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Month: October 2019

Trump’s Syria debacle not going over well

Published by digby on October 24, 2019

Trump’s Syria debacle not going over well

by digby

CNN poll:

Three-quarters of Americans are concerned about the situation in Syria and many see a reemergence of ISIS as likely following recent changes in US policy, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.


But the country is divided over how to proceed. Just over half (51%) think the US has a responsibility to remain involved in the ongoing conflict in Syria, while 43% do not. The poll finds a sharp partisan divide over whether America has a responsibility to remain involved in the conflict there: 72% of Democrats say yes, while 65% of Republicans say no.
Read the full poll results


Overall, three-quarters of the country (75%) is concerned about the situation in Syria, including 43% who are very concerned. Concern, too, is highly divided along partisan lines — 65% of Democrats say they’re very concerned. Less than half of independents (40%) and about a quarter (24%) of Republicans feel the same

President Donald Trump announced a withdrawal of all troops from Syria last week, but he reversed course on Wednesday, saying a “small number” will remain. The poll was conducted after the decision to remove them, but before he said some could stay. 

Around two-in-five (42%) Americans approved of Trump’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Syria, while half (50%) disapproved. Three-quarters of Republicans approved, while majorities of Democrats (79%) and independents (51%) disapproved. 
Many say that the change in US policy in Syria will likely result in a reemergence of ISIS — 69% say it’s likely, 23% not so likely. Democrats (85%) and those who disapprove of Trump’s performance as President (80%) are most likely to be say there will be a resurgence of ISIS, but that is also the view among a majority of Republicans (56%) and those who approve of Trump’s job performance (54%). 
A plurality think the US hasn’t been tough enough on Turkey in response to its military action in Syria, which targeted America’s former Kurdish allies. Overall, 42% feel the response has not been tough enough, while 33% think the response has been about right and 8% say it has been too tough. 
More broadly, Trump’s ratings for handling his job as the commander in chief — 40% approve and 57% disapprove — are around the same as his overall approval numbers. But there has been a 9-point increase in the share who disapprove of his work as commander in chief, driven by a 16-point increase in disapproval among independents and a 12-point increase in disapproval among Democrats. 
Three-in-ten (31%) say leaders from other countries have respect for Trump, 61% that they don’t. That’s an improvement for Trump compared with June of last year, when just 26% said Trump is respected by foreign leaders shortly after his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. That shift comes mostly from Republicans. Last year, 59% said the President was respected by other world leaders, 76% say so now. 
Despite the improvement, perceptions of whether Trump is respected by other world leaders remain worse than they ever were for former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton. The smallest share to say so about Obama in CNN polling was 39% in March 2014, it was 35% for George W. Bush in February 2005, and 41% for Clinton in September 1994.

Here’s your brain damaged president today:

There is a minuscule amount of oil in this area. It’s totally meaningless but Trump thinks he can slide out of this utter travesty by “offering” it to the Kurds (still no word on whether the Syrians who live here currently feel about that) he can make everyone happy with all the great bounty he’s providing and who knows? Maybe he’ll build a Trump Tower there!

It appears to me that someone in the administration told Trump there were some oil wells there in order to get him to agree to leave a few troops there. They know that the only thing he understands or cares about is money so “protecting” the oil from ISIS (as opposed to people) would be something he might respond to. When a leader has the mind of a greedy princeling you have to come up with such

Meanwhile, all the al Qaeda and ISIS fighters that Syria and Turkey have set loose on the area are posting videos of their atrocities which Trump apparently thinks is akin to some teenagers fighting in a parking lot.

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Crying burleymen

Published by digby on October 24, 2019

Crying burleymen

by digby

I wanted to share this. It’s such a perfect example of Trump’s fantasy world:

Update

Apropos of nothing, this …

Anyone else would have laughed and said he misspoke. But Trump would rather offer gibberish as an explanation than admit he made a mistake.

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Justice by zealots by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on October 24, 2019

Justice by zealots
by Tom Sullivan

“He’s the, ‘Screw you, Washington’ vote,” one auto racing enthusiast told BBC in November 2016. Voters who elevated Donald Trump to the White House wanted someone from the private sector, untainted by politics, not a politician.

