Month: September 2019

Conspiracy Theorist in Chief goes full Infowars

by digby

In case you’re wondering what lunacy Trump is spouting there, here is the shorthand from Josh Marshall:

A conspiracy theory tied to the murder of Seth Rich and claims it was not actually Russian intelligence that had broken into the DNC servers. For years in far-right media there have been claims that the accusations against Russia were false in part because the FBI had never been allowed to examine the DNC servers. Trump tells Zelensky that he needs him to find the servers and get to the bottom of what happened to them and suggests they are somewhere in Ukraine.

The Daily Beast has the details:

To those not versed in fringe-right canon it’s a curious thing to say. “It almost sounds like he was babbling to the president of Ukraine,” said Robert Johnston, CEO of Adlumin, who led the DNC breach investigation while at Crowdstrike. “I imagine it would have confused the Ukranian president. Like, ‘What are you talking about?’”

Conservative websites are spinning the odd exchange as a reference to a Justice Department investigation ordered by William Barr into the origins of the Mueller probe. “It is unclear specifically what Trump was referring to with Crowdstrike,” reads one article in this vein on The Federalist.

In truth, it’s actually quite clear. Trump is referencing a conspiracy theory pushed by Russian trolls and far-right pundits that imagines the Democratic National Committee fabricating all the evidence in Russia’s 2016 breach of the DNC network.

The hoax has its roots in a GRU persona, “Guccifer 2.0,” created to cast doubt on Russia’s culpability in the DNC hack. Today it’s buttressed by deceptive blog posts, memes and putative forensic analysis of metadata in documents leaked from the DNC and John Podesta intrusions, and has spun out several related theories and offshoots, including the Seth Rich hoax that blames the hack on a slain DNC staffer with previously-unknown hacking skills.

Crowdstrike enters the picture because it’s the security firm the DNC hired to investigate the breach back in 2016, and the first of many to identify Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, as the perpetrator. A publicly-traded company headquartered in California, Crowdstrike has nothing to do with Ukraine, except in conspiracyland, which pretends that Crowdstrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is Ukranian, and that he framed Russia for election interference both on the DNC’s orders and to punish Putin for invading his homeland.

In real life, Alperovitch is American citizen born in Russia who escaped to the U.S. with his family during the Soviet era. But Trump has shown a pronounced preference for the pretend version.

“Why wouldn’t Podesta and Hillary Clinton allow the FBI to see the server?” Trump asked the AP in 2017. “They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based … I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian, that’s what I heard.”

The “server” in the conspiracy is the hacked DNC server that the democrats, the claim goes won’t let the FBI examine, because it would expose their elaborate plot. “What is the server saying?” Trump asked in one tweet last year.

That part’s made up, too. The DNC turned down one unusual FBI request early in the hack investigation. The bureau wanted access to the DNC’s network while the Russians were still in it, most likely to stage a counter operation against the GRU. The DNC declined, perhaps reluctant to have two intelligence agencies playing capture-the-flag in their systems five months before a presidential election. The DNC later authorized Crowdstrike to share full copies of the hacked servers with the bureau, giving the FBI access to the same evidence Crowdstrike had.

“With regards to our investigation of the DNC hack in 2016, we provided all forensic evidence and analysis to the FBI,” Crowdstrike said in a statement Wednesday. “As we’ve stated before, we stand by our findings and conclusions that have been fully supported by the US Intelligence community.”

In truth, Crowdstrike’s findings were never controversial among security experts, and they were later confirmed by FBI agents with access to the same evidence, as well as additional evidence Crowdstrike never had. In October 2018, Robert Mueller indicted 12 GRU officers for the DNC intrusion and hacks targeting John Podesta and the DCCC.

Today the secret server hoax is mostly confined to the very edge of the conservative fringe, though it’s made an appearance in court. Indicted former Trump campaign advisor Roger Stone has been using the theory to try and get evidence against him thrown out of court, even filing an affidavit written by William Binney, one of the conspiracy theory’s most dogged advocates. Last week the federal judge overseeing Stone’s obstruction of justice case rejected his motion without ruling on the conspiracy theory itself.

Emptywheel has a theory that some of this is in anticipation of the Roger Stone trial which she expects will result in a Trump pardon.

