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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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National Security Council official set to testify in impeachment inquiry is leaving his post

By Carol D. Leonnig, John Hudson and Reis Thebault | Published October 30 at 7:24 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 30, 2019 |

Tim Morrison, who is set to testify in the House impeachment inquiry about what he has witnessed as the senior National Security Council official handling Russian affairs, is leaving his White House post, according to people familiar with his plans.

Morrison has been on the job for about 15 months, having joined the security council during John Bolton’s tenure as national security adviser. Morrison could be a key witness in the inquiry into President Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

“After more than a year of service at the National Security Council, Mr. Morrison has decided to pursue other opportunities — and has been considering doing so for some time,” a senior administration official said in a statement Wednesday. “We wish him well.”

Morrison’s departure was first reported by NPR.

William B. Taylor Jr., acting ambassador to Ukraine, testified last week that Morrison told him that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. envoy to the European Union, relayed to a top Ukraine aide that the country wouldn’t receive military aid money until the Ukrainian president agreed to pursue an investigation into Joe Biden’s son.

Morrison’s departure from the National Security Council removes an important vestige of Bolton’s tenure in the administration. Bolton handpicked Morrison to join the NSC because of his shared opposition to arms control agreements, which both men view as an unacceptable constraint on American power.

He is a staunch foe of nuclear nonproliferation advocates who view arms control accords as the only workable means to reducing the risk of nuclear war and managing defense budgets.

During his tenure, Morrison oversaw the U.S. withdrawal from the Reagan-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and continued to look for ways the U.S. could pull out of other nuclear accords.

This summer, Morrison lobbied Republican offices to urge them not to support an amendment to a defense authorization bill encouraging the administration to extend a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty known as New START, which expires in February 2021.

Anne Gearan contributed to this report.

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Ex-Rep. Livingston, player in Clinton impeachment, emerges as character in inquiry of Trump

By Mike DeBonis and Anu Narayanswamy | Published October 30 at 8:15 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 30, 2019 |

A pivotal but largely forgotten player in the last presidential impeachment effort suddenly made an unexpected appearance Wednesday in the latest one, this time in a radically different role.

On one of the most tumultuous days in congressional history — Dec. 19, 1998 — days before he was expected to claim the speaker’s gavel, Rep. Bob Livingston (R-La.) admitted to a extramarital affair and announced his resignation hours before the House voted to impeach President Bill Clinton for conduct related to Clinton’s own affair.

Now a prominent Washington lobbyist, Livingston has emerged nearly 21 years later as a behind-the-scenes player in the impeachment investigation of President Trump, allegedly urging at least one Trump administration official to oust the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine whose removal is a key episode in the probe.

Livingston’s role in pushing out the envoy was first revealed in testimony delivered Wednesday by State Department official Catherine M. Croft.

Livingston did not respond to messages seeking comment sent through his firm, The Livingston Group. Lobbying records indicate that Livingston has worked for multiple entities with ties to former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who lost a presidential bid earlier this year.

Croft’s prepared testimony portrays Livingston as a player in a multifront effort to force the ouster of the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, and install a new envoy more sympathetic to Trump. Yovanovitch was ultimately removed in June, and her removal is among several key episodes in the impeachment investigation, which is probing allegations that Trump tied the delivery of U.S. military aid to Ukraine investigating certain political targets, including the son of former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Croft describes receiving “multiple calls” from Livingston urging Yovanovitch’s firing during her time detailed to the National Security Council as a director from August 2015 to July 2017.

“He characterized Ambassador Yovanovitch as an ‘Obama holdover’ and associated [her] with George Soros,” she said in a written statement obtained by The Washington Post. “It was not clear to me at the time — or now — at whose direction or at whose expense Mr. Livingston was seeking the removal of Ambassador Yovanovitch.”

Croft said she relayed those contacts to her supervisor, NSC senior director Fiona Hill and George Kent, a senior State Department official. Both have already testified in the House inquiry. Croft testified she is “not aware of any action that was taken in response.”

Livingston’s motivation for wanting Yovanovitch removed is not fully known. But according to lobbying records, Livingston has a key business relationship with Tymoshenko, a gas mogul who has been on a years-long quest to regain political power in Ukraine after she lost the prime ministership in 2010. Part of that quest has been to build relationships in the U.S. with key government officials to burnish her reputation as a reformer despite suspicions of corruption in her home country.

Two groups with ties to Tymoshenko — Association of Enterprises UKRMETALURGPROM and Innovative Technology & Business Consulting — have both hired the Livingston Group, tapping a firm with a long record of representing foreign clients including the governments of Iraq, Egypt and Turkey.

The firm was first hired by UKRMETALURGPROM, a steel-industry trade group, in April 2018 for a three-month period and then hired again in Sept. 2019 on a one-year contract at a $20,000 a month retainer. And in June 2018, Innovative Technology & Business Consulting hired Livingston’s firm for a $50,000 a month retainer for a year.

Livingston’s firm played a key role in arranging a visit that Tymoshenko made to Washington in December, during which she met with administration and congressional officials.

In the months ahead of the visit, Livingston and his colleagues contacted the offices of about two dozen prominent House and Senate members, including the Republican chairmen of the committees dealing with intelligence and foreign affairs in both chambers, as well as Kevin McCarthy (D-Calif.), then the House majority leader, and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate minority whip. A key figure in arranging the trip was Christopher Anderson, a State Department official who also testified to House committees Wednesday.

During the early December visit, Livingston accompanied Tymoshenko to meetings with Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who is now chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the leader of the impeachment probe, as well as Kurt Volker, the State Department’s special envoy to Ukraine. Volker testified before the House committees earlier this month and described working with Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani on persuading the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to cooperate with Trump’s request for investigations.

Tymoshenko also appeared at think tanks and did media interviews, including for a Wall Street Journal piece where she promoted her upcoming run for president and cast herself as a pro-western reformer who could be counted on to counter Russian aggression. She called attacks from pro-Russian groups, including those affiliated with former president Viktor Yanukovych and his political strategist Paul Manafort, “a badge of honor.”

Manafort would later become Trump’s campaign manager until he was embroiled in a Ukrainian corruption scandal himself.

It is unclear whether Livingston was acting in concert or at odds with Tymoshenko to oust Yovanovitch during the time frame Croft describes. A congressional aide knowledgeable about Ukrainian affairs but not authorized to comment publicly said it was possible Tymoshenko viewed Yovanovitch as an obstacle to the resurrection of her domestic political career ahead of the March presidential election.

Yovanovitch was recalled from her position in May following a smear campaign that included unsubstantiated allegations of opposition to Trump that were promoted by Giuliani and amplified by right-wing media outlets and Republican officials, including former Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas. Yovanovitch denied those allegations when she appeared before the House earlier this month.

Whether Livingston’s role is integral to the current impeachment probe remains to be seen. “I think he sounds rather peripheral, not really central to this, but again, I’m guessing there might be a difference of opinion among my colleagues,” Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.) said Wednesday.

Livingston played a much clearer role in Clinton’s impeachment, helping to push the process forward despite his own doubts in late 1998 as House Republicans warred internally over how to sanction Clinton and what to do about their divisive speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.).

