can to make things difficult for any of his Republican colleagues who join with the Democrats in voting for anyone like John Bolton to appear.  And of course Ted Cruz just wants to hear from the Bidens.  The trial begins on Tuesday.

Parnas Parses:  Lev Parnas, the Giuliani associate, who is now spilling his guts to anyone who will listen, and lots are listening, including the NY Times and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.  Parnas, who is actually a lot more articulate than I expected given his thuggish career path, says that everyone knew what he was up to.  Last night, with his lawyer Joseph Bondy by his side, Parnas told Rachel Maddow that Ukrainian officials knew that Trump cared little about corruption, that he just wanted dirt on the Bidens and that before the Zelensky quid pro quo came to light there was another one with then Ukraine prosecutor Lutsenko: dirt on the Bidens from Lutsenko in exchange for Trump firing Ambassador Yovanovitch and a visa for Lutsenko to travel to the US. Like EU Ambassador/Trump donor Gordon Sondland, Parnas implicates everyone, he says that John Bolton, VP Pence,  Secretary of State Pompeo, and even Attorney General Barr were “in the loop,” well aware of what he and Giuliani were doing on Trump’s behalf.  He says that though he met with Trump a few times, he didn’t discuss his activities with him but that he’s confident that Giuliani did which makes sense because that’s the way that Trump rolls.  As to the alleged threat against Ambassador Yovanovitch by Robert Hyde, the Connecticut Republican/lawn doctor, Parnas said that he didn’t take it seriously because Hyde was always drunk and made things up to make himself seem more important.  Hyde appears to have been quite a character, yesterday it was reported that he was once picked up and put on psych hold after showing up at Mar a Lago uninvited.  Still he was in the Trump orbit and Trump did suggest to Ukraine President Zelensky that Yovanovitch was going to experience “bad” things so the threat warrants further investigation by appropriate authorities, at least that’s the position that many State Department civil servants, those not named Mike Pompeo, are taking.  Pompeo has remained silent on the threat, he even cancelled a previously scheduled press conference.  And then there’s House Intel Ranking member Devin Nunes, he previously said that he never had any contact with Parnas, but now faced with hard evidence that he did, he admits that the two spoke about “odd random things.”  Parnas says that Nunes knows full well that they spoke about more than that. Under ordinary circumstances, a guy like Parnas wouldn’t have much credibility, however, unfortunately for Trump and his team, much of what Parnas is saying is backed up by texts, WhatsApps and other hard evidence, more of which was released yesterday, including proof that Parnas had regular communications with two top Republican fundraisers, Tom Hicks Jr, a donor and Trump family friend, and Joseph Ahearn, who raised money for pro-Trump political groups.  Parnas says that he regularly discussed Ukraine matters with both of them. As to all this Parnas stuff, when asked about it yesterday, Senator Susan Collins testily asked why if it was so important didn’t the Democrats bring it up sooner.  Collins, who always finds ways to ignore facts that don’t fit her narrative, appears to be trying to ignore that the release of the Parnas evidence trove was just approved by the courts.  Anyone counting on her to do the right thing is likely to be keenly disappointed.   

Et Cetera:  Trump signed a rather tepid First Phase trade deal with China yesterday, one that leaves tariffs in place.  During the signing, which coincided with the House vote to send the Articles over to the Senate,  he called the impeachment a hoax and complained about rules prohibiting fireworks over Mt Rushmore and about sneakers he found on eBay. Those last two points make sense when you consider that a new book, A Very Stable Genius, by Washington Post writers Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig details that Trump didn’t know that India bordered China, wanted to award himself a Medal of Honor, is ignorant of the history around Pearl Harbor, and wants to make it legal for American companies to bribe foreign officials, among other things.  One of those other things is that while interviewing a Secretary of State candidate, Trump asked if he could get a meeting with Putin before his inauguration because as Speaker Pelosi says, it always comes back to Russia.  And on the Russian front, it appears that Putin is on the verge of becoming a Czar, yesterday his whole government resigned, paving the way for him to further solidify his position.  

I expect to be sans computer for a few days so there probably won’t be any blogs until next week sometime.  Enjoy the break!   