They got one. Someone with no experience (or real interest) in government. Trump’s qualifications for president were inheriting a fortune, a talent for self-promotion, a reputation for bigotry, a stint on reality TV, and experience running a corrupt family business with a history of bankruptcies and shady dealings.

More engaged Republicans wanted a candidate who would elevate conservatives to the federal bench. No experience there is a plus now, too.

HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery observed, “[I]n his entire eight years in the White House, President Barack Obama didn’t nominate anyone to be a lifetime federal judge who earned a ‘not qualified’ ABA rating.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled this morning to vote on Trump’s fifth, Sarah Pitlyk, for appointment to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. “Ms. Pitlyk has never tried a case as lead or co-counsel, whether civil or criminal. She has never examined a witness,” the American Bar Association wrote in its letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dahlia Lithwick elaborates:

Like many nominees who have been advanced before her, Pitlyk’s primary legal work has consisted of attacks on abortion rights, tempered by attacks on constitutionally protected contraception rights, leavened by other attacks on abortion, and supported with her work defending David Daleiden—the author of a vicious smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, based on fake videos of Planned Parenthood officials appearing to negotiate the sale of aborted fetal body parts. These are all claims that were later debunked by a Republican-led House Oversight Committee. Criminal charges were brought against Daleiden. Yet Pitlyk’s biography proudly notes that she was “part of a team defending undercover journalists against civil lawsuits and criminal charges resulting from an investigation of illegal fetal tissue trafficking.” In last year’s Box v. Planned Parenthood, Pitlyk made the transparently false argument in an amicus brief that abortion and birth control are based in the eugenics movement and urged that: “The eugenic origins of the birth-control movement—the progenitor of the abortion rights movement—are well-established” and “Given its strategic location of abortion clinics near minority neighborhoods and its blatant marketing of abortion to the minority community, the abortion industry’s claims to bear no responsibility for the staggering numbers of minority abortions beggars belief.” That claim has been roundly debunked as false.

Lithwick provides paragraphs more to demonstrate, in short, Pitlyk is a zealot.

Undoing the damage the unqualified (and corrupt) chief executive has already done to the republic will take decades, if ever. Teamed with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, the damage Trump and Republicans have already done — and mean to yet — wreak on the independence of the American judiciary will last for the foreseeable future.

Lithwick continues:

It’s easy to say that none of this merits our concerted attention because, until and unless Democrats gain control of the Senate—something that is suddenly less impossible to imagine but still, a long shot—there is absolutely nothing that can be done to slow the smash-and-grab pace of judicial nominations, which trucks along ever faster as Mitch McConnell gives up on doing any legislative work at all. Democratic presidential candidates aren’t talking about the decimation of the federal bench enough, even as Donald Trump has now seated one-quarter of the federal appeals courts and one-seventh of the federal district courts. My friend Elie Mystal is correct to say that there is no point in even talking about the Democrats’ plans for the Supreme Court, unless they have plans to thwart Mitch McConnell, because: “If you don’t have a plan to get your plan past McConnell, then you really don’t have a plan—you have a wish.”

Like their party’s avaricious leader, Republicans in Congress and in the states mean to stuff their pockets with whatever goodies they can before Humpty Dumpty crashes and burns, and their prospects for enduring power with him. This is why I hammer away at public fixation on the presidential contest. The real action is in the states. GOP gerrymandering gives the party representation in the House disproportionate to its support in the states. The Senate, by its design, gives Republicans disproportionate representation to their support nationally. “A majority of the Senate now represents 18% of the country’s population,” wrote Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report in August 2018. For the most part, that majority represent smallish, red states.

McConnell denied Barack Obama a Supreme Court seat. Team Trump means to deny anyone not of their tribe a fair and competent hearing before the federal judiciary, basically, for the rest of our lives. President [your favorite Democrat here] won’t have a prayer of doing anything about that so long as Republicans control the U.S. Senate. Should McConnell lose his seat, but Republicans retain the Senate in 2020, the Senate might get marginally less acrid. It is hard to imagine anyone who replaces him being as scruple-free. (Not that the party is not up to the challenge.) But it is worth helping him out the door next year and weakening his majority if not actually breaking it.