Livingston launched a bold challenge to Gingrich after Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterms and was chosen by his party to claim the gavel once the new Congress convened in 1999. But faced with the disclosure of his own extramarital affairs, he decided he could not credibly lead a party pursuing impeachment and announced suddenly on Dec. 19 he would not run for speaker and would resign his seat within months.

“I was prepared to lead our narrow majority as speaker, and I believe I had it in me to do a fine job,” he said in a dramatic floor speech that began with a call for Clinton’s resignation. “But I cannot do that job or be the kind of leader that I would like to be under current circumstances, so I must set the example that I hope President Clinton will follow.”

Since leaving Congress, Livingston has not only been an effective lobbyist but a trusted counselor for many prominent Republican officials. Among them is House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, who holds the suburban New Orleans seat that Livingston once held.

Scalise said Wednesday that Livingston is among a host of Clinton impeachment veterans whom he has spoken to in recent weeks to discuss the practices and procedures surrounding impeachment. But he said Livingston never lobbied him on Ukraine or discussed Yovanovitch with him.

“It’s not uncommon that a new administration removes people from the previous administration and puts in their own folks to carry out their own foreign policy, but I haven’t talked to him about that at all,” Scalise said.

Karoun Demirjian and Tom Hamburger contributed to this report.

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Republicans will have to face the truth on impeachment eventually

By Karen Tumulty | Published October 30 at 6:48 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 30, 2019 |

Republicans don’t know how to take yes for an answer.

For weeks, they dutifully echoed President Trump, baying that the House’s ongoing impeachment investigation is a “witch hunt” and a “sham.”

They have complained that the House never took a formal vote on proceeding with the inquiry (though there is no requirement for one), that it was being conducted in secret (though open hearings are promised) and that the president is not being offered an opportunity to respond to his accusers (though he does it constantly on his Twitter feed).

On Thursday, they will have the vote they demanded, along with a road map for how the inquiry will go from here.

The procedure as outlined strikes a reasonable balance between the need to collect evidence and testimony, some of which must be done initially behind closed doors, and the transparency necessary for the public to have confidence that something as grave as the impeachment of a president is done fairly.

There will be public hearings. Transcripts of testimony already gathered privately will be released. The arrangement also sets out procedures under which Trump’s lawyers can call and cross-examine witnesses, although that may be made contingent on White House cooperation with the House Judiciary Committee’s requests for witnesses and documents.

All of this will be an educational exercise for the American public, in which people will once again be reminded that when it comes to impeaching a president, the Constitution gives the House a role like the grand jury in a criminal case. It collects and hears the evidence and decides whether to bring charges. From there, the action moves to the Senate, which holds a trial to decide whether to convict and remove the president from office.

So far, the effort in the House has moved methodically. Nonetheless, Republicans continue to howl about process. The reason: It allows them to avoid talking about the actual substance of the allegations against Trump.

The essential unseriousness of their argument became apparent last week, when two dozen House Republicans burst like a clown car into the secure meeting room of the House Intelligence Committee, where a Pentagon official was set to testify.

They recklessly violated the security of the facility by bringing in their cellphones, which is prohibited, and ordered pizza as they staged a five-hour sit-in. The point of their stunt was not entirely clear, given that roughly 100 lawmakers — both Democrats and Republicans — were actually authorized to be there, by virtue of membership on one of the three committees conducting the inquiry’s preliminary phase.

In the meantime, polls show a plurality of Americans now support not only impeaching Trump but also kicking him out of office. A mountain of evidence — which includes the White House’s own version of the conversation Trump had on July 25 with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — already makes a compelling case that he has abused the power of his office.

Even now, it is clear that the president pressed a foreign power to dig up dirt on a leading political rival and to provide information that would support a crackpot conspiracy theory that undercuts the conclusion of this country’s own intelligence professionals that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election. And whether the phrase “quid pro quo” ever crossed Trump’s lips, testimony gathered thus far indicates that he withheld $391 million in congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine to coerce its government to do his bidding.

Asked whether all of that is sufficient fodder for articles of impeachment against the president, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) earlier this week told a group of columnists: “There’s no question about that, right? We’ve had enough for a very long time. No, I think we have enough. But as long as there’s corroboration, we might as well get some more.”

The bigger challenge, she suggested, may be deciding what not to include. One thing that is not likely to make the cut, she said, is Trump’s apparent violation of what he calls the “phony emoluments clause” — which is the Constitution’s very clear ban on government officials’ accepting gifts or payments “from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”

“How much drama can the American people handle?” Pelosi asked. “Where does the law of diminishing returns set in? Where is the value added not worth the time?”

Still, the speaker appears to be in no hurry to wrap this all up, even though an election year looms. “We will take as long as the truth insists,” she said. “And that will be its own agenda.”

The truth. Eventually, that is what Republicans will have to face.

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In Syria and elsewhere, Trump is making Russia great again

By Max Boot | Published October 30 at 5:31 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 30, 2019 |

What does Russian President Vladimir Putin want from his U.S. counterpart? Someone who will corrupt and discredit American democracy, turn on U.S. allies and give Russia a free hand abroad. President Trump, elected with Russian help, is giving Putin more than he could have dreamed of. We still don’t know exactly why Trump is acting as he is, but the consequences of his presidency are clear: Trump is bringing the United States to its knees and making Russia great again.

Until recently, the most effective response available to Trump’s defenders has been the fact that, under heavy congressional pressure, he approved lethal-weapons aid to Ukraine in its battle against Russian separatists. But that dog won’t hunt anymore, now that Trump held up that aid to force Ukraine to cough up dirt on former vice president and Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden and to exonerate Russia of election hacking in 2016. (The president still calls Russia’s attack a “hoax.”) The nearly $400 million in aid was released only after Congress and the media started raising the alarm.

Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines of a war that has killed 13,000 people told the New York Times that the aid interruption “took a heavy psychological toll . . . striking at their confidence that their backers in Washington stood solidly behind their fight to keep Russia at bay.” Oh, and those Javelin antitank missiles that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked for? The Times reports: “The Trump administration provided the missiles on the condition that they not be used in the war . . . lest they provoke Russia to slip more powerful weaponry to the separatists.” So what’s the point of providing them at all?

Trump is further undermining Ukraine by spreading the crazy conspiracy theory that it, not Russia, was behind the 2016 election hacking. Is this something that Putin told Trump during one of their top-secret conversations? I bet it is. Zelensky is fighting corruption but Trump is promoting it: He outsourced his Ukraine policy to personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was in cahoots with a couple of sleazy operators who are linked to a pro-Putin oligarch and have now been arrested by the FBI. Trump put Zelensky in a no-win situation: Either smear Biden and alienate Democrats or risk the loss of vital U.S. aid. That’s not how you treat allies.

Trump is doing Putin another solid in Syria by pulling most U.S. forces out. Russian soldiers are entering U.S. bases and taking up the joint patrolling duties with the Turkish army that U.S. troops had been performing until recently. The fate of Syria was settled not in Washington but in Sochi — Putin’s favorite Black Sea resort. Trump has given Russia what it has sought for decades: a leading role in the Middle East. This is the biggest geopolitical shift in the region since 1972 when Egypt’s Anwar Sadat expelled Soviet advisers and aligned with Washington. Russian television had good reason to crow that “the United States has given a real gift to Putin.”