Bad Things

Democrats:  They came, they went and they debated again last night.  I have no idea if anything that any of the candidates said really matters to any voters. Notably, while they clearly disagree on the best way to fix the US medical care system, they all agree that any of their proposals would be better than the Republican plan to ditch Obamacare altogether.  As to that feud between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over whether or not he told her that a woman couldn’t win the presidency, the two did their best to appear collegial during the debate and, of course, Warren, who has a plan for everything also had a planned, but still witty response when she was asked about the Sanders comment.  She said “Look at the men on this stage, collectively, they have lost ten elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they've been in are the women. Amy and me.”  With little else to report, the press made a big deal about the fact that Warren did not shake Sanders offered hand at the end of the evening.  Whatever.      

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  The House is expected to vote to send the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate later today.  Speaker Pelosi is expected to name her impeachment managers.  Though Pelosi’s gambit of holding out on releasing the Articles didn’t push Senate Leader McConnell to sway from his plans, he hasn’t released his game rules and still hasn’t committed to calling witnesses, her delay did provide added time for additional evidence in the form of wannabee witnesses such as former national security advisor John Bolton and documents from freedom of information act releases to surface.  To that end some really bigly stuff came out late yesterday when the House Intelligence Committee released a new batch of documents provided by Trump crony, Lev Parnas, the guy who appears in countless pictures alongside Trump who still claims not to know him.  Included in the dump is a photo of a May 10, 2019 letter from Rudy Giuliani to then Ukraine president-elect Zelensky in which Giuliani asks in his “capacity as personal counsel” to Trump and with his “knowledge and consent” for a meeting with Zelensky.  The documents also provide evidence that there was an understanding between then prosecutor general Lutsenko, that if he were to provide information on Burisma and the Bidens to Trump’s team, they would fire US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, whose anti-corruption activities were hampering Lutsenko’s power grabs and get rich quick schemes.   Most disturbing of all is a set of messages between Parnas and Robert Hyde, who is now a Republican congressional candidate in Connecticut.  Hyde texted Parnas that he had people in Ukraine tracking Yovanovitch’s movements.  He claimed he could tell whether her phone and computer were off, writing that “If you want her out they need to make contact with security forces.” Though it’s not clear if Hyde really had people monitoring Yovanovitch or whether or not he was prepared to follow through on arranging for her “removal,” it’s worth remembering that when Yovanovitch was pulled from Kiev, she was told to get out on the next flight as her safety was an issue and, that during their infamous, not so “perfect” July phone call Trump told Zelensky that Yovanovitch was going to “go through some bad things.”  Those words take on added meaning in light of the Hyde-Parnas texts especially when you consider that Trump’s bestie Vladimir Putin has a habit of arranging for the defenestration of his enemies.  

Getting back to impeachment, a number of Republican Senators are threatening to call their own witnesses if the Democrats manage to get enough votes to call one time national security advisor John Bolton or any of their other choices.  Most notably they want to call Hunter and Joe Biden, even though neither of them would have anything to say about the issues at hand, which have to do with Trump’s obstruction and abuse of power.  As to former national security advisors, late yesterday Trump’s first one, Michael Flynn who is due to be sentenced in two weeks, now wants to withdraw his guilty plea.  His claim is that prosecutors showed "bad faith, vindictiveness,” and “breached their plea agreement."   It’s far from clear  how his Judge who once suggested that Flynn was a traitor will respond to that but Flynn’s real objective may be to delay his sentencing in the hope that he can avoid any prison time via a Trump pardon.  One more impeachment thing, though White House Counsel Pat Cipollone  and Jay Sekulow are expected to lead Trump’s defense team, Alan Dershowitz, who has been tarnished by his association with Jeffrey Epstein and accusations of pedophilia, may serve as an advisor.  So far there’s no indication that Giuliani will be tapped despite how much he wants to be involved because even Trump has got to know that would be a really bad idea but then again, who knows what’s going to happen.  Sekulow’s name pops up in some of the Parnas memos and texts and he still has a role.