Trump calls Republicans “human scum”

Published by digby on October 24, 2019

Trump calls Republicans “human scum”

by digby

Now that some Republicans are speaking out, he’s being much more explicit about his demands for 100%, unwavering, blind, loyalty to him personally. Not that it wasn’t before, but it’s escalating:

Human scum? Ouch.

It’s not just about owning the libs anymore, is it? It’s about owning anyone who doesn’t worship Dear Leader.

The stupid is running strong with House GOPers today

Published by digby on October 24, 2019

The stupid is running strong with House GOPers today

by digby


In case you were out and didn’t hear about their latest antics:

Notably, according to a list provided by Gaetz’s office of the Republicans who RSVP’d to join the protest, 12 of them are members of the Oversight or Foreign Affairs committees — including Rep. Jim Jordan, the ranking member on the Oversight Committee — meaning they have been allowed to sit in on all depositions held in the SCIF in recent weeks. A spokesperson for Rep. Ken Buck, who is on the list and serves on the Foreign Affairs Committee, however, later clarified that he did not attend, though he tweeted in support.

Rep. Fred Keller, an Oversight member who joined the protest, “was acting in solidarity with those members of Congress who are not allowed in the hearings, to review testimony, or read transcripts of this secret inquiry. … [He] believes the way this inquiry is being conducted is unfair and it needs to stop,” according to a spokesperson.

President Donald Trump knew in advance that Republicans planned to occupy the space and supported their plan, “saying he wanted the transcripts released because they will exonerate him,” Bloomberg reported, citing four sources familiar with the conversation.

The members went into the SCIF at about 9:45 a.m. Wednesday, passing Capitol Police officers who guard the door. Some of the members brought in cellphones (which are not allowed in the secure space). Most of them emerged around 2:15 p.m. ahead of a scheduled House vote, but Gaetz said as he left that several Republicans were still inside. By about 3 p.m., the Republicans were gone.

Asked if the group would continue to storm the private depositions, Gaetz wouldn’t say, but said they would “continue to advocate for transparency.”

Here’s the extra-stupid part:

The protest Wednesday is the latest in a line of complaints from GOP lawmakers, who have argued that they are being cut out of the impeachment inquiry and that Democrats are holding hearings in secret. That’s not the case.

While the hearings have not been public, they have not been “secret.” Members of both parties on the committees holding the hearings — Oversight, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs — have been able to attend the depositions and ask questions.

The Republicans in the depositions include Mark Meadows and Devin Nunes. In fact, 42 Republicans are authorized to hear every single word of the depositions and ask questions.

So, the whole thing is ridiculous.

h/t to Spocko

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Trump’s Ukrainian goombahs are claiming executive privilege

Published by digby on October 23, 2019

Trump’s Ukrainian goombahs are claiming executive privilege

by digby

One of Rudy’s Ukrainian biddies was in court this morning:

One of the two indicted associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Wednesday tied the case to the president himself, saying that some of the evidence gathered in the investigation could be subject to executive privilege.

The unusual argument was raised by a defense lawyer in federal court in Manhattan as the two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pleaded not guilty to federal charges that they had made illegal campaign contributions to political candidates in the United States in exchange for potential influence.

Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman have become unexpected figures in the events at the heart of the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, having played a role in helping Mr. Giuliani’s efforts on behalf of President Trump to dig up information in Ukraine that could damage former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a prospective Democratic challenger.

Mr. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing but has acknowledged that he and the two men worked with officials in Ukraine to collect damaging information about the American ambassador to Ukraine and other targets of Mr. Trump and his allies, including Mr. Biden and his younger son, Hunter.

We knew that one of the lawyers, former Trump attorney John Dowd, has said they were on Trump’s legal team which was extremely dubious. But I don’t think anyone expected they would claim executive privilege. That really takes some chutzpah.

There’s more to this. They are involved with Rudy and the indicted Russian mobster Dmitry Firtash as well.

And it appears that they have been involved for quite some time:

The private Instagram page of a Rudy Giuliani associate accused of a conspiracy to funnel foreign money into elections show that he also had regular access to the President and his inner circle.