This is the equivalent of the President Obama asking a foreign government to investigate the conspiracy theories that the planes didn’t really take down the WTC and that George W. Bush was in on 9/11. It’s just plain nuts. And so is he.

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America’s most important diplomat

by digby

This is the person Donald Trump is sending around the world to represent the US:

Rudy Giuliani shouts at a fellow Fox News panelist: “Shut up, moron, shut up” pic.twitter.com/pySYyGDtUm

— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) September 25, 2019

He seems nice.

It’s not a joke, though. This lunatic has been in contact with half of Europe spewing this crazy talk. And plenty of people in the government knew all about it and went along with it.

Over the course of the past year, Giuliani has participated in a far-flung campaign by Trump allies to unearth damaging information about Biden and his son Hunter. As part of that effort, Giuliani pressed the Ukrainian government to investigate so far unfounded allegations of corruption in the country involving the Bidens. At the time, Hunter Biden was accused of using his father’s political standing to secure lucrative business opportunities abroad. Ukraine’s prosecutor general would subsequently say he had no evidence of any wrongdoing.

This summer, Giuliani briefed U.S. diplomats, including special representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker, on his work in Ukraine and his efforts to convince the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens. But Giuliani confirmed to The Daily Beast that he also briefed another diplomat: U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland. President Trump’s lawyer said he briefed both Volker (whom he referred to as the “main one” in terms of his State contacts) and Sondland on multiple conference calls earlier this year about his progress in pursuing a Ukraine investigation.

It wasn’t exactly an unknown topic for Sondland. The ambassador was also closely involved with the Trump phone call to Zelensky in which Trump repeatedly pressured the Ukrainian president to investigate the Bidens.

“I spoke with both of them before and after this conversation,” Sondland told Ukraine’s state-run news agency after the phone call. “The conversation was very successful. They found a common language immediately.” The two leaders discussed Ukraine’s war, energy security, and “the rule of law,” Sondland said in July.

That same day, Zelensky met with both Sondland and Volker to discuss Ukraine’s war with pro-Russian rebels. It was a particularly poignant topic at the time; the U.S. was holding back on nearly $400 million worth of equipment promised to Kyiv to deter Moscow and its allies.

While Giuliani has said publicly that his overtures to the Ukrainians were brokered in part by the State Department—even claiming in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that the State Department called him up personally to assign him the task—the specifics of his contacts with Foggy Bottom have remained opaque, including what, if anything, Secretary Mike Pompeo knew about the Ukraine work.

According to two sources inside the department, U.S. diplomats including Sondland and Volker were aware of the details of Giuliani’s work in Ukraine on Biden as early as this spring. Those sources said senior officials at the department were read in on Giuliani’s calls with Volker and Sondland.

“I’ve spoken to Kurt Volker the most about this, but have been on conference calls with [Sondland],” Giuliani said. Giuliani also claimed that he had not asked to be put in touch with Sondland, but one day unexpectedly found himself “on a conference call with him” to discuss the Ukraine efforts.

They weren’t the only senior members of the Trump administration brought into the president’s efforts to use a foreign government to squeeze a political foe. According to The Washington Post, Trump ordered Mick Mulvaney, his acting chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget, to hit pause on hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid for Ukraine—just days before a now-infamous July phone call between Trump and Zelensky. Mulvaney’s OMB deputies then directed officials at the Departments of Defense and State not to distribute the military aid.

And Wednesday morning’s release of the phone call’s transcripts revealed that Trump also suggested Zelensky work with U.S. Attorney General William Barr on a Biden probe.

“I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it,” Trump said, per the transcript, later adding: “Whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.”

In a statement to the Washington Post, the Justice Department said Trump never communicated with the attorney general “about having Ukraine investigate anything related to former Vice President Biden or his son.”
[…]
While Volker is known in diplomatic circles as the U.S. special representative for Ukraine, Ambassador Sondland has—until recently—maintained a lower profile. The founder and chairman of Provenance Hotels, Sondland appeared to be uncomfortable with his status as a Trump supporter during the 2016 campaign.
[…]
Sondland attended Zelensky’s presidential inauguration as part of the U.S. delegation in May 2019 shortly after Giuliani announced he was canceling plans to visit the country in pursuit of dirt on the Biden family.

