Impeachment Day 9 - Congress Raises the Stakes, Wants to See Trump's 'Best People'
It’s subpoena time, folks. The Democratic leadership went before the press this morning--after noting all the legislation they have already passed--and raised the ante.
Over the past two weeks revelations about attempts by Individual #1 and his private lawyer to pressure Ukraine to aid in smearing former Vice President Mr. Biden have touched off an inquiry that threatens his presidency. Democrats in the House of Representatives are pursuing an inquiry that has already reshaped the political landscape.
Lawmakers and their staffs are working methodically to collect evidence they believe is needed to assess the anonymous C.I.A. whistle-blower complaint at the heart of this matter. They have focused on the State Department, the White House, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer.
Three House committee chairmen plan to issue a subpoena to the White House on Friday, saying the administration has refused to produce documents requested more than 3 weeks ago.
From the New York Times:
The draft subpoena circulated by Mr. Cummings, in conjunction with the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees, reads like a dragnet of potential records related to the Ukraine matter and is all but certain to touch off a battle with a White House that has a long history of refusing to comply with congressional requests of this nature.
It also explicitly asks for records that could indicate whether the White House or other administration officials took steps to conceal or destroy the records to prevent Congress or the public from learning what had happened.
Yesterday lawyers for House Democrats suggested that they have reason to believe that the grand-jury redactions in the Mueller report show that Trump lied about his knowledge of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks.
The quest for information from the State Department has blown up over the past 24 hours. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote the chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight and Reform committees heading the investigation to assert that five State Department officials called to give depositions over the next two weeks would not appear as scheduled.
From the Washington Post:
Pompeo characterized the effort to depose the officials as “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly, the distinguished professionals of the Department of State.”
Saying Congress had no authority to compel such testimony, Pompeo wrote that he would “not tolerate such tactics, and I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State.”
The Secretary of State’s declaration rings hollow when one remembers he spent four years investigating the Benghazi attacks even after several other GOP led committees had concluded their investigations.
Meanwhile, the “dedicated professionals” at the State Department have ideas of their own.
Via ABC News:
The State Department’s inspector general is expected to give an "urgent" briefing to staffers from several House and Senate committees on Wednesday afternoon about documents obtained from the department’s Office of the Legal Adviser related to the State Department and Ukraine, sources familiar with the planned briefing told ABC News.
Details of the briefing, requested by Steve Linick, the inspector general at State, remain unknown. Linick is expected to meet with congressional staff in a secure location on Capitol Hill.
News reports say the inspector general will brief and “provide staff with copies of documents related to the State Department and Ukraine” this afternoon.
https://twitter.com/JoshuaHol/status/1179435746329071617?s=20
Two of the five officials subpoenaed by House committees, former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker and former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, have already agreed to appear.
Then there’s Rudi Giuliani, the president’s lawyer who is working for free in an effort to reduce an alimony award. I’ll insert the obvious pro-tip here: “you get what you pay for.”
We do know Giuliani is getting paid by a bunch of corrupt oligarchs. Paul Manafort got paid (at least in part) that way while working for “free” as Trump’s campaign manager.
There is no way of predicting what Rudi will do. Wait 15 minutes and he’ll be running at the mouth again.
Via Vanity fair:
“Looking at a [lawsuit] to end lawless action,” he texted the Atlantic’s Elaina Plott on Tuesday night.
“Who are you going to sue?”
“The swamp. Trump v The Swamp.”
“How do you sue The Swamp?”
“In federal court.”
Giuliani expanded on this unusual strategy during an appearance Tuesday night on Fox News, telling host Laura Ingraham that he plans to file a lawsuit against Congress. “They are doing extraordinary things,” he said of House Democrats. “For example, they are violating—they’re interfering with the president in exercising his rights under Article II: The president United States conducts the foreign policy of the United States...This is worse than McCarthy!”
The problem for Mr. Giuliani is that the more he talks, the more evidence of his own corruption is revealed. Here’s today’s tidbit, via the Washington Post:
The hunt by President Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani for material in Ukraine damaging to Democrats has put a spotlight on business ties he has had in the former Soviet republic for at least a decade, work that has introduced him to high-level Ukrainian financial and political circles.
Giuliani has said he has been working for free solely to benefit his client, Trump, as he has sought information from Ukrainian officials — an effort that has spurred a House impeachment inquiry into whether the president abused his power.
However, House investigators are now seeking records about Giuliani’s past clientele in Ukraine, including Pavel Fuks, a wealthy developer who financed consulting work Giuliani did in 2017 for the city of Kharkiv. That same year, according to court filings, Fuks said he was banned from entering the United States for five years. The documents do not specify why.
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“You can put almost everything Donald Trump does into one of three buckets: cruel, childish, or corrupt.”-----Rep Eric Swalwell
Here’s the lede from a New York Times story adapted from the forthcoming book “Border Wars: Inside Trump’s Assault on Immigration:”
The Oval Office meeting this past March began, as so many had, with President Trump fuming about migrants. But this time he had a solution. As White House advisers listened astonished, he ordered them to shut down the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico — by noon the next day.
The advisers feared the president’s edict would trap American tourists in Mexico, strand children at schools on both sides of the border and create an economic meltdown in two countries. Yet they also knew how much the president’s zeal to stop immigration had sent him lurching for solutions, one more extreme than the next.
Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down. That’s not allowed either, they told him.
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In closing, let’s look in on the candidates in the 2016 presidential election:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1179422987684077568?s=20
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1179125816338386945?s=20
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