The Wall Street Journal sifted through the contents of Lev Parnas’ instagram page, which is not viewable to the general public, on Monday.

Parnas poses with President Donald Trump in multiple pictures on the account. One photo shows a thank you noted signed by the President and first lady Melania Trump.

Another post shows Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman at the White House with the President and Vice President Mike Pence. One entry shows the President’s legal team the day after Attorney General Bill Barr published his four-page summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

“Congratulations team trump !!!” the caption reads, per the Journal.

Parnas and Fruman were arrested on campaign finance charges earlier this month, accused of a plot to funnel nearly $1 million of a foreign national’s money to Republican causes. The two were also allegedly involved in hiding the source of a $325,000 donation to the well-known pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.

Several photos show Parnas and Fruman with Giuliani, including at campaign events around the country. There’s also another photo from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) 2018 victory party. One entry even appears to show that Giuliani and Parnas took a private tour of the fire-damaged Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.

The Instagram account also shows Parnas in Madrid with Giuliani when Giuliani took an August meeting with a close adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Questions about that meeting and others now fuel the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s actions.

Attorney John Dowd wrote in a recent letter to Congress that Parnas and Fruman “assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump.” They’ve also been represented by Giuliani, Dowd wrote.

There was a large gap in Parnas’ instagram page when the Journal was able to access it. The Giuliani associate had photos dated from 2015, but none from 2016 and 2017. The photos began again in mid-2018.

Among the 2015 photos is one of Parnas and his business partner David Correia, the co-founder of the cyber security venture known as “Fraud Guarantee.” Giuliani has said the firm paid him $500,000 for consulting work he began last year. Correia also faces charges in Parnas’ case, to which he’s pleaded not guilty.

Also in the photo: The President’s ex-wife, Ivana Trump. Parnas captioned the photo, “Fraud Gaurantee pow wow.”

This piece in the Washington Post goes into Rudy’s tangled Ukrainian web:

The first time Parnas and Fruman were looped into the Ukraine situation, though, was when the House committee in charge of the Trump impeachment inquiry reached out to them for information about their work. Those requests were elevated to subpoenas after their attorney, John Dowd, informed the committee that neither witness would be able to provide the requested information.

In that letter, Dowd — himself once part of Trump’s legal team — established a specific relationship between Parnas, Fruman and Giuliani: Fruman and Parnas assisted Giuliani in his work for Trump while also enjoying his representation in their own business interests. The neat effect? They had attorney-client privilege with Giuliani and, potentially, with Trump. (Dowd recently stopped representing Fruman.)

These mobsters are being protected as part of Trump’s legal team.

Think about that for a minute.

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Trump celebrates the ethnic cleansing

Published by digby on October 23, 2019

Trump celebrates the ethnic cleansing

by digby

And claims victory over the oil wells:

Here’s a little corrective on that grotesque display:

NBC correspondent Richard Engel on Wednesday lashed out at President Donald Trump for portraying the Middle East as “sand and blood” to “confuse” Americans about the U.S. retreat from Syria.

In a statement from the White House on Thursday, the president announced that he was lifting all sanctions on Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised to enact a “permanent” ceasefire against the Kurds.

“Let someone else fight over this long bloodstained sand,” the president said. At another point, he described the Middle East as “tribal.”

Following the president’s remarks, Engel appeared outraged.

“Ethnic cleansing is a crime against humanity,” the correspondent explained. “By witnessing it, by being in a position to stop it but being order not to stop it, [U.S. special forces] could open themselves up to accusations that they were even aiding and abetting.’

He continued: “This was a very specific mission that was to fight against ISIS with a very small number of elite U.S. special operations forces. They were working, they had captured and killed tens of thousands of ISIS fighters. And then abruptly, for reasons that maybe we’ll know one day, President Trump has this call with Erdoğan and he decides to let Erdoğan, let Turkey invade and blow up the entire project.”

Engel noted that Trump was wrong to expect a few special forces to stay behind to takeover oilfields in the area.

“I don’t think he has any idea of what these special operations forces do,” Engel explained. “They don’t go around with buckets and pick up oil and fly them in helicopters back to the United States. They hunt down ISIS fighters. They do very specific missions. They look for hostages. That’s what they’ve been doing here.”