And the gifts just keep coming. By abandoning the Kurds, Trump confirms Russia’s arguments that it is a much more reliable ally. By keeping some troops in eastern Syria to guard oil fields, Trump is confirming Kremlin propaganda that U.S. foreign policy is motivated (just like Russia’s) by greed and self-interest, not by high-minded ideals. “Wow, what a great outcome!” Trump said. It is — for Russia.

Trump has sacrificed the high ground at home as well as abroad. He engages in blatant self-dealing — conditioning aid to Ukraine on political help for himself, operating hotels where foreign emissaries stay, paying off a mistress in violation of campaign finance laws, obstructing justice, etc. — and claims immunity from any consequences. His lawyer argues that Trump couldn’t be prosecuted even for shooting someone. This allows Putin to say: You think I’m bad? Everyone’s corrupt. Look at the United States.

Trump is further normalizing Putin by emulating the Russian leader’s strongman tactics. He calls opponents “human scum” and the media “the enemy of the people” while launching an investigation of the investigators who dared to probe his links with Russia. Trump is also helping Russia by denigrating the FBI, CIA, and even his own ambassador to Ukraine and one of his own National Security Council staff members as agents of a nonexistent “Deep State.” He is thereby undermining the individuals and institutions most dedicated to combating Russian designs. The leading Russian hard-liners — Fiona Hill and John Bolton — have already left the White House, no doubt to Putin’s delight.

“Russia likes seeing President Trump in the White House in part because it provides the Kremlin a chance to point to the ugly side of American politics — to say, just as they did with [President Richard M.] Nixon, look how sordid, how hypocritical,” former Russian foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev recently wrote in the New York Times. The only way to undo some of the damage, he argued, is to impeach and remove Trump. That would send a message to the world similar to the one sent by Nixon’s resignation: “Moral principles still matter in American politics and policy.”

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We’re polarized and fragmented at the same time. Trump likes that.

By E.J. Dionne Jr. | Published October 30 at 5:00 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 30, 2019 |

Why would President Trump’s hardcore defenders think the best way to defend a floundering leader is to hurl repulsive dual-loyalty charges at a decorated Army combat veteran who feels an obligation to tell the truth to Congress?

Why would British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gamble on forcing an election in Britain at a time when his Conservative Party is under 40 percent in the polls?

And why are German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats and her coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, suffering electoral losses even though a large majority of the country wants her to serve out her term through 2021?

The standard answer to such questions focuses on political polarization, and there sure is a lot of it going around: left vs. right, urban vs. rural, religious vs. secular, young vs. old, prosperous vs. left-behind, pro-immigrant vs. anti-immigrant.

Polarization is deepened because many of these identities reinforce one another these days. To pick just one example underscored by recent studies from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Pew Research Center: Christian conservatives rally to the Republican Party while the secular are overwhelmingly Democrats. Partisans don’t just disagree about politics. They are divided by some of the most fundamental questions about human existence.

But another factor that we talk about far less is feeding the chaos: fragmentation. If some identities are mutually reinforcing, we have other commitments that split us into ever smaller groups. This feeds a tendency toward niche politics, visible in all the democratic nations. Taken together, polarization and niche politics make it very hard to forge the consensus required to solve problems and move democracies forward.

Consider first the sliming of Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who raised damaging questions about whether the White House summary of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president omitted a reference to former vice president Joe Biden, whom Trump was pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate.

Even before testifying Tuesday to House impeachment investigators, Vindman, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, was subjected to attacks by Fox News and others on the far right because of his Ukrainian heritage. (He was brought to the United States by his refugee family when he was 3.)

Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) demanded Wednesday that Vindman be protected from retaliation. He “served our country for more than 20 years and is a recipient of the Purple Heart after being injured while serving in Iraq,” and yet “some have even gone so far as to call him a spy and question his loyalty to the United States.”

The vile assault on Vindman is designed to muddle a factual record highly damaging to the president. But it’s aimed at the Trump niche, roughly a quarter of Americans who will follow Trump’s lead on almost everything. This is a case of polarization and fragmentation reinforcing each other.

In Britain, the average of three recent polls gives Johnson’s party, pledged to leading Britain out of the European Union, just 38 percent of the vote. But Johnson has good reason to think he will win a majority of seats in the House of Commons, because his opponents are so fractured.

The Labour Party, broadly pro-E.U. but divided on the Brexit issue, is at just over 23 percent, while the passionately pro-E.U. Liberal Democrats stand at 18 percent. An additional 8 percent support pro-E.U. regional parties or the Greens, while the Brexit Party (committed to an even sharper break with Europe) polls at 11 percent.

This is a portrait of radical polarization (generally pro- and generally anti-E.U. parties are at roughly 49 percent each) and extreme fragmentation. Both make Britain harder to govern.

And in Germany, elections this past Sunday in the state of Thuringia saw both the Left Party and the far-right Alternative for Germany party gain ground — the left to 31 percent and the far right to 23 percent. The Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats each saw their vote reduced by a third, the Christian Democrats to 22 percent and the Social Democrats to a paltry 8 percent. The outcome in Thuringia is an extreme case of what’s going on in the country as a whole, but it is symptomatic of the broader decay of once unifying, middle-ground politics.

It would be nice to end on an upbeat note. But the economic and cultural forces pushing simultaneously toward polarization and fragmentation will be hard to overcome. And just when we need leadership that might promote solidarity and a degree of mutual understanding, the most powerful democratic country in the world is led by Trump, who thrives on chopping up our society into pieces.

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Only now do we understand the true cruelty of Trump’s family separation

By Editorial Board | Published October 29 at 5:59 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 30, 2019 |

BEFORE THE spring of 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had no system in place to track migrant children who were separated from their families. That was the case even though, it now turns out, the Trump administration, in its first months in office, had already begun wrenching scores of babies, toddlers, tweens and adolescents from their parents to deter illegal border crossings. Then, beginning in April last year, the administration doubled down, systematically breaking apart migrant families upon apprehension at the border — still with no means of tracking and reuniting the families it had sundered.

Only now, 16 months after a federal judge ordered migrant families reunified, has the scale of the administration’s cruelty become understood. Most Americans thought the policy detestable. It was far worse than they imagined.

Having resisted demands that it compile a definitive listing of the families broken apart by its policies, the administration finally relented this spring when U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw ordered a full accounting. Last week, hours before the deadline set by the judge, the government submitted the numbers to the American Civil Liberties Union, to whose volunteers it has fallen to clean up the mess created by President Trump, former attorney general Jeff Sessions, former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and others.

No, it was not only the 2,814 traumatized children who had been separated and were in custody under the government’s policy of “zero tolerance” for unauthorized border crossers when Judge Sabraw ordered families reunified in June last year. It turns out that an additional 1,556 children had been separated in the preceding 12-month period, beginning in July 2017. Of those, more than 300 were 5 years old or younger.

