Impeachment

[JJ Slim]

And all of this is for naught if it doesn't convince more people to get out and vote. 73.6M people voted against Donald Trump in the last election, but he still won with only 63M votes. It is critical to get more people to vote if we want to rid ourselves of the racist grifter sitting in the oval office.

Just to be clear 71,2M people voted against Hillary Clinton and she lost with only 65.8M votes. I'm not disputing what you are saying, in fact it is true. But my statement is also true. It just depends on how you want to portray it.

Hillary - 65.8M
Donald - 63M
All others - 8.3M

[Indy]

And all of this is for naught if it doesn't convince more people to get out and vote. 73.6M people voted against Donald Trump in the last election, but he still won with only 63M votes. It is critical to get more people to vote if we want to rid ourselves of the racist grifter sitting in the oval office.

Just to be clear 71,2M people voted against Hillary Clinton and she lost with only 65.8M votes. I'm not disputing what you are saying, in fact it is true. But my statement is also true. It just depends on how you want to portray it.

Hillary - 65.8M
Donald - 63M
All others - 8.3M

I am glad you admit that it is true Trump is a racist and a grifter.

[Mori Chu]

The dismissal of this lawsuit implies that folks like Bolton must testify in the impeachment trial.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/politics ... index.html

[Mori Chu]

Lev Parnas, a Ukranian official and ex-associate of Rudy Giuliani, wants to testify before Congress and hand over the contents of his iPhone.

Federal authorities arrested Parnas and his associate Igor Fruman at Dulles Airport in October and charged them with conspiring to illegally funnel money from a foreign national into an American election. For many months before their arrest, the two worked with Giuliani to investigate allegations about former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, who served for a time on the board of a scandal-dogged Ukrainian energy company.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lev-parna ... -committee

[Mori Chu]

This is a fairly shocking NYT article. It says that Trump himself was personally directing the command to freeze aid to Ukraine over objections of several of his subordinates. Makes it clear that they knew it was wrong and that the President himself was behind the effort.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/29/us/p ... y-aid.html

[Nodack]

The dismissal of this lawsuit implies that folks like Bolton must testify in the impeachment trial.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/30/politics ... index.html

A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit that former Trump national security official Charles Kupperman had filed challenging a House subpoena for him to testify in the impeachment inquiry after the chamber withdrew their subpoena.

Judge Richard Leon wrote in a 14-page opinion that there is no expectation that the House will reissue the subpoena, therefore the lawsuit is unnecessary.

It sounds like the House subpoenaed the guy and he filed a lawsuit to stop the subpoena. The judge threw out the lawsuit because the House withdrew their subpoena making the lawsuit moot.

I am not sure if that means Bolton has to testify.

[Indy]

And the Senate majority determines the rules of the "trial." I would be surprised to see 51 senators vote to call witnesses, and then another 51 vote with Bolton as a witness.

[Mori Chu]

Former WH NatSec Advisor John Bolton says he will testify if subpoenad by the Senate. Claims he has new information not previously discovered in House impeachment trial.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51012941

[Nodack]

A subpoena from this Senate?

[Mori Chu]

Presumably it would be a House subpoena from the impeachment committee. Now that Bolton has indicated willingness to testify, he has shown that his conversations were not under executive privilege and can be subpoenad.

[Indy]

Presumably it would be a House subpoena from the impeachment committee. Now that Bolton has indicated willingness to testify, he has shown that his conversations were not under executive privilege and can be subpoenad.

The vote has already happened in the House. If they are going to force him to show up in the House, they probably need a new article of impeachment to be brought. That will not happen.

[Nodack]

Russians hack energy company that played major role in Trump Ukraine scandal

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/politics ... index.html

CNN)Russian military hackers have successfully infiltrated the Ukrainian gas company at the heart of the impeachment drama surrounding President Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden and his family, according to cybersecurity researchers.