Engel also blasted the president for stereotyping the Middle East to “confuse” Americans.

“President Trump was trying to confuse the whole American people who think that the Middle East is a big just giant war zone, sand and blood,” he observed. “And he’s dwelling on these memories that people have, angry memories about Iraq, when you had lots of young men and women, hundreds of thousands of them cycling through Iraq and Afghanistan.”

“This is not that,” Engel insisted. “This was a specific counter-ISIS operation that was working. And what the world is going to see is the United States betrayed an ally. That is the only message that will be received out of this internationally. And that Vladimir Putin sticks with his friends.”

If that isn’t bad enough, there’s this:

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What authoritarianism?

Published by digby on October 23, 2019

What authoritarianism?

by digby

They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore:

It may be stupid but recall that they also believe that impeachment is illegal. And that it’s fine to extort foreign government to help sabotage your political rivals and stop people from voting.

So basically, a president is immune from all accountability, even including an investigation, even free elections.

Well, I should amend that. This applies to Republican presidents only. But if this holds I’m going to guess there won’t be any7 other kind.

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Impeachment support grows

Published by digby on October 23, 2019

Impeachment support grows

by digby

Oh look:

In a Quinnipiac University poll released early Wednesday, 55 percent of U.S. voters support the impeachment inquiry, a jump of 4 percentage points from Quinnipiac’s previous poll, released just last week, while 43 percent disapprove. For the first time, a plurality of voters, 48 percent, want Trump impeached and removed from office while 46 percent disagree; last week, those numbers were reversed.

There is a wide partisan split in the results, but 58 percent of independents support the House impeachment inquiry and 49 percent want him booted from office, versus 41 percent who don’t. As support for impeaching Trump rose, his job approval number dropped to 38 percent, with disapproval at 58 percent, tied for the lowest net approval of his presidency. In last week’s poll, Trump’s approval rating was 41 percent to 54 percent disapproval. 

A brutal 66 percent of women disapprove of Trump’s job performance. 

Here’s the partisan breakdown:

In today’s poll, Democrats approve of the inquiry 93 – 7 percent and independent voters approve 58 – 37 percent, while Republicans disapprove of the inquiry 88 – 10 percent. In last week’s poll, Democrats approved of the inquiry 90 – 8 percent, and independents were divided with a 50 – 45 percent approval, and Republicans disapproved 90 – 9 percent.

Reuters-Ipsos shows support surging among Independents as well.But that’s important.

CNN also has a new poll showing only 50% support impeachment, but that’s up substantially from where it was:

According to new CNN/SSRS poll released Tuesday showing support for Trump’s impeachment and removal at 50 percent, a new high. This is up three points since CNN asked the question last month in the days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) officially announced the impeachment inquiry; that September poll already saw a six point jump in impeachment support since May. Forty-three percent said they don’t support impeachment in the new poll.

In that poll Republicans are circling the wagon, opposing impeachment in greater numbers than before.

I think the idea that 20 Republicans will cross over and vote for impeachment is a delusional pipe dream. But it’s possible that a few swing-state Senators could nonetheless vote for it if they find that polling in their home state has moved in that direction. But the dynamic is very fluid and I don’t think anyone can predict how it’s going to go.

I remain of the opinion that torturing Trump with rolling revelations and public hearings over the next few months to create a complete record of all of his impeachable offenses is the right strategy. But who knows? Maybe getting this whole unpleasantness over with quickly won’t give him time to bounce back in the polls and eke out a victory in the fall.  I sure hope so.

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Ukraine proves the Russia charges

Published by digby on October 23, 2019

Ukraine proves the Russia charges 

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

I hear a lot of pundits and analysts insisting that the Democrats have finally decided to move on impeachment because the Ukraine scandal is so easy to understand. They also insist that all the earlier evidence of Donald Trump’s lawbreaking, such as the 10 obstruction of justice charges in the Mueller report and the ongoing violations of the emoluments clause, should be set aside as articles of impeachment because they are simply too confusing. That is nonsense. It’s the same story.

