Impeachment Today: A Revelation and Plenty of Flibberty Gibberty
The impeachment hearings before the House Intelligence Committee had one big reveal.
William Taylor, the current acting United States Ambassador to Ukraine, revealed being told by an aide about a phone call between President Trump and Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union where the subject of “investigations” was discussed.
David Holmes, the aide to William Taylor who overheard the phone call, made from a restaurant in Kyiv, is scheduled to give a deposition in a closed door session with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform committees on Friday.
https://twitter.com/jpaceDC/status/1195021456557707265?s=20
As numerous ex-spies and reporters on the intelligence beat noted, the phone call likely wasn’t encrypted, given that it was made from a public place. Via the Washington Post:
“The security ramifications are insane — using an open cellphone to communicate with the president of the United States,” said Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior director of the White House Situation Room and a former chief of staff to the CIA director. “In a country that is so wired with Russian intelligence, you can almost take it to the bank that the Russians were listening in on the call...”
...It was also noteworthy in that ambassadors typically don’t just pick up the phone and call presidents. “They never do so to discuss Ukraine policy,” former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said in a tweet. “Doing so on a cellphone from Kyiv means [the] whole world was listening in.”
https://twitter.com/IndivisibleNet/status/1195026399729315841?s=20
Ambassador Sondland is scheduled to give public testimony next week. He will have to make a choice between confirming this phone conversation or following the President’s lead in saying he does not recall.
All the twaddle coming from the GOP side couldn’t prevent this disclosure by Taylor from stealing the show.
While some Democrats on the committee used their time to score political points, they didn’t have to waste verbiage on defending their case. The facts of this case are not in dispute.
Here’s Dana Milbank at the Washington Post:
In lieu of an opening statement, Devin Nunes (Calif.), the ranking Republican, read slogans and epithets: “Russia hoax . . . preposterous allegations . . . Media smear . . . Cultlike. . . Purely fictitious . . . Star chamber . . . Low-rent Ukrainian sequel . . . politicized bureaucracy.” He later informed Taylor that “you did not do due diligence” by investigating whether the Ukrainians really were out to get Trump in 2016.
What is in question is whether the Republicans playing to an audience of one Very Important Twitter account will have an impact.
The scattershot recitation of conspiracy theories, personal attacks, and already disproved ‘facts’ may make Fox News talking heads happy, but the impeachment train will continue on its way.
The "both sides" pundit view of Day One was that it was boring.
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1194983405315862529?s=20
Here’s what to expect after the current round of hearings, which are expected to last through next week, via the New York Times:
By the time lawmakers leave for a weeklong Thanksgiving recess, staff for the Intelligence Committee may begin drafting a formal report of its findings to present to the House Judiciary Committee for consideration in early December. Some Democratic leaders hope that the House could vote on articles of impeachment by the year’s end.
Republicans cannot stop Democrats from impeaching Mr. Trump, but they appear to be determined to ensure that any vote to do so is partisan. Their strategy is multipronged. It includes defending Mr. Trump’s interest in Ukrainian corruption as legitimate, and portraying Democrats as desperate to find something, anything, to take out Mr. Trump.
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A coalition of progressive advocacy groups is organizing events in more than 80 U.S. Cities on the eve of the House of Representative impeachment vote.
The "Nobody Is Above the Law" coalition, which includes MoveOn, Public Citizen, Indivisible, and Stand Up America, as well as more than a dozen other organizations.
"Protesters will gather in front of the district offices of House members as the lawmakers finalize their positions and at U.S. Senate offices as senators prepare for a likely trial," the coalition said in a statement. "Protesters will call on their representatives to uphold the Constitution and their oaths of office by supporting Trump's impeachment."
On its website, the coalition says the goal of the mass protests is "to demonstrate to our lawmakers that their constituents are behind them to defend the Constitution—and that Trump has left them no alternative to uphold their oath of office but to support impeachment and removal."
San Diego’s event -- information here-- will be Waterfront Park/County Administration Building, time and speakers, etc, TBA.
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Republicans will be in charge once the ball is in the Senate’s Court.
An article in the Washington Post suggests they are leaning toward a protracted trial, lasting as long as eight weeks.
Such an extended schedule will keep Democratic Senators who are running for President off the campaign trail and show constituents for GOP incumbents in flippable districts that they matters are being taken seriously.
The issue of trial length came up during a closed-door lunch of all GOP senators Wednesday, when Republicans speculated about whether the House would hand over the process to them either before or after Christmas, according to multiple people in attendance.
Inside the lunch, McConnell had little guidance for his ranks, outside of saying the trial will go on as long as the Senate wants it to run, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details from the private meeting.
But McConnell’s top deputies, as well as most of his ranks, believe a longer trial is the likelier outcome — which they say would give Trump and his defense team sufficient time to make his case.
Cornyn said Wednesday that it would be difficult to find a majority in the Senate to dismiss the trial early on, even if the president’s attorneys request it, “before the evidence is presented.”
As John Harris at POLITICO points out, “Impeachment is not merely an inquiry into presidential misconduct. It is a violent intrusion into intimate regions of presidential psychology.”
The coming weeks will likely also offer a window into the other great continuity of presidential scandal from Watergate to Monica Lewinsky to Ukraine. That is the need for presidents to project confidence and control when the very nature of an impeachment inquiry underscores that they have lost control.
The news has been full of reports lately about Trump’s “isolation,” “anger,” “frustration” and “rage”—toward Democrats, toward the media, toward his own team for failing to bring Democrats and the media to heel. And the White House’s internal recriminations are flowing in both directions. “Frustrated Trump allies urge him to stop talking about himself,” my colleague Anita Kumar wrote earlier this week, in one example of the genre.
The effort to project control recalls the scene in “Animal House” in which the ROTC parade commander, surrounded by chaos, vainly shouts, “Remain calm! All is well!”
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There is one other recent development worth noting with a potential impact on the tenure of Trump’s Presidency.
From NPR:
A U.S. appeals court opened the door for Congress to gain access to eight years of President Trump's tax records, setting the stage for a likely review by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to revisit an earlier ruling by a three-judge panel that allowed Congress to subpoena the president's tax records. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenaed those records in March.
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https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1195012943269814272?s=20
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“Flibberty Gibberty” rhyming reduplication used in headline came via Joshua Holland at Raw Story
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