Sondland is known inside the State Department as key to helping the administration promote better U.S.-Ukraine trade relations. Together with U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, Sondland has spoken out against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, saying it undermines Ukraine’s sovereignty by bypassing the country and cutting off its ability to export natural gas to Europe. In an op-ed, Grenell, Sondland, and U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands said the pipeline would “bring more than just Russian gas.” “Russian leverage and influence will also flow under the Baltic Sea and into Europe, and the pipeline will enable Moscow to further undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and stability,” the op-ed said.

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment for this story and did not provide details about whether it had reached out to Giuliani to take a call with Yermak.

But it appears the State Department and other Trump administration officials were well on their way to establishing a connection with the Zelensky team. By the time of Giuliani’s debriefings this August, leading Zelensky ally Ivan Bakanov had already visited Washington twice—once in April and once following Zelensky’s inauguration. Bakanov, who now heads the country’s security service, met with members of Congress, including Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), one of the leaders of the Ukraine caucus, and officials inside the administration including Fiona Hill, who at the time was serving as the top White House adviser for Russia. Bakanov also met George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau at the State Department.

Volker and Sondland had also visited Kyiv twice—once in May and the other time coming on the heels of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky. They went to Ukraine with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and briefed the White House on their visit just days later. Sondland and Volker met with Zelensky on July 26 to express “unwavering support for Ukraine’s democracy,” according to a U.S. embassy tweet.

These people are willingly, eagerly, betraying the United States for money and Donald Trump.

How many more knew and did nothing?

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I Won’t Trust It’s Complete Unless The Whistleblower Testifies It Is 

by tristero

This may be a good sign:

The acting director of national intelligence, under pressure from Congress to release the full complaint of a whistle-blower who touched off the Ukraine impeachment furor, was to have handed over the document to the House Intelligence Committee at 4 p.m., according to a congressional aide.

But Trump, Barr, and Maguire can’t be trusted. Let’s not forget that as damning as it is in this bowdlerized form, the rough summary of the Trump/Ukraine phone call was, in fact, redacted, and in fact is not a verbatim transcript despite the Trump administration lying with a straight face and pretending it was complete and accurate.


The only way we can be certain that the full whistleblower complaint is delivered to Congress is if the whistleblower swears under oath it’s complete.

In other news, Maguire threatened to resign. Resign now, buddy. You deliberately broke the law, probably on orders from on high (or with the conscious thought of currying favor from them).

But now that you were caught, you’re engaged in a truly pathetic attempt to salvage what’s left of your reputation, and you’re desperately trying to take the high, principled road.

Too late, pal. You should have thought of what association with Trump would do for your rep long before you joined the his corrupt administration.

Oh, and don’t slam the door.

What was impeachment for if not this?

by digby

Former Republican congressman David Jolly said this on MSNBC yesterday. I thought it was good:

There were three architects of the impeachment language, if you will. James Madison, George Mason and Edmund Randolph. And they were each concerned that the president may one day engage in activity that was not criminal but was impeachable. 

Madison was concerned about a president who would engage in perfidy, deceit, untrustworthiness. He was worried about a president who would be disloyal to our nation in dealing with a foreign nation. 

Randolph was concerned about a president who would secure emoluments from the office, profit from the presidency. 

Mason was concerned about someone who would tamper with elections or electors. He was concerned that he would tamper with investigations into himself. This is the presidency that the authors of the impeachment language feared. 

This [Trump’s] was the presidency they were worried about.

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Professional White House Com Shop take a bow

by digby

The White House accidentally sent their talking points to House Democrats.

And then, an hour later, asked that it be “recalled” — after it was already all over twitter.

They seem to be just a little bit … rattled.

Here are the typically fatuous talking points, in case you were wondering:

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Democratic activists take a bow. This wouldn’t have happened without you.

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

Well, it finally happened. After months of handwringing, the Democrats finally took the step their most committed activists have been clamoring for since November of 2018. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Tuesday that Congress will launch an official impeachment investigation. As of this writing, 203 Democrats are now on the record in support of an inquiry. On Monday morning, that number stood at 134.