Imagine, if you can, the suffering visited upon those children, including many still in diapers and requiring afternoon naps, by the administration’s cavalier brutality and incompetence — the anguish of little girls and boys removed from their parents for weeks or months because of a president lacking a conscience and a government whose data systems were not suited to the task of reunification. Those wounds won’t heal easily, or ever.

Incredibly, having shattered so many families, the administration threw up its hands and declared the task of reuniting them beyond its capabilities. Even now, volunteers working under the coordination of the ACLU are going door to door in Guatemala and Honduras, seeking to ascertain whether families have recovered their children.

More than 1,000 additional migrant children have been separated in the past 17 months on the grounds, the government says, that their parents or guardians endangered or abused them, or were unable to care for them, or were criminals, or were not actually their parents. The ACLU maintains that in some cases, those separations are also unjustified, triggered by minor offenses committed by the parents, such as shoplifting or driving without a valid license. It has asked Judge Sabraw to set a narrow standard for separations.

In all, the administration has taken at least 5,460 children from their parents. That is a stain on Mr. Trump, on the government he leads and on America.

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1765liberty · 7 years

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The Russian Timeline

I pulled this together from the various news outlets and (I believe) it is the most comprehensive timeline out there detailing past and present developments surrounding the Russian involvement in the elections and potential connections to Trump. Please feel free to share as widely as you like.

April 18, 2012

In a joint announcement by Exxon/Mobil’s CEO Rex Tilerson and Rosneft Executive Chairman Igor Sechin, Exxon and state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft unveil an offshore exploration partnership that could invest upward of $500 billion in developing Russia's vast energy reserves in the Arctic and Black Sea. Sechin, a close ally of Russian Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin, hailed the partnership, saying it had already added $7 billion to Exxon and Rosneft's combined market capitalization since it was announced.

June 21, 2013

Vladimir Putin awards Rex Tillerson the Order of Friendship.The Order of Friendship is awarded to Russian and foreign nationals for special merit in strengthening peace, friendship, cooperation and understanding between nations.

November 19, 2013

Trump holds Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. During this trip, later intelligence reports would suggest the KGB/FSB filmed Trump watching Russian prostitutes perform "golden showers" in his hotel room and begin compiling compromising financial and personal information on Trump.

February 22, 2014

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych flees Kiev during a series of violent protests. Later, Vladimir Putin admits to helping Yanukovych escape Ukraine to Russia.

February 28-March 18, 2014

Russia invades the Ukraine and annexes Crimea and Sebastopol.

March 17, 2014

The US, the EU and Canada introduce the first round of specifically targeted sanctions against Russian the day after the Crimean referendum and a few hours before the Russian president Vladimir Putin, by signing a decree recognizing Crimea as an independent state, laid the groundwork for its annexation by Russia. The sanctions lead to the Russian financial crisis with losses estimated at $100 Billion Euros.

March 24, 2014

In an interview with Fox and NBC News Trump suggests imposing sanctions to hurt Russia economically and then later says he supports such sanctions. Trump also says (about Mitt Romeny) "Well, Mitt was right, and he was also right when he mentioned in one of the debates about Russia, and he said, 'Russia's our biggest problem, and Russia is, you know, really something."

April 28, 2014

The United States imposes a ban on business transactions within its territory on seven Russian officials, including Igor Sechin, executive chairman of the Russian state oil company Rosneft, and seventeen Russian companies. The result includes a block of the formerly announced partnership between Exxon and Rosneft. 

June 16, 2015

Donald Trump announces he will run for president of the United States.

July 2015

A hacking group possibly linked to the FSB, the main successor to the K.G.B., entered Democratic National Committee servers undetected for nearly a year, security researchers said. The group was nicknamed Cozy Bear, the Dukes or A.P.T. 29 for “advanced persistent threat.”

December 17, 2015

Putin is quoted as saying (about Trump), "He’s a really brilliant and talented person, without any doubt,” Putin told reporters, according to a translation by Interfax. "It’s not our job to judge his qualities, that’s a job for American voters, but he’s the absolute leader in the presidential race.”

March 2016

Investigators believe that the G.R.U., or a hacking group known as Fancy Bear or A.P.T. 28, was the second group to break into the D.N.C., but it played a bigger role in releasing the committee’s emails.

March 21, 2016

Trump names Carter Page one of his foreign policy advisors. Page, Managing Partner of Global Energy Capital, is known for brokering energy deals in Russia and has been an advisor to (and investor in) Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled natural gas company.

May, 2016

Trump promotes Paul Manafort to campaign chair and chief strategist. Manafort worked as a political consultant for the Ukraine’s ruling party from 2006-2012, and specifically for then-Ukrainian Prime Minister, Viktor Yanukovych. During that time, Manafort persuaded the Ukrainian government to change its grain policies in a way that benefited a U.S. agribusiness giant, and to consider deals with Exxon and Chevron for oil exploration.

June 14, 2016

Russian government hackers penetrate the computer network of the DNC and gain access to the entire database of opposition research on Donald Trump.

June 15, 2016

American cyber-technology firm Crowdstrike releases a detailed statement about Russian hacking of the DNC.

Trump’s team issues a statement: “We believe it was the DNC that did the ‘hacking’ as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader.”

A hacker calling himself Guccifer 2.0 says he’s given the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, and also publishes them himself, complete with telltale Russian-language formatting errors.

July 2016

A January 27, 2017 Business Insider article details a dossier with unverified claims about President Donald Trump's ties to Russia contained allegations that Igor Sechin, Executive Chairman of Rosneft (and former deputy prime minister), offered former Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page and his associates the brokerage of a 19% stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Russia.

The dossier says the offer was made in July, when Page was in Moscow giving a speech at the Higher Economic School and just prior to the Republican National Convention. The claim was sourced to "a trusted compatriot and close associate" of Sechin, according to the dossier's author, former British spy Christopher Steele.

Yahoo News (September 23) reports that on that same Page trip, U.S. intelligence agencies received reports that Page met with another top Putin aide while in Moscow — Igor Diveykin. A former Russian security official, Diveykin now serves as deputy chief for internal policy and is believed by U.S. officials to have responsibility for intelligence collected by Russian agencies about the U.S. election.

July 22, 2016

WikiLeaks publishes the first in a series of hacked emails taken from the DNC.

It releases a statement on Twitter reading, "Today, Friday 22 July 2016 at 10:30am EDT, WikiLeaks releases 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the top of the US Democratic National Committee -- part one of our new Hillary Leaks series," the introduction says.

"The leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC," including Communications Director Luis Miranda (10,770 emails), National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3,797 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer and others. The newly released emails cover the period from January 2015 through May 25, 2016.

July 24, 2016

Debbie Wasserman Schultz resigns from her position as DNC Chair amid email revelations that party officials were trying to undermine the candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook tells ABC News' "This Week" that their researchers (Crowdstrike) believe the Russians are responsible for the attack.

July 25, 2016

The FBI announces it's investigating the hack.

The DNC apologizes to Sen. Sanders.

Trump: "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me." 

