Impeachment Today: A Tsunami of Bullshit Defending the Indefensible
I can’t type fast enough to report on the deceptions, distortions, and distractions coming from the Trumpanistas this morning. I don’t think anybody can. And that’s the point of what the GOP is doing.
Let’s step back for a moment and look at the big picture. Three very real things are happening:
There are no excuses/alibis/fabrications left when it comes to the Ukraine scandal.
The administration’s losing streak in the courts is reaching epic proportions.
RussiaGate, or whatever you want to call it, is coming back from the dead.
This week’s party line on the withholding of military aid to Ukraine in return for dirt on Biden comes down to “yeah, he did it.” Because corruption is a real administration concern. Riiight.
In advance of the release of the House Intelligence Committee’s findings, the party of Trump is resurrecting the ploy used in the run up to the publication of the Mueller Report.
From the Washington Post:
House Republicans have now formalized their defense of Trump with the release of a new report as the impeachment process shifts into its next phase, and at the center of it is an effort to make that corrupt motive disappear entirely.
The report’s new argument is that, yes, Trump might have made requests of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce “investigations” that would validate Trump’s (invented) theory of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and his (fabricated) narrative of corruption on the part of Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine.
But, Republicans say, Trump was right to do this, because his concerns about these things were legitimate and were subsumed into a much broader — and, again, legitimate — set of concerns about corruption.
The President, whose family charity was shut down by authorities for "persistently illegal conduct" with respect to the foundation's money and was ordered to pay a $2 million settlement for misusing the foundation for his business and political purposes, is concerned about corruption.
The President, whose “University” paid out $25 million to settle three lawsuits asserting it engaged in a variety of illegal business practices, ranging from false claims to racketeering, is concerned about corruption.
You want some corruption? How about this nugget from this morning’s Washington Post:
North Dakota-based Fisher Sand and Gravel won the contract to build in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Yuma County, Ariz., the Defense Department said, with a target completion date of Dec. 30, 2020.
Trump has repeatedly pushed for Fisher to get a wall-building contract, urging officials with the Army Corps of Engineers to pick the firm – only to be told that Fisher’s bids did not meet standards. Trump’s entreaties on behalf of the company have concerned some officials who are unaccustomed to a president getting personally involved in the intricacies of government contracting.
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Three strikes...
The Trump administration’s effort to block House Democrats seeking to obtain President Trump’s private financial records from Deutsche Bank and Capital One ran into a brick wall at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit today.
This loss --which obviously be appealed-- will join two others headed for the Supreme Court.
Last month, a federal appeals court in Washington let stand an earlier ruling against the president, affirming that Congress can seek eight years of Trump’s tax records.
In a case related to a New York investigation into hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels a separate three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit has unanimously rejected Trump’s effort to block New York grand jury subpoenas for his eight years of Trump’s tax returns from his accounting firm.
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Notes from the FBI interviews of witnesses in the Mueller investigation have been released thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests from CNN and the Daily Beast.
A couple of tidbits via the CNN coverage…
...Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen told Trump's lawyer Jay Sekulow that there were details about the Trump Tower Moscow discussions that were not included in the statement they were providing Congress, including more communications with Russia and more communications with Donald Trump…
...The details, which were not previously known, highlight how significant it was for Manafort to have agreed to cooperate, then lie to Mueller, potentially blocking the special counsel from getting to the truth of what happened…
...The document dump sheds new light on what Mueller learned from former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who sat for an interview in August 2018. Investigators quizzed Kelly about Trump's efforts to fire Mueller in June 2017, and his efforts to contain the fallout when The New York Times revealed the unsuccessful attempt in a January 2018 article. The Mueller report determined that there was substantial evidence that both of these episodes constituted obstruction of justice, though Trump could not be charged due to Justice Department policy’
https://twitter.com/ShimonPro/status/1201646455724945409?s=20
Democrats are reported to be actively considering expanding the scope of proposed articles of impeachment to include the 10 possible instances of obstruction by the president outlined in the Mueller report.
And, while some moderate Democrats are concerned the political consequences of taking any such action, the fact remains that Republicans will attack regardless of what happens.
As the Post’s Jennifer Rubin points out:
Republicans remain united not because truth, the Constitution or fairness are on Trump’s side. They are on his side because they have chosen to put blind tribalism above their constitutional obligations. Republicans think they have a captive base insulated by Fox News (the equivalent of Pravda) and by the allegedly more sophisticated conservative pundits who cannot stand up to the mob, for fear of losing readership, speaking fees, access and political relevance in the Trump era. Whatever procedural requests Democrats grant will be dismissed as insufficient. There is no process that will meet Trump’s definition of “fairness,” because any limitation on his conduct and any criticism are by definition unfair in his narcissistic, self-deluded view.
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Trump’s visit to Europe… isn’t going well...
https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/1201810613904785409?s=20
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