The reason for this change among the leadership, and this avalanche of support among the rank and file, has been the reporting showing that the president and his legal henchman, Rudy Giuliani, have been strong-arming the Ukrainian government to get help in smearing Trump’s potential election opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. The timeline of events starting last spring strongly suggests that the president went way outside normal procedures and held military aid to Ukraine hostage in hopes that newly-elected President Volodymyr Zelensky would do his bidding. Giuliani and Trump have made numerous wild TV appearances over the last few days in which they have confessed to many elements of this story.

Pelosi said in her brief address:

The president has admitted to asking the president of Ukraine to take actions which would benefit him politically. … The actions of the Trump presidency revealed a dishonorable fact: The president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security and betrayal of the integrity of our elections.

The president has agreed to release a transcript of his phone call with Zelensky, in which he is accused of bringing up the Biden issue. And after the Senate unanimously voted to request this, the White House also agreed to follow the law and release some version of the whistleblower account to the intelligence committees in both houses of Congress. There’s no telling whether either of those documents will be trustworthy. The White House has been known to doctor transcripts, and phone calls with foreign leaders apparently are not recorded verbatim in any case. It is also likely that the whistleblower report will be subject to the usual redactions. But it’s a start.

In remarks at a forum sponsored by the Atlantic on Tuesday morning, Pelosi said she believed this blatant abuse of power would be easy for the public to understand, and that there was a new urgency here since this case reveals how the president’s actions imperil the integrity of the upcoming election — the very mechanism by which she had previously insisted would hold Trump accountable.

But that wasn’t the only reason. As Ryan Grim reported at the Intercept, tremendous pressure has been building for months within the Democratic caucus. As is common in a large political coalition, there are turf wars and frictions between the young Turks and the old guard. And some deluded committee chairmen apparently believed they could make deals with Trump on pet legislation, so they were afraid to be too aggressive. But over the August break constituents came out of the woodwork demanding impeachment and members both for and against began to worry that the political price of a failure to hold the president accountable had become too great.

Grim writes that Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a constitutional attorney and advocate of impeachment on principle, told members in one recent meeting that “the party’s passivity was causing real political pain for rank-and-file members of Congress” and that in order to keep just a small handful of freshman happy, “the entire party was being dragged down and routinely humiliated by Trump’s contempt for the rule of law.” He noted that primary opponents were popping up all over the place, far more than usual, to challenge those who were holding back support for impeachment. According to Grim, even members who weren’t currently facing a primary challenger were looking over their shoulders.

If intensity is important in party politics (and it is), the intensity of the anger and frustration among the Resistance groups and rank-and-file grassroots was already pushing the caucus to the brink when this latest example of Trump’s unpatriotic perfidy was revealed.

I was concerned at first that the party would decide only to pursue this one impeachable incident when it’s vitally important that they look at every aspect of Trump’s abuse of power, obstruction of justice and ongoing corruption and self-dealing. The list is long and somewhat overwhelming, which has probably served as a perverse form of protection for Trump: Aside from the Mueller investigation, they didn’t seem to know where to start.

There had been talk of naming a select committee on impeachment, but Pelosi has instead decided to task the Intelligence, Ways and Means, Finance, Oversight and Foreign Relations committees with continuing their work and then reporting their findings to the Judiciary Committee, which would actually vote on articles of impeachment. Stonewalling by the White House and the Department of Justice has slowed that down but there’s really no reason why it should take too much time.

After all, we already know that that a special prosecutor found that Trump committed obstruction of justice at least 10 times, and was only spared indictment because of one Department of Justice memo. We also know that the president has adopted a blanket policy of obstructing congressional oversight, which makes similar obstruction during the Nixon administration look like child’s play.

Trump blatantly violated campaign finance laws and watched his accomplice, Michael Cohen, go to jail while he signed hush money checks in the Oval Office. He constantly releases classified information willy-nilly on social media and threatens all critics and responsible law enforcement with firing or imprisonment.

While refusing to divest himself of his businesses, Trump has never adequately revealed the extent of his holdings around the world. What we know about the attempted Trump Tower Moscow deal alone shows that his conflicts of interest are monumental. Trump promotes his commercial properties constantly, systematically funds his businesses with taxpayer dollars and gleefully accepts millions in foreign money in direct violation of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution. His offspring and their spouses are all enmeshed with both politics and the family business to such an extent that it’s impossible to see where one ends and the other begins.