July 27, 2016

In a news conference, Trump tells reporters that if Russia is behind the DNC hack that they most likely accessed her deleted emails from her tenure as secretary of state."By the way, if they hacked, they probably have her 33,000 emails. I hope they do," Trump said. "They probably have her 33,000 emails that she lost and deleted.” He then says, directly facing toward the cameras: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing."

July 28, 2016

Donald Trump, in an interview with Fox News' "Fox & Friends," clarifies that "of course" he was being "sarcastic" with his comments about Russia hacking into Clinton's deleted emails.

August 2016

Harry Reid (R-Nev) writes to FBI Director James B. Comey asking him to initiate an investigation into Page’s Moscow visit stating the FBI should investigate his meetings as part of a larger look into whether the Trump campaign was conspiring with the Russian government to tamper with the U.S. presidential election. 

A New York Times investigation conducted with the help of Ukrainian National Anti-Corruption Bureau shows that Donald Trump’s campaign chairman Paul Manafort received $12.7 million in cash from the former president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych. The investigation causes Manafort to step down from his post. Steve Bannon replaces Manafort as Chief Strategist and Kellyanne Conway replaces Manafort as Trump’s campaign manager.

September 13, 2016

UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin lodges a formal complaint with the United Nations over a top U.N. official's condemnations of Donald Trump and some European politicians. Eight days before, Zeid went after Trump in a speech in The Hague, Netherlands, lumping the billionaire businessman with several populist leaders in Europe. "All seek in varying degrees to recover a past, halcyon and so pure in form, where sunlit fields are settled by peoples united by ethnicity or religion," Zeid said, calling it a sentiment they share with the Islamic State. "This is not only strange — it's scary," senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said. "A major-party candidate for the presidency of the United States is being protected by the Kremlin. Wow."

September 23, 2016

Yahoo news reports that although Trump first mentioned Carter Page’s name when asked to identify his “foreign policy team” during an interview with the Washington Post editorial team, his precise role in the campaign remains unclear; Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks last month called him an “informal foreign adviser” who “does not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign.” When Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller was asked about Page he responded Page “has no role” and added: “We are not aware of any of his activities, past or present.” Miller did not respond when asked why Trump had previously described Page as one of his advisers. 

September 26, 2016

Carter Page announces he is taking a leave of absence from his work with the Trump campaign due to the controversy over Rosneft.

At the first presidential debate, Trump states “I don’t think anybody knows it was Russia that broke into the DNC. [Clinton’s] saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t—maybe it was. I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?”

October 6, 2016 

DC Leaks publishes some hacked DNC emails.

October 7, 2016

‪Beginning on Oct. 7, WikiLeaks publishes the first in a series of 50,000 emails belonging to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of the National Intelligence issue a joint statement concluding: “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.”

October 9, 2016

2nd debate: Trump questions whether Russia is behind the hacks and suggests "maybe there is no hacking."

“I notice any time anything wrong happens, they like to say ‘The Russians!’ She doesn't know if it's the Russians doing the hacking," Trump said of his rival Hillary Clinton. "Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia and the reason they blame Russia is because they think they are trying to tarnish me with Russia.”

October 20, 2016

3rd debate:

Trump: [Clinton] has no idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else.

Clinton: I am not quoting myself.

Trump: You have no idea.

Clinton: I am quoting seventeen, seventeen [US intelligence agencies.] Do you doubt…

Trump: Our country has no idea. 

October 30, 2016

FBI Director James Comey announces an investigation and possible link between Clinton email server and emails from Anthony Weiner.

November 6, 2016

FBI Director Jamey Comey affirms the FBI’s July decision not to charge Clinton after review of Weiner emails.

November 7, 2016

WikiLeaks releases second batch of thousands of DNC emails.

November 8, 2016

Donald Trump wins the US presidential election.

November 10, 2016

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov states that Russian government officials conferred with members of Donald Trump’s campaign team in an interview with the Interfax news agency.

November 17, 2016

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-California, tells reporters she believes there should be a federal investigation into the hacking and that her team's own investigations alongside the DNC and other Democratic groups had led them to believe it was the Russians.

December 5/6, 2016

Sergei Mikhailov, a senior officer of the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B. (formerly the K.G.B.) in their cyber security department was attending a routine staff meeting when several armed police officers burst in, threw a hood over his head, and dragged him from the room. That is the last anyone has seen of him. Following that day, the Russian State charged him with treason.

Later, Russian media broke the story that another high ranking intelligence official Russian Stoyanov), at Kaspersky Labs, a leading private sector cybersecurity firm, had been detained. There was sketchy information as to whether or not the official had also been imprisoned and charged. Kaspersky Labs, maker of anti-virus software, has long been rumored to be associated with the Russian government.

If true, the actions could be an attempt by the Russian government to remove leaks that would link them to the Russian election hacking.

December 7, 2016

Russia makes surprising announcement it has sold 19.5% of Rosneft, the state-controlled oil company. Reports on the investors are hazy, but include Glencore and Qatar. Although Rosneft is valued at $59 Billion, total investment by Glencore and Qatar is $3B Euros and additional funding may have occurred of up to $2.5Billion by Russian and Cayman Island banks and a series of shell companies.The deal defies expectations that no investor would dare buy a share in the Russian asset, given Western sanctions against the government of President Vladimir V. Putin.

December 9, 2016

President Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser Lisa Monaco announces that the intelligence community’s review of the Russian hacking incident will be completed before the inauguration and presented to Congress.

The Washington Post reports that the CIA says the hack was done to help Trump get elected.

The New York Times matches the Post's reporting and says the Republican National Committee was also hacked but information wasn’t shared.

Trump's transition team says of the intelligence community: "These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and 'Make America Great Again.'"

December 11, 2016

RNC Chairman, and Trump's incoming White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus and Trump deny the RNC was hacked and separately deny that Russia was trying to interfere in the election, counter to the DHS and DNI's October statement.

Trump tells "Fox News Sunday" that the reports of Russia hacking are "ridiculous" and “Nobody really knows, and hacking is very interesting. Once they hack, if you don’t catch them in the act you’re not going to catch them.” Trump also argues that U.S. intelligence has "no idea" if Russia or China are behind the hackings.

Breach remediation firm Crowdstrike points out that it did in fact catch the hackers “in the act,” monitoring their activities inside the DNC network for weeks.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) calls for a select committee to investigate the Russian hacking, saying "it’s clear the Russians interfered."

December 12, 2016

Republican lawmakers announce that congressional committees will also investigate the allegations made by the CIA.

December 13, 2016

Trump names Rex Tillerson his nominee for Secretary of State. Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, received the Russian Order of Friendship from Putin in 2011 following negotiation of a partnership to drill in the Arctic. The partnership was delayed due to US sanctions against Russia for its annexation of Crimea. Tillerson has had a close and personal relationship with Igor Sechin, head of the Russian oil giant Rosneft, for over a decade.

December 14, 2016

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-California, who chairs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, releases a statement, calling it "unacceptable" that intelligence community directors declined the House Intelligence Committee's request to be briefed on the hacking.

"The Committee is vigorously looking into reports of cyber-attacks during the election campaign, and in particular we want to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us," Nunes added in the statement. "The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes."