Et Cetera:  Democratic Senator Tim Kaine appears to have rounded up enough Republican Senators to pass a Senate War Powers resolution, one that would limit Trump’s ability to go to war with Iran without Congressional approval as Republican Senators Mike Lee, Rand Paul, Todd Young and Susan Collins have all signed on as co-sponsors.  Kaine believes that he may even have more Republican votes, not enough to override a Trump veto if it gets that far, but enough to send a message.   As to the now very dead General Soleimani, Attorney General Barr says it doesn’t really matter whether or not he had “imminent” plans to attack any US embassies, Trump was well within his rights to order him killed because that’s one of the many things that unitary presidents get to do.           

Suitable Trigger

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  Speaker Pelosi is still futzing with the Articles of Impeachment but is expected to transmit them to the Senate by the end of the week after the House votes on its impeachment managers.  In all likelihood she’ll send over both Articles, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, at the same time although impeachment buddies former Solicitor General Neal Katyal and Kellyanne hubby George Conway believe that she should send over only the obstruction Article, continuing to hold on to the abuse of power one to pressure Senate leader McConnell to play by the rules.  That’s probably too cute, even for Pelosi.   As to the Senate trial, McConnell has made no commitments to play fair however it’s now reported that he doesn’t have the votes to immediately dismiss the charges as a number of  Republican Senators don’t want the process to be so obviously rigged.  Additionally, CBS reports that the White House expects that at least four Republican Senators and “likely more” will joining the Democrats in voting to call witnesses.  Those votes, to the extent they ever happen, would take place after both sides present their cases.  In addition to Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, it’s thought that Mitt Romney and Cory Gardner, who is up for reelection in leaning blue Colorado, and Lamar Alexander, who is viewed as an “institutionalist” might vote for the calling of witnesses.  Quirky Rand Paul might as well, but it’s thought that he would also call for testimony from Hunter Biden just to be fair, or at least fair by Paul’s rules.  On the quirky front, Joseph Bondy, the lawyer for Rudy Giuliani’s indicted associate Lev Parnas has turned over photos, dozens of text and WhatsApp messages, and thousands of pages of documents to the House Intelligence Committee in an effort to get them to sit down with his client who is dying to spill his guts about Trump, Giuliani and his other good buddy House Intelligence Ranking Member Devin Nunes.  And because this is Trump’s Washington, Bondy also tweeted out a series of compromising pictures of Parnas with Trump and Giuliani alongside the hashtags #LetLevSpeak and #LevRemembers.  And then there’s Vladimir Putin, though no one expects him to show up and testify, he appears to be weighing in on proceedings and the upcoming election.  Late yesterday, both the NY Times and Washington Post reported that his military technowizards successfully hacked into Ukraine gas company Burisma’s internal computer  systems in December most likely searching for anything about Hunter Biden that could possibly be used to disrupt former VP Joe Biden’s campaign.  Though there is no evidence as to whether Vlad was directly requested to do this by Trump or whether the wily former KGB officer decided to do it all by himself, it’s worth noting that the two do speak and that we are never given read outs of their conversations.

Iran: Well it turns out that Trump authorized the killing of Iran’s General Soleimani seven months ago and was just waiting for a suitable trigger, the killing of an American and/or a distraction from the impeachment morass.  That’s notable because it pretty much puts to rest the assertion that Soleimani was taken out because of his plans to blow up four or more US embassies, the Trump assertion that no one in either the Defense Department or any of the intelligence agencies has confirmed largely because there is no such evidence which isn’t to say that Soleimani wasn’t planning bad things, those just weren’t the things he was planning.  Trump pretty much admitted this yesterday by tweeting “The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was 'imminent' or not, & was my team in agreement, the answer to both is a strong YES, but it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!"  To hammer home his point, or because he just likes doing stupid, racist things, Trump also retweeted a photoshopped image of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in traditional Muslim garb.  In related news, though we’ve been told that Iran’s retaliatory attacks on the two US bases in Iraq were intended to be largely harmless, NBC reports that they were almost quite lethal, that US soldiers were in far more danger than was previously noted. So we really did almost launch into all-out war over mythical accusations of imminent threats that didn’t exist.  Someday soon, this administration is going to need the support of Congress and the public to do something critically important and, to state the obvious, their credibility is long gone.  