There is a pattern of abuse of power, since Trump obviously believes he can do all this with impunity:

TRUMP: "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."

(Article 2 does not in fact empower the president to do whatever they want.) pic.twitter.com/qIFP1AbHw6— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 23, 2019

I don’t know what legal genius told him that, but it’s not true — as he may finally be about to find out. All these behaviors must be checked.

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Much worse than I imagined

by digby

The president is delusional pic.twitter.com/0WxGmVJdDX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2019

It’s actually way worse than we thought:

President Trump urged the president of Ukraine to contact Attorney General William P. Barr about opening a potential corruption investigation connected to former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to a transcript of a July phone call at the center of accusations that Mr. Trump pressured a foreign leader to find dirt on a political rival.

“I would like you to do us a favor,” Mr. Trump said in response to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine raising the prospect of acquiring military equipment from the United States. The president then also asked for another inquiry: that the Ukrainians examine an unsubstantiated theory about stolen Democratic emails.
[…]
During the call, Mr. Trump told Mr. Zelensky that he should be in touch with both Mr. Barr and the president’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, according to the transcript released by the White House on Wednesday.

“There is a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution, and a lot of people want to find out about that,” Mr. Trump said to Mr. Zelensky during the call, according to the transcript. “So whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.”
[…]
Mr. Trump specifically asked his Ukrainian counterpart to come to the aid of the United States by looking into the unsubstantiated theory pushed by Mr. Giuliani holding that Ukrainians had some role in the emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee.

“I would like to have the attorney general call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of that,” Mr. Trump said on the call, also referencing Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russia’s election sabotage. “Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it, if that’s possible.”

Mr. Trump’s allies argue that he was not exerting improper pressure on Mr. Zelensky, but mentioned Mr. Barr because the Justice Department was already reviewing the origins of the inquiry into Russia’s 2016 election meddling.

The president’s mentions of Mr. Barr and Mr. Giuliani were the most striking part of a half-hour conversation in which the two men discussed a series of issues. But several times, Mr. Trump steered the conversation back to Mr. Barr, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Biden.

If this “transcript” is supposed exoneration of Trump, can’t imagine what the inculpatory evidence looks like

Bottom of p2–Ukraine Pres says Ukraine ready to buy more Javelins (weapons). Very next line: “I would like you to do a favor THOUGH” & then goes into his Biden request

— Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) September 25, 2019

And by the way:

The Justice Department also said Wednesday that it received a criminal referral from the Intelligence Community Inspector General in late August to investigate whether the President’s push for Ukraine to investigate Biden was a violation of campaign finance law.
DOJ declined to bring a case because it found that asking the Ukrainians to investigate Biden was not something of monetary value, and therefore did not run afoul of campaign finance laws.

The Justice Department’s examination centered on the July call. Prosecutors interviewed White house officials involved in producing the transcript to establish it was a reliable record of the call. No other interviews were done. The FBI received a separate referral from the inspector general but deferred to the DOJ criminal division which was doing its analysis, according to a senior Justice Department official.

Barr was also not recused from handling the issue despite the fact that his name comes up in Trump’s call with Zelensky.

Barr is an accomplice.

Here are the six most shocking elements of the transcript:

1. Trump asked for an investigation into the Bidens. 

The President: “The other thing. There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

In this passage, Mr. Trump pushed the new Ukrainian president to get his country’s prosecutor to open an investigation into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter. In May, Ukraine’s top prosecutor had said there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens to investigate.

When he was vice president, Mr. Biden had pushed the Ukrainian government in 2015 to fire its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was widely seen as an obstacle to reform because he failed to bring corruption cases. At the time, Mr. Biden’s son sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, that was the subject of an investigation that Mr. Shokin’s office had long left dormant.

In 2018, Mr. Biden talked about his effort to get Mr. Shokin removed — carrying out the Obama administration’s policy — at a Council on Foreign Relations event, and Mr. Trump’s supporters have used a brief video clip from those remarks as part of their insinuations that the vice president was trying to protect Burisma Holdings from prosecution. Mr. Biden did not portray his effort to get Mr. Shokin out as stopping any prosecution of Burisma Holdings.

2. Trump alluded to American aid, while not explicitly linking his request to unfreezing it, the document shows. 

The President: “I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time.”