December 16, 2016

In a press conference, Obama says that the hacks were initiated by the “highest levels of the Russian government.” Obama suggests he will retaliate but doesn’t specify how.

December 26, 2016 The Telegraph is reporting (1/28/17) an ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump may have been murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up. it has been claimed.

Oleg Erovinkin, a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on Boxing Day in mysterious circumstances.

Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is repeatedly named in the dossier.

December 28, 2016

On reports of impending sanctions,Trump tells reporters, "I think we ought to get on with our lives.”

December 29, 2016

Obama announces sanctions against Russian officials, including expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and the closing of Russian compounds in Maryland and New York on suspicion they were used for intelligence gathering.

Trump: "It's time for our country to move on to bigger and better things. Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation."

The Russian government vows retaliation.

December 30, 2016

Putin makes the surprise announcement that he won’t kick U.S. diplomats out of Russia.

"We will not create problems for U.S. diplomats," Putin says in a statement. "We will not expel anybody.”

Trump: "Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!"

December 31, 2016

Trump: “I know a lot about hacking. And hacking is a very hard thing to prove. So it could be somebody else. And I also know things that other people don’t know, and so they cannot be sure of the situation.”

January 3, 2017

Trump tweets that his intelligence briefing on the Russian hacking evidence has been postponed.

January 5, 2017

Trump: "So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is going on?"

NBC News reports that the FBI said they had already captured the necessary forensic data via “upstream” intelligence, a term that refers to capturing data in transit.

January 6, 2017

Classified documents are presented to President Obama and President-elect Trump by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers. These documents include allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

January 10, 2017

The Daily Beast (1/11/17) reports a leaked dossier says that Diveykin (the report identifies him as “Devykin”) had warned Page at their meeting in July about the Kremlin preparing an ugly “kompromat” or compromising materials on Trump that involved the golden shower video.

January 11, 2017

Trump: “Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to ‘leak’ into the public,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

Trump admits to Russia hacking but denies the attacks were meant to boost him.

January 17, 2017

In a WSJ interview Trump suggested he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia.

January 22, 2017

Rex Tillerson’s nomination for Secretary of State receives the endorsement of the Senate Panel.

January 23, 2017

Trump announces James Comey will remain FBI Director

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highvoltagearea · 4 years

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Russia Continues Interfering in Election to Try to Help Trump, U.S. Intelligence Says

WASHINGTON — Russia is using a range of techniques to denigrate Joseph R. Biden Jr., American intelligence officials said Friday in their first public assessment that Moscow continues to try to interfere in the 2020 campaign to help President Trump.

At the same time, the officials said China preferred that Mr. Trump be defeated in November and was weighing whether to take more aggressive action in the election.

But officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more immediate, threat. While China seeks to gain influence in American politics, its leaders have not yet decided to wade directly into the presidential contest, however much they may dislike Mr. Trump, the officials said.

The assessment, included in a statement released by William R. Evanina, the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, suggested the intelligence community was treading carefully, reflecting the political heat generated by previous findings.

The White House has objected in the past to conclusions that Moscow is working to help Mr. Trump, and Democrats on Capitol Hill have expressed growing concern that the intelligence agencies are not being forthright enough about Russia’s preference for him and that the agencies are introducing China’s anti-Trump stance to balance the scales.

The assessment appeared to draw a distinction between what it called the “range of measures” being deployed by Moscow to influence the election and its conclusion that China prefers that Mr. Trump be defeated.

It cited efforts coming out of pro-Russia forces in Ukraine to damage Mr. Biden and Kremlin-linked figures who “are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.”

China, it said, has so far signaled its position mostly through increased public criticism of the administration’s tough line on China on a variety of fronts.

An American official briefed on the intelligence said it was wrong to equate the two countries. Russia, the official said, is a tornado, capable of inflicting damage on American democracy now. China is more like climate change, the official said: The threat is real and grave, but more long term.

Democratic lawmakers made the same point about the report, which also found that Iran was seeking “to undermine U.S. democratic institutions, President Trump, and to divide the country” ahead of the general election.

“Unfortunately, today’s statement still treats three actors of differing intent and capability as equal threats to our democratic elections,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Adam B. Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a joint statement.

Asked about the report during a news conference on Friday night at his golf club in New Jersey, Mr. Trump said, “The last person Russia wants to see in office is Donald Trump because nobody’s been tougher on Russia than I have.” He said that if Mr. Biden won the presidency, “China would own our country.”

Aides and allies of Mr. Biden assailed Mr. Trump, saying that he had repeatedly sided with President Vladimir V. Putin on whether Russia had intervened to help him in 2016 and that he had been impeached by the House for trying to pressure Ukraine into helping him undercut Mr. Biden.

“Donald Trump has publicly and repeatedly invited, emboldened and even tried to coerce foreign interference in American elections,” said Tony Blinken, a senior adviser to the former vice president.

It is not clear how much China is doing to interfere directly in the presidential election. Intelligence officials have briefed Congress in recent days that much of Beijing’s focus is on state and local races. But Mr. Evanina’s statement on Friday suggested China was on weighing an increased effort.

“Although China will continue to weigh the risks and benefits of aggressive action, its public rhetoric over the past few months has grown increasingly critical of the current administration’s Covid-19 response, closure of China’s Houston Consulate and actions on other issues,” Mr. Evanina said.

Mr. Evanina pointed to growing tensions over territorial claims in the South China Sea, Hong Kong autonomy, the TikTok app and other issues. China, officials have said, has also tried to collect information on the presidential campaigns, as it has in previous contests.

The release on Friday was short on specifics, but that was largely because the intelligence community is intent on trying to protect its sources of information, said Senator Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats.

“The director has basically put the American people on notice that Russia in particular, also China and Iran, are going to be trying to meddle in this election and undermine our democratic system,” said Mr. King, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Intelligence officials said there was no way to avoid political criticism when releasing information about the election. An official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that the goal was not to rank order threats and that Russia, China and Iran all pose a danger to the election.

Fighting over the intelligence reports, the official said, only benefits adversaries trying to sow divisions.

While both Beijing and Moscow have a preference, the Chinese and Russian influence campaigns are very different, officials said.

Outside of a few scattered examples, it is hard to find much evidence of intensifying Chinese influence efforts that could have a national effect.

Much of what China is doing currently amounts to using its economic might to influence local politics, officials said. But that is hardly new. Beijing is also using a variety of means to push back on various Trump administration policies, including tariffs and bans on Chinese tech companies, but those efforts are not covert and it is unclear if they would have an effect on presidential politics.

Russia, but not China, is trying to “actively influence” the outcome of the 2020 election, said the American official briefed on the underlying intelligence.

“The fact that adversaries like China or Iran don’t like an American president’s policies is normal fare,” said Jeremy Bash, a former Obama administration official. “What’s abnormal, disturbing and dangerous is that an adversary like Russia is actively trying to get Trump re-elected.”

Russia tried to use influence campaigns during 2018 midterm voting to try to sway public opinion, but it did not successfully tamper with voting infrastructure.