Democrats: The number of Democratic candidates still running for president continues to shrink.  Yesterday, New Jersey’s Senator Cory Booker suspended his campaign for the presidency leaving former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick as the last Black candidate standing, not that many people realize that he’s running.  If you live in New Jersey, you are still likely to see lots of Booker advertisements going forward since he is up for reelection to the Senate this year.   Marianne Williamson, whose early presence on the debate stage was mildly entertaining in a crystals and Goopy way is out too, she gave up her campaign over the weekend.  In other campaign news, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren or, at the very least their surrogates, are going after each other.  Yesterday, Warren’s side leaked that during a private December 2018 meeting where the two agreed to remain civil and not go after each other during their as yet unannounced campaigns, Bernie told Warren that he didn’t believe a woman could win.  Though Bernie denies that he ever said that, last night Warren confirmed that he did.  Whether or not Warren could win is debatable but it’s worth noting that Hillary Clinton received 3 million more votes than Trump did in 2016. Biden, who Bernie has been attacking, has to be enjoying the progressive feeding frenzy. Trump, who commented on Booker’s departure by tweeting “Really Big Breaking News (Kidding): Booker, who was in zero polling territory, just dropped out of the Democrat Presidential Primary Race. Now I can rest easy tonight. I was sooo concerned that I would someday have to go head to head with him!,” is probably loving it too.   In other election related news, another Iowa poll, this one conducted by Monmouth University, was released yesterday.  It shows Biden in the lead with support from 24% of likely Democratic caucus goers followed by Bernie , Buttigieg and Warren who are locked in a statistical tie with 18%, 17%, and 15% respectively.  To the extent it means anything, Biden has also moved into first place in a recent New Hampshire poll.  The DNC’s seventh debate, co-hosted by CNN and the Des Moines Register, takes place tonight from 9 to 11 PM EST at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. 

One More Thing: A few days ago the investigation into Hillary Clinton that was done at the behest of then Attorney General Sessions in order to satisfy Trump’s demands that “crooked” Hillary’s countless, non-existent bad deeds needed to be further scrutinized was wound up. John Huber, the US Attorney tapped by Sessions to complete the investigation, found nothing, nada, zip. Funny, neither Trump nor his flunky Attorney General Barr have said anything.  Wonder what that’s about.

Snow Squalls

Iran:  Yesterday it was 68 degrees and sunny in Washington DC so Trump’s communications team tweeted out a picture of the White House surrounded by flakes of snow; the picture was labeled first snow of the year.  Continuing with the snow job theme, the White House sent Defense Secretary Esper and national security advisor O’Brien out on the Sunday talk show circuit to try to explain Trump’s Friday night assertion to Fox’s Laura Ingraham that he had Iranian General Soleimani killed because the evil general was planning to attack four US embassies, or at the very least because he thought that Soleimani probably, maybe was going to target four embassies.  Neither O’Brien nor Esper would or could provide any more details about that, largely because there were no details to provide.  Esper pretty much acknowledged that when he said Trump “believed it probably could have been possible,” adding that Trump never cited any intelligence, he only said it was a belief, one that he, Esper, shared too because that’s what good Trump acolytes say and do in this groupthink administration. Both Esper and O’Brien insisted that the intelligence they had was “exquisite, ” whatever that means.  They also said that Trump was advised by one of his most senior intelligence experts that not killing Soleimani was more dangerous than leaving him alive.  While revealing that the plans to takeout Soleimani had been kicked around for some time, the NY Times reported that the intelligence person who expressed that view was CIA Head Gina Haspel; apparently if things go badly, she’ll be Trump’s designated scapegoat.  Turning back to the  Ingraham interview. Trump defended his decision not to talk to the Gang of Eight before the Soleimani assassination, saying why would he ever tell that crooked politician Adam Schiff, who as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee is a member of the gang, anything. A number of other Senators, including Republican Mike Lee reported that the “four embassy explanation” was new to them, that no one brought it up during their very inadequate briefing, the one where only eight senators got to ask questions before the Trump team announced that they had to leave.  As to Iran, though Trump couldn’t have anticipated it, as a result of the accidental downing of the Ukrainian passenger plane, he won the weekend. On Saturday Iran’s Revolutionary Guard acknowledged its responsibility for the shooting down of the plane, undermining their earlier assertion that the crash had been the result of engine failure. Iran’s civilians who had earlier taken to the streets to protest the US killing of Soleimani quickly changed the target of their protests, calling for the resignation of the Ayatollah, blaming him for the crash, the initial denial and the failure to close airports to civilian traffic during the time period surrounding the missile attack of the two US bases.  Trump responded with a Farsi language tweet praising the “brave, long-suffering people of Iran” and telling those demonstrating against the government that he was “inspired by your courage.” An Iranian government spokesman tweeted back “Hands and tongues smeared with threatening, sanctioning and terrorizing the Iranian nation, are not entitled to dishonor the ancient Persian language” while the government starting shooting at protesters.  So basically, not the best week to visit Tehran.  In other news, Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced new harsh sanctions against Iran and it was reported that Trump plans to extend his travel ban to include additional countries, most of which will be countries with large Muslim populations, because it’s an election year and that’s the kind of thing that will go over well with his base.  