At the time of this call, Mr. Trump was holding back hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to Ukraine that Congress had appropriated to help that country fend off Russian aggression. The two leaders did not directly refer to Mr. Trump’s freezing of the aid or whether he would unfreeze it. However, Mr. Trump referred to large-scale American assistance to Ukraine in this passage, and several sentences later, Mr. Trump added:

The President: … “but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal, necessarily, because things are happening that are not good. But the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.”

At this point in the call, Mr. Trump brought up the idea of reciprocity, suggesting that the United States has been good to Ukraine even though something Ukraine has done is not good. The next thing Mr. Trump said — after Mr. Zelensky responded to this statement — was to ask for investigations.

3. Zelensky agreed to pursue an inquiry into the Bidens. 

President Zelensky: “Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September. He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country.”

In May, Ukraine’s top prosecutor at the time had said there is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens for him to investigate. In this passage, Mr. Zelensky promises to do what Mr. Trump is asking — launch an investigation into the Bidens — but also asks Mr. Trump if he can provide any information for Ukrainian investigators to look at.

4. Trump said Barr would call the Ukrainian president about another investigation. 

The President: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation in Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike … I guess you have one of your wealthy people … The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”

Mr. Trump appears to be referencing an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory pushed by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, that Ukraine had some involvement in the emails stolen from Democratic National Committee.

Mr. Giuliani said in a previously unpublished portion of an interview with The New York Times in April that he was in touch with people “who said that the Ukrainians were the ones who did the hacking,” then participated in an effort to blame the Russian government and link it to the Trump campaign.

The special counsel’s report, which Mr. Trump disparages here, made clear that Russian military officers hacked the D.N.C. mail server. There is no evidence that the Ukrainians were involved. But in May, Attorney General William P. Barr launched his own investigation into the Russia investigation and its origins.

5. Trump cast aspersions on Western Europe and Germany as Ukrainian allies. 

The President: “Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she doesn’t do anything. A lot of European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very good to Ukraine.”

The geopolitical fate of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, has been up for grabs. Mr. Zelensky has expressed interest in having his country join NATO, and many in Ukraine want their future to be oriented toward Western Europe. But Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, has been trying to bring it back into Moscow’s orbit.

In recent years, Russia has annexed the Crimea and invaded Ukraine’s eastern territory, where many Ukrainian citizens are ethnically Russian and where pro-Russian separatists are strong. In this portion of the phone call, Mr. Trump suggests Ukraine cannot count on Europe and casts aspersions on German assistance.

6. Trump portrayed Giuliani, his personal lawyer, as an envoy. 

The President: “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. The former ambassador from the United the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news I just want to let you know that.”

Here the president is pushing Mr. Zelensky to deal directly with Mr. Giuliani, his personal lawyer and close ally, while disparaging the United States’ Senate-confirmed ambassador.

Mr. Giuliani has repeatedly pushed conspiracy theories about the Bidens and encouraged the Ukrainian government to ramp up investigations into them. He told The New York Times in May that he was doing so “because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

At the time of this call, Mr. Giuliani had recently spoken on the phone with a top representative of the new Ukrainian president, and would soon meet him in person in Madrid. Mr. Giuliani has said he was acting on his own as a private citizen, but with the knowledge and assistance of the State Department.

Meanwhile, in Bizarro World, Trump and the right insists that he’s been totally exonerated.

I hope the media will resist the pressure it is about to receive from the right wing to see this as no big deal.  They are working feverishly to normalize this mafia-style shakedown of a foreign leader for personal gain.

Jesus .

You can read the whole transcript here.

The Latest Sparkly Thing 

by tristero

Damn straight it’s damning. But no one should be distracted by this single sparkly thing because it’s neither a verbatim record of what was said nor is it the entire story.

And that is my biggest concern, that the press will in its hive wisdom decide that it was damning enough and that now the story is complete. It is not.

The entire, original, complete, unredacted whistleblower complaint needs to be turned over to Congress. Now.

But the press coverage I’ve seen, with the exception of Maddow, still is minimizing the blatant lawbreaking that Trump, Barr, and Maguire are perpetrating. [SEE UPDATE 2 Below]

UPDATE: The Republicans desperately want reporting to stop with the transcript.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told reporters that this transcript doesn’t justify an impeachment. 