Mr. Evanina said it would be difficult for adversarial countries to try to manipulate voting results on a large scale. But nevertheless, the countries could try to interfere in the voting process or take steps aimed at “calling into question the validity of the election results.”

The new release comes on the heels of congressional briefings that have alarmed lawmakers, particularly Democrats. Those briefings have described a stepped-up Chinese pressure campaign, as well as efforts by Moscow to paint Mr. Biden as corrupt.

“Ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections, foreign states will continue to use covert and overt influence measures in their attempts to sway U.S. voters’ preferences and perspectives, shift U.S. policies, increase discord in the United States, and undermine the American people’s confidence in our democratic process,” Mr. Evanina said in a statement.

The statement called out Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russia member of Ukraine’s Parliament who has been involved in releasing information about Mr. Biden. Intelligence officials said he had ties to Russian intelligence.

Intelligence officials have briefed Congress in recent weeks on details of the Russian efforts to tarnish Mr. Biden as corrupt, prompting senior Democrats to request more information.

A Senate committee led by Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, has been leading an investigation of Mr. Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his work for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy firm. Some intelligence officials have said that a witness the committee was seeking to call was a witting or unwitting agent of Russian disinformation.

Democrats had pushed intelligence officials to release more information to the public, arguing that only a broad declassification of the foreign interference attempts can inoculate voters against attempts by Russia, China or other countries to try to influence voting.

In meetings on Capitol Hill, Mr. Evanina and other intelligence officials have expanded their warnings beyond Russia and have included China and Iran, as well. This year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence put Mr. Evanina in charge of election security briefings to Congress and the campaigns.

Intelligence and other officials in recent days have been stepping up their releases of information about foreign interference efforts, and the State Department has sent texts to cellphones around the world advertising a $10 million reward for information on would-be election hackers.

How effective China’s campaign or Russia’s efforts to smear Mr. Biden as corrupt have been is not clear. Intelligence agencies focus their work on the intentions of foreign governments, and steer clear of assessing if those efforts have had an effect on American voters.

The first reactions from Capitol Hill to the release of the assessment were positive. A joint statement by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee praised it, and asked colleagues to refrain from politicizing Mr. Evanina’s statement.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the acting Republican chairman of the committee, and Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the Democratic vice chairman, said they hoped Mr. Evanina continued to make more information available to the public. But they praised him for responding to calls for more information.

“Evanina’s statement highlights some of the serious and ongoing threats to our election from China, Russia, and Iran,” the two men’s joint statement said. “Everyone — from the voting public, local officials, and members of Congress — needs to be aware of these threats.”

Maggie Haberman contributed reporting from New York.

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caveartfair · 7 years

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Lost Giacometti Drawings Found in London Antique Shop—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

Catch up on the latest art news with our rundown of the 10 stories you need to know this week.

01 Never-before-seen drawings by Alberto Giacometti have been discovered in the holdings of a London antique shop.

(via The Guardian)

The Giacometti drawings, until recently presumed lost, were unearthed amongst piles of antiques and paintings belonging to the late antique dealer Eila Grahame. The Cambridge auction house, Cheffins, cleared and sold the effects of her shop in 2016, when it found the works. The pencil-sketched portraits included a nude woman and various heads, signed and dated to 1947 but still requiring authentication. A director at Cheffins, Martin Millard, stated that “these drawings have never before been seen by the public.” While the main sale of Grahame’s antiques occurred late last year, Millard expects the pieces will garner interest from museums, galleries, and collectors around the world. The sale, with an estimated price of the drawings at £40,000–£60,000, will occur in mid-October, conveniently following the Tate Modern’s retrospective of Giacometti’s work. All proceeds will be donated to the Art Fund, an art fundraising charity.

02 Overall auction turnover for the first six months of the year is up 5.3% to $6.9 billion from the same period a year ago, according to new analysis by Artprice.

(Artsy)

A report from the art market database showed the market turning a corner after two straight years of first-half drops from 2014’s record high. The U.S. auction market led the recovery, with sales increasing 28% to $2.2 billion in the first six months of the year from the same period in 2016. That rise gives it the largest share of the auction market at 32.4%, ahead of China, last year’s leader. China’s auction market dropped 12% in the first half of the year to $2 billion in turnover, a correction that set it back to second place with 29% of global market share. Post-war and contemporary art continued to grow their market shares in the first half of the year, the report noted. In 2000, they represented 8% and 3% of global auction sales, respectively; as of 2017, those respective shares had risen to 21% and 15%.

03 Russian police detained two members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot for participating in an unauthorized protest.

(via The Washington Post)

The rally took place outside the Siberian prison where Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiracy to commit terror attacks. Sentsov, originally from the Crimean Peninsula—which Russia controversially annexed from Ukraine in 2014—has denied all charges. Sentsov maintains that his conviction by the Russian military court is punishment for his political opposition to the current government. The United States and the European Union have also called for the filmmaker’s release. After parading a “Free Sentsov!” banner during the recent protest, Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina and Olga Borisova were brought to a police station under charges that a judge later dismissed (it remains to be seen if the police will refile the charges). Pussy Riot, a mostly anonymous collective, has a history of criticizing the Russian government, with some members receiving prison time for their protests.

04 Martin Roth, former head of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, died on Monday at the age of 62.

(via BBC News)

Roth directed the museum from 2011 until last year and oversaw shows about such subjects as Alexander McQueen and David Bowie. According to chairman of the museum, Nicholas Coleridge, German-born Roth raised the V&A “to new heights.” The museum, which was founded in 1852, now boasts the title of largest museum of decorative arts and design. With Roth at the helm, it saw record-breaking numbers of visitors, won Art Fund’s 2016 Museum of the Year Award, and worked to establish a presence at the Venice Biennale. He also aided in founding the V&A Research Institute and expanding the museum to parts of Scotland and China. Former Labour Member of Parliament Tristram Hunt, who has taken over the position of V&A’s director, applauded Roth’s “prodigious internationalism & contemporary ambition.”

05 The Museum of Modern Art will deaccession 400 photographs from its collection.

(via ARTnews)

The New York museum will sell the work through Christie’s, over a number of online and live auctions held throughout the next year. The first auction will occur on October 10th. The museum is selling the pieces, by artists such as Walker Evans, Man Ray, Garry Winogrand, because the prints are duplicates, a museum spokesperson told ARTnews. While the sale of work from a museum’s collection can often draw controversy since it generally violates industry guidelines that discourage museums from selling art held “in the public trust,” MoMA’s sale of these photographs falls under an exception to these rules, which permit deaccessioning in order to fund the purchase of more work. All the profits from MoMA’s sale will go to the museum's acquisition fund.

06 Protesting warehouse closures and labor conditions, B&H Photo Video warehouse workers and activists demonstrated outside of Mayor Bill De Blasio’s residence.