Impeach, Impeach, Impeach:  On Friday Speaker Pelosi announced her plans to start the process of sending the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate.  That process will involve the approval of the House Managers, the team who will present the case for impeachment to the Mitch McConnell controlled Senate.  The Senate will have some procedural things to do too. They’ll have to take an oath to be fair, one that McConnell, who has continued to coordinate with the White House, will immediately violate.  Chief Justice Roberts, who will preside over the hearing, will be sworn in too and then the rules of engagement will be “debated” and voted on.  Those rules are expected to defer any votes on the calling of witnesses until after the cases for and against removing Trump are presented.  Trump’s case is likely to be presented by a team headed up by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone though others such as Alan Dershowitz, the infamous lawyer who is also involved in the Jeffrey Epstein mess, has also been mentioned as a possible team member though it appears that Rudy Giuliani has been ruled out.  As to witnesses, although Senator Susan Collins claims that she is having discussions with a small group of Republicans to make the calling of witnesses a reality, it’s not clear that those discussions are really taking place, and in any case, during the same interview where he told Laura Ingraham more about the justification for taking out Soleimani than he told any member of Congress not named Lindsey Graham, Trump said that he would block former security advisor John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, or anyone else who he ever spoke with from testifying by declaring executive privilege because it’s his job to protect the office of the presidency for future presidents, as if he cares about future presidents, or future presidents not named Don Jr or Ivanka, two names that some of his avid fans keep bandying around for 2024 and beyond.  It’s expected that the trial won’t begin until next week and that it will take two weeks to complete unless McConnell figures out away to avoid it altogether.  Over the weekend Speaker Pelosi made it clear that any effort to block the trial would be viewed as a cover-up, she also responded to Trump’s assertions that the whole impeachment thing has been unfair to him because he’s really perfect by saying that Trump will be “impeached for life” and that no gamesmanship on his or McConnell’s part will change that.       

Democrats:  Bernie Sanders who lost the Iowa caucuses by a hair to Hillary Clinton in 2016 is now polling at the top of the leader board except that this time around there are far more candidates and unlike last time he does not have the support of 49% of the Iowa base.  The most recent polls show Sanders with 20%, Warren with 17%, Buttigieg at 16% and Biden at 15% with the rest spread out among the other candidates and the many undecideds.  Although things don’t look great for Biden in very white Iowa, he is far and away the preferred candidate of African Americans.  According to a poll completed by the Washington Post and IPSOS, among black Democrats, Biden stands at 48 percent. Sanders runs second at 20 percent. Warren gets 9 percent and Buttigieg 2 percent. Biden has slightly more support than Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Booker, Yang and Steyer combined.  So basically regardless of what happens in Iowa, the Democrats are far from selecting their candidate.  Whoever is finally chosen, he or she will have Mike Bloomberg’s support.  He’s announced that whether or not he succeeds at winning the candidacy he will support the party’s candidate and by support he means that he will continue paying his 500 member campaign staff through the election dedicating their services to whomever the Democratic base selects as its candidate even if that candidate is from the progressive wing of the party.  All in he has pledged to spend $1 billion of his fortune to run Trump out of office.