“From my point of view, to impeach any president over a phone call like this would be insane,” Graham said.

The GOP is trying to pretend the story begins and ends with a few remarks that have been reported in a paraphrased fashion.

Again, this non-transcript is just the latest sparkly thing. The press has to do its job. It simply must place this non-transcript in context and make it clear that it is just one of several pieces of the story. They have to aggressively report the lawless behavior of the the Trump administration in their attempt to suppress the whistleblower complaint. [Paragraph updated after posting to reflect the fact that transcript is in fact not a transcript.]

UPDATE 2: This is exactly what I mean by the press minimizing the story:

The release did not go far enough for many Democrats, who have demanded to see the full complaint about Mr. Trump’s actions lodged by a whistle-blower, which has not been shared with Congress.

Red, white and blue. And green.
by Tom Sullivan

That Republicans and Democrats live in different worlds is readily apparent. With Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement Tuesday that the House would launch a formal impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, that divide just got wider.

The red-blue divide in Congress is not only political and cultural, but economic. “Attitudes about race, gender, and cultural change played outsized roles in the 2016 Republican primaries and general election,” Michigan State political scientist Matt Grossman found in May 2018, “with economic circumstances playing a limited role.”

Yet the economic divide defines some of the way Trumpworld has diverged from the rest of the country, Thomas Edsall suggests in the New York Times. He cites a new study written by Mark Muro, a senior fellow at Brookings, and research analyst Jacob Whiton.

“Not only are red and blue America experiencing two different economies, but those economies are diverging fast,” they write. “In fact, radical change is transforming the two parties’ economies in real time.” Even as Republicans gained House districts between 2008 and 2018, the economies of red and blue districts have gone from near parity to rapid divergence:

With their output surging as a result of the big-city tilt of the decade’s “winner-take-most” economy, Democratic districts have seen their median household income soar in a decade—from $54,000 in 2008 to $61,000 in 2018. By contrast, the income level in Republican districts began slightly higher in 2008, but then declined from $55,000 to $53,000.

Underlying these changes have been eye-popping shifts in economic performance. Democratic-voting districts have seen their GDP per seat grow by a third since 2008, from $35.7 billion to $48.5 billion a seat, whereas Republican districts saw their output slightly decline from $33.2 billion to $32.6 billion.

A series of charts indicate partisan polarization “across demographic and economic indicators.” A host of them.

A set of psychology experiments indicate inducing a sense of vulnerability tends to make liberal subjects test more conservative. Priming subject to feel themselves invulnerable makes conservative subjects test more liberal.

Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, has studied authoritarian right-wing movements. He tells Edsall, a “combination of economic insecurity and cultural insecurity has contributed to the Trump vote.”

Edsall asks:

Why does Trump spend so much time and energy keeping people off kilter? He has no interest in increasing the sense of security of his base. To do so would only make these voters more receptive to Democratic appeals.

The relative material deprivation of many Republican voters that continued into the first two years of the Trump administration reinforces their sustained dedication to Trump, even as the regions of the country where they disproportionately live fall further behind.

Conversely, the exceptional success in 2018 of Democratic House candidates in well-to-do, highly educated, formerly Republican districts suggests that Democrats gain from prosperity, affirming the Inglehart thesis that liberal values thrive under conditions of economic security.

That suggests there is an untapped market for economic security in places experiencing prosperity in decline. Contra Trump’s habit of poking at sore spots, Democrats might expand their reach by addressing economic decline in red districts whose economic and cultural anxieties Trump merely exploits. Cultural divides and demographic shifts may be more intractable, but money? People understand that.

Why did he do it?

by digby

Somebody (Bill Barr? Rudy Giuliani? Sean Hannity?) gave him some bad information:

TRUMP: "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."

(Article 2 does not in fact empower the president to do whatever they want.) pic.twitter.com/qIFP1AbHw6— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 23, 2019

That’s only a figment of Unitary Executive monarchist like Barr’s imagination. Here’s what it actually says

Section 1
The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

The Congress may determine the Time of choosing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Section 2

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section 3

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Section 4
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

There’s nothing in there that even slightly suggests the president can do whatever he wants. Indeed, it says otherwise.

He hasn’t read the constitution and wouldn’t understand it if he did. Someone told him this. I wonder who.

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