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.