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"tapped a gusher"
The White House is tense — and some aides are frantic — as Democrats on Capitol Hill tap a gusher of revelations that paint an increasingly vivid portrait of President Trump's unrestrained conduct of foreign policy.
Why it matters: Democrats are moving fast. Letters to potential witnesses reveal the breadth and speed at which the inquiry is unfolding, a stark contrast to the Mueller report which stretched over nearly two years.
The probe now reaches into the Pentagon, with Democrats sending a letter demanding the appearance of Acting Assistant Defense Secretary for International Security Affairs Kathryn Wheelbarger.
Fiona Hill, Trump's former National Security Council senior director for Europe and Russia, testified yesterday that then-national security adviser John Bolton told her to notify the NSC's chief lawyer about a rogue effort by EU ambassador Gordon Sondland, Rudy Giuliani and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, the N.Y. Times reports.
"I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up," Bolton instructed Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to the Times.
"Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up," Hill, during 9+ hours behind closed doors at the House Intelligence Committee, quoted Bolton as saying.
Some White House officials are demoralized, amid unusual chaos and uncertainty, even for this West Wing, according to a former top Trump official.
Is Kent another Soros spy?
Laura Cooper from the Defense Department is testifying on Friday. I think this one could be especially interesting.
At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, House Democrats tell Axios that every witness has bolstered the case against Trump, with what Democrats contend is little contradictory evidence. Our takeaways:
If everyone agrees to appear, Democrats will have interviewed 11 Trump administration officials by the end of next week. The people and agencies being called to Capitol Hill have now expanded to the White House Office of Management and Budget acting director Russ Vought, the Defense Department and Giuliani associates.
And the daylong appearances by Hill — as well as former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker, and former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch — show House investigators are being incredibly thorough in their questioning.
Democratic committee sources say Pelosi still maintains that their investigation needs to wrap by the end of the year.
Final bit of intrigue: Dems tell Axios that this week's depositions are private partly to prevent other witnesses from coordinating or aligning their testimony with what others say.
But they plan to release many transcripts to the public in the future.
They seem to have a much better plan than in the Mueller investigation when they mistakenly left everything to him.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Dems have also been much better at messaging in terms of feeding the press some really juicy stuff. The Yovanovitch opening statement was just devastating. The Bolton quotes are gold. They are controlling the flow of information in a really effective way. And chosen one's defenders have a legitimate complaint there. At some point all of the transcripts need to be released. The sooner the better.
Is there any law against a private citizen running a "shadow foreign policy" for personal benefit if it's on the order of the President? And what if this secret foreign policy undercuts the official foreign policy?
No law as far as I know. Perfectly legal!
So Rudy works for free for chosen one. He also has other clients who pay him a lot. Some of those clients have interests that intersect in various ways with chosen one's interests. It is a bad look. But technically it could all be legal.
One of the most dramatic moments she described came in the July 10 meeting in Mr. Bolton’s office that included Mr. Sondland; Kurt D. Volker, then the special envoy for Ukraine; Rick Perry, the energy secretary; and two Ukrainian officials.
The purpose of the meeting was to talk about technical assistance to Ukraine’s national security council. The Ukrainians were eager to set up a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky, who was elected on a promise to clean up corruption and resolve the country’s five-year war with Russian-armed separatists.
Mr. Bolton was trying to not commit to a meeting, according to Ms. Hill’s testimony. Mr. Sondland got agitated, Ms. Hill testified, and let out that there was an agreement with Mr. Mulvaney that there would be a meeting if Ukraine opened up the investigations the White House was seeking.
Mr. Bolton immediately ended the meeting abruptly. As the group moved toward the door, Mr. Sondland said he wanted them to come down to the ward room next to the White House mess to discuss next steps. Mr. Bolton pulled Ms. Hill aside to instruct her to go to the ward room and report to him what they talked about.
When she got downstairs, Mr. Sondland was talking with the Ukrainians and specifically mentioned Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that had Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, on its board.
Ms. Hill testified that she asked Mr. Sondland why he would be discussing this in front of their Ukrainian colleagues and tried to shuffle them out of the room and break things up.
At one point, Mr. Sondland mentioned Mr. Giuliani, who was involved in the discussions about a possible meeting between the two presidents.
Ms. Hill went back upstairs and reported the encounter to Mr. Bolton, who promptly instructed her to report the issue to John A. Eisenberg, a deputy White House counsel and the chief legal adviser for the National Security Council, along with his line about the drug deal, which he meant metaphorically.
Mr. Eisenberg told Ms. Hill he would report it up his chain of command, which would typically mean Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. It was uncertain what he did at that point. But when the C.I.A. whistle-blower later filed his complaint, the agency’s chief lawyer called Mr. Eisenberg at the White House. After several discussions over the following week, they decided the accusations had a reasonable basis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/u...testimony.html
https://youtu.be/kMqxq9BcBLc
Oh really, I would love to hear more about this information Googliani said was given to him. Pretty sure he already admitted it came from foreign nationals. I expect the revelations of who gave him that information and what their motivations were will be the death blow in this case. Lutsenko is a prime suspect. He was butt hurt about his guy losing. Googliani has been pimping accusations he made publicly about Biden that he has since walked back. His 2 goons recently arrested are my other prime suspects here.
He tried submitting this information to the State Department who apparently thought it was bullcrap and wouldnt touch it with a 10 foot pole.
Rudy and chosen one worked hand in hand to generate disinformation on Biden and people who got in the way such as Yovanovitch. We shouldn't lose sight of who the ultimate targets of this disinformation campaign were: American voters.
chosen one abused his office by trying to pressure a vulnerable country to manufacture disinformation he and Rudy wanted to weaponize in the elections...a variation on a theme we've seen before
It came from that Russian mob guy hiding out from the US Justice Dept. in Vienna, where his henchmen were heading when they were arrested and where Rudy was going in 2 days. This guy has been quoted saying that he gave Rudy "what he wanted to hear", thinking it might help his with his situation.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/03...achment-biden/
Wow, not sure how I missed that. This is far worse for Googliani and Trump than I thought. I have a hard time seeing Republicans sticking by Trump when this all is publicly revealed in a Senate trial.
i love the "dems can't win elections/voters on the issues" nonsense.
the dem won the 2016 popular vote by 3 million votes.
they won the House in 2018 by 9.7 million votes.
if not for gerrymandering and an extremely outdated electoral college system, the republican party would get walloped in every single election.
a very good majority of the country favors and votes dem. their policies are very popular when labels (such as "socialist") are stripped off them. it's not a surprise, either, as these policies aim to benefit the majority and not only the richest in the country.
it's why republicans fight dirty to make it harder for all citizens to vote. if every citizen voted, they'd never hold majorities again.
but yeah, tell me more about how the people want republicans in charge.
I like how they keep saying this impeachment stuff is going to help Trump win reelection. Then why are they trying to stop it?
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics...orida-governor
And pictures surface of "the" Florida Governor with Googlianis Ukranian criminals. With the Butina stuff there sure seems to be a lot of foreigners from Russia involved with Republcans. Someone should probably investigate that......
https://mobile.twitter.com/SethAbram...547495936?s=09
Parnas may have worked with the Trump organization since 1987.....cant really find much on this. I assume he is refrencing a Washington Post article. That's right around the time Trump first went to Russia. Also around the time he started sniping at Presidents with his comments. He used to **** all over Reagan like he did to Obama.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/polit...ent/index.html
Googliani already parting ways with his lawyer. Interesting tidbit at the end, Googliani appears to be broke. He had to take a 100k loan from another lawyer. Just makes his situation of working for free all the more suspect.