Employees of the gas company, Burisma Holdings, were tricked into giving up their computer credentials by a sophisticated network of fake websites set up by Russian military intelligence, the GRU, said Area 1, an online security firm.

[Mori Chu]

You better believe Russia is going to release stolen / leaked information to try to hurt Biden if he ends up being the Dem nominee. Russia and Trump have consistently acted in each other's interest, whether you want to call it "collusion" or not. They know that having him re-elected as President is useful for them.

[Nodack]

The House hands over their Impeachment Docs to the Senate tomorrow and have added all the evidence gathered from Lev, one of Rudy’s two goons who was working on the Ukraine scheme that decided to cooperate after he was arrested. The evidence is pretty damning. They were tracking the Ukrainian ambassador and from their text messages it sounds like they were considering taking her out. Somehow the threat was figured out and she was ordered out of the country for her own safety.

Trump says he has no idea who Lev is but they have pictures of him and Trump in at least eight different pictures including a picture of a meeting with Trump and Levs name cards next to each other.

Other docs show Rudy’s notes about getting the Ukrainian president to announce an investigation into the Bidens. There are over 60 pages of this stuff.

https://www.axios.com/schiff-lev-parnas ... 4c67c.html



Parnas also received messages from Hyde, who referred to Yovanovitch as a “bitch.” Hyde is now running for a U.S. House seat in Connecticut.

After texting about the ambassador, Hyde gave Parnas detailed updates that suggested he was watching her. In one text, Hyde wrote: “She’s talked to three people. Her phone is off. Her computer is off.” He said she was under heavy security and “we have a person inside.”

Hyde at one point texted Parnas that ″they are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” and “guess you can do anything in Ukraine with money ... is what I was told.”

Parnas texted back: “lol.”

[Indy]

the text messages are chilling.

[Mori Chu]

I just came here to post about this. This is stunning. They were following the ambassador around and talking about who knows what else. It sure has the tone to imply that they intended to be a threat to her physical safety in some way. They talk about how they can't do what they want to do yet because she has Secret Service detail protecting her at the moment; that implies to me that they want physical access to her. Terrifying. I am amazed that she had the courage to testify in the impeachment hearing despite knowing that she and her family might be in danger from people both inside and outside our country.

[Nodack]

WOW!

I just watched the Lev Parnas interview with Rachel Maddow. He knows everything and spilled his guts and it’s even worse than you think. Everybody knew everything from the top down. The Hyde guy? Parnus says he’s just some drunk guy with a big mouth that Parnus didn’t take seriously. Parnus apologized to the Ukrainian Ambassador that was fired for the way he bad mouthed her.

Did Trump know what was going on? Of course.



Did Pence know? Yes.



What about the Hyde guy?



Oh yeah, what about Nunes? What did he know?

[Nodack]

The notes were Levs. He was on the phone with Giuliani and Giuliani was giving him orders that Lev was writing on stationary from where he was staying in Vienna.

He says Bolton knows everything and has a story to tell and that he would let Bolton tell it.

Part two of her interview comes out tomorrow night. Can you say Pompeo and Barr.

[Mori Chu]

The Parnas documents and testimony are stunning. One should not believe everything he says without further verification and evidence, of course; he seems to be a sketchy character who directly helped the Trump regime commit crimes and foul acts. And it's clear that he is acting at least partly out of self-interest and self-preservation rather than out of some true concern for the country or the law. But his testimony is quite in line with a lot of other testimony and evidence we've seen so far, and this is perhaps the first occurrence of somebody inside the malfeasance "flipping" and coming out to testify what happened and how it happened. So it is quite significant.

I just don't see how you can look at all of this evidence and still claim that there's no reason to have an impeachment trial and no reason to call witnesses. Bill Clinton spent months on trial for lying about a blowjob, but this isn't worth investigating properly?

[Nodack]

Trump could shoot the Pope in front of the Senate and they say it was a nothingburger.