It’s true that the notorious phone call and the testimony of the parties in the Ukraine scandal show a simple quid pro quo. But all the Rudy Giuliani shenanigans with people whose names most of us can’t easily pronounce and Russian mobsters and secret meetings in exotic world capitals is just as crazy as the Russia investigation. It even features some of the same players, such as former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The reason the Ukraine scandal finally pushed the Democrats to open an impeachment inquiry isn’t that it’s unique. It’s because of how closely it mirrors what we already know about Trump and Russia in 2016.

Immediately after Attorney General William Barr released his misleading letter describing the Mueller report, Trump and his fixer Rudy Giuliani went back to work doing exactly what Trump had been suspected of doing all along: inviting foreign interference in an American presidential election. This time Trump and his accomplices had the full force of the U.S. government to bargain with and they just went for it. When the whistleblower came forward, it was as if the Democrats and much of the public collectively said, “You’ve got to be kidding — he did it again?”

If anything, this Ukraine business makes it clear that the suspicions raised but unproven in the first volume of the Mueller report were likely true, and that the president’s repeated obstruction of justice during the Mueller probe was remarkably effective. Working with a foreign government to smear an opponent is by now a patented Trump strategy.

What we know about the bombshell testimony delivered on Tuesday by the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, has brought the Trump method into sharp focus. According to Taylor’s opening statement, which reportedly drew gasps from people in the room, Trump was at the very center of this crude plot to strong-arm Ukraine’s new president into smearing former Vice President Joe Biden and doing his best to exonerate the Russians for the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Taylor began his dramatic recitation of his tenure in Kyiv by revealing that he was personally asked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to return to his former job in Ukraine (where he had served from 2006 to 2009) after former ambassador Marie Yovanovich was forced out by Giuliani and Trump. What happened after that is shocking, even for those who already knew the outlines of the story.

If there was any doubt that Trump demanded a quid pro quo in that notorious phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Taylor put that to rest. He started his job at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv — technically as interim chargé d’affaires — in June of this year and immediately found that Ukraine policy was running on two tracks, one of them official and the other “highly irregular.” That one was led by Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, with the assistance of U.S. ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, special Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry (who actually called themselves “the Three Amigos.”)

At first they seemed to be heading in the same direction but by July Taylor knew that something was up. Zelensky was desperate for a meeting with Trump, preferably at the White House, and Taylor learned that it was “conditioned on the investigations of Burisma [the company that employed Hunter Biden] and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.”

Taylor added important new information about that demand:

Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling the Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations — in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, “everything” was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky “in a public box” by making a public statement about ordering such investigations.

Taylor was told that Trump believed “President Zelenskyy should want to do this himself.”

That has the ring of truth, doesn’t it? After all, Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey largely because the latter refused to make a public statement saying that the president was not under investigation. It is standard operating procedure for Trump to demand such blatant acts of submission. It makes you wonder how many other people have buckled under similar pressure.

As it became obvious that Trump was withholding nearly $400 million in military aid in exchange for these public statements and bogus investigations, Taylor became even more alarmed. He said that both Sondland and Volcker at different times explained that “when a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.” From Taylor’s opening statement:

I argued to both that the explanation made no sense: the Ukrainians did not “owe” President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was “crazy,” as I had said in my text message to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker on September 9.

Taylor backed up the testimony of former National Security Council official Fiona Hill, who has testified that former national security adviser John Bolton didn’t want anything to do with what he called Giuliani’s “drug deal” and opposed the phone call between Trump and Zelensky because it would be “a disaster.” Bolton told Taylor to inform Pompeo of his concerns, which he did, in a detailed cable. He never heard back.

Taylor’s testimony, combined with that of all the others who were involved in Ukraine policy last summer, shows that after successfully obstructing the Mueller investigation and rendering the prosecutors unable to find enough evidence to prove a conspiracy in 2016, Trump believed he could get away with anything. The frightening part is that if it hadn’t been for the as-yet-unidentified whistleblower, he very likely would have.

We know that Trump currently has his attorney general running all over the world looking for evidence outside the usual law enforcement channels to prove the Russia investigation never should have happened. How many other “irregular” projects do you suppose he’s been running? I suspect the answer lies in that super-secret vault with all the other phone calls nobody is allowed to see.