(via Hyperallergic)

The upcoming closure of the two Brooklyn warehouses in Bushwick and the Navy Yard will reportedly force more than 300 jobs from the city and into New Jersey, where the company’s operations are set to relocate by the end of the year. The company’s warehouse workers, many of whom are immigrants, have been involved in a nearly two-year labor struggle involving mistreatment and discrimination, prompting a vote to unionize in 2015 and join the United Steelworkers (USW). While they had yet to negotiate their first contract, the USW had filed a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board arguing that B&H was violating federal labor laws. The case has reportedly been dismissed, but critics have maintained that the relocation to central New Jersey belies an effort to avoid dealing with union rights. Demonstrators have faulted de Blasio for failing to prevent the closures and complicity in a union-busting effort (as the city owns the land the warehouse has been renting in the Navy Yard). B&H spokesman Michael McKeon claimed the company is “trying to offer a rational package to those who don’t want to move [to New Jersey] or a severance package to those who don’t,” but many workers who cannot move have stated they can’t make the approximately three-hour commute to the new facilities.

07 An artist spray-painted offensive tweets outside Twitter’s Hamburg office as examples of the hate speech that is often allowed to circulate by the social media company.

(via the New York Times)

“Retweet if you hate Muslims,” one read. Another: “Let’s gas some Jews together again.” They were just two of over 300 homophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic tweets reported by artist Shahak Shapira to the company over six months. He only received nine answers from Twitter, all saying the tweets did not violate the company’s rules. Of the reported tweets, the majority, the artist said, remained on the platform. The chalk protest comes following the passage of a new law, under which social media companies in Germany will be hit with huge fines of up to €50 million should they fail to respond to requests to remove hate speech within 24 hours. Twitter declined to comment on Shapira’s protest but noted that it will “continue to review and iterate on our policies and their enforcement.”

08 Four months after Sotheby’s sold a 60-carat pink diamond for $71.2 million, the auction house is still waiting to collect.

(via ArtsJournal)

The massive diamond, known as “the Pink Star,” was gleefully reported to have been purchased by Hong Kong-based jewelry retailer Chow Tai Fook in a sale that set a new price record for a gem at auction. The press release touted its new name, “the CTF Pink Star,” in honor of the jewelry company’s founder, the late father of its current chairman who placed the winning bid. But in its most recent earnings report, Sotheby’s included a note that the jeweler has until April 2018 to pay. The diamond is still accounted for as part of the auction house’s inventory, Mike Goss, the auction house’s chief financial officer, said in its second-quarter earnings call. The quarterly earnings report noted that the sale will only net the house $500,000 in profit, “after taking into account the associated cost of inventory sales of $70.7 million, which includes amounts due to our partner and other costs related to the sale.”

09 The Montreal Biennial owes $200,000 CAD to artists and small vendors who helped stage its 2016 edition, raising questions about whether it will return.

(via The Globe and Mail)

The 2018 edition of the biennial has been canceled, and it is unclear whether it will return in 2020. It recently released a statement saying it is facing “a precarious future financial situation.” Board chair Cédric Bisson said the deficit stems from decisions by the management team formerly run by Sylvie Fortin, who departed from her director post in January. He cited cost overruns, several sponsorships that fell through, and a failure to meet fundraising targets. Bisson, a venture capitalist, told a Globe and Mail writer that everyone will be paid, but he did not specify when. The biennial closed in mid-January, nearly seven months ago. Public support has not been renewed, since it is anathema to its mission to give grants and then see artists go unpaid.

10 Artist John Currin has painted Jennifer Lawrence for the cover of the September issue of Vogue.

(via the New York Times)

On the cover, one of four to accompany the September issue, Lawrence appears demure, wearing “a simple tan chemise and a Miu Miu patterned fur hat,” according to the Times. Currin, whose work is often erotic, stated that he was “a little scared” creating a cover for Vogue, which is also celebrating its 125th anniversary. “I do worry about decorum,” Currin added. Evoking the 1930s and 1940s pictorial style of magazine illustrations, Currin’s cover exemplifies his style, blending mannerism, absurdism, and a rococo palette. “Fashion was a huge influence on his work early on,” noted Dodie Kazanjian, Vogue contributing editor. This is not the first time Vogue has spotlighted an artist: The work of Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, and Andy Warholhave all appeared on the magazine’s cover. Along with Currin’s painting, photographs of Lawrence by Annie Leibovitz, Bruce Weber, and the duo Inez & Vinoodh will feature on covers for the September issue.

—Artsy Editors

Cover image: Swiss sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti (1901 - 1966) at his studio on Rue Hippolyte Maindron in Paris, France, 1953. (Photo by Michel Sima/Archive France/RDA/Getty Images)

from Artsy News

#Artsy News

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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🍁🍷🍂🍷🍁🍷🍂🍷🍁🍷🍂🍷🍁🍷

John Bolton expressed alarm about shadow Ukraine policy, but at key moments it’s unclear what he did to stop it

By Greg Jaffe, Greg Miller and Paul Sonne | Published November 06 at 12:23 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 6, 2019 |

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton was the highest-ranking official in the White House who voiced opposition to the effort to pressure Ukraine, someone with ample authority and motivation to disrupt a shadow foreign policy he reportedly likened to a “drug deal.”

Yet Bolton, who has a reputation as one of the most ruthless bureaucratic warriors in Washington, seemed to find reasons to avoid intervening directly at some key moments in the scandal now threatening the Trump presidency, according to current and former U.S. officials and testimony in the impeachment inquiry. Bolton sent others to report concerns to National Security Council lawyers, but it is unclear if he went himself. He skipped listening to the July 25 call between President Trump and the leader of Ukraine despite railing in the preceding weeks about the plan to compel Kyiv to open investigations that could help Trump in the 2020 election.

Even now, Bolton is expected to be a no-show for his appointment with impeachment investigators on Thursday, citing legal obstacles that did not impede former aides on the NSC.

As a result, Bolton’s role in the unfolding impeachment saga has become one of the most difficult to ascertain. His hard-line views about Russia, conservative bona fides and ignominious removal from the White House would seem to mark him as an eager and potentially devastating witness against the president. But, at the same time, he may have more to explain than other witnesses on whether he could have done more to stop a scheme he seemed to view as a shakedown.

Current and former U.S. officials said the perception inside the White House was that Bolton was deliberately seeking to protect himself from exposure to any fallout from the attempt to pressure Ukraine.“He was being a very careful political operative — which is what his reputation is,” said a former U.S. official familiar with Bolton’s actions who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Bolton wants to continue to be a major player, wants to be relevant,” the official said. He avoided intervening directly in some Ukraine matters “because he knew it was going to be a disaster.”

A spokesman for Bolton said the former national security adviser had no comment.

Bolton first raised his worries about policy toward Ukraine during a volatile July 10 meeting in his White House office with U.S. officials and top aides to the Ukrainian president. The discussion was proceeding normally until Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union and a key driver of the shadow policy, made a cryptic reference to reviving investigations important to Trump.

Bolton immediately understood Sondland was pressing the Ukrainians to pursue a probe into Burisma, an energy company that had hired Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter to be on its board.

Bolton abruptly cleared the group from his office, officials said. When Sondland tried to reconvene with the Ukrainians downstairs he dispatched his then-Russia adviser, Fiona Hill, to break it up.

“I’m not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton told Hill, according to her testimony. Bolton directed Hill to report what she had witnessed with Sondland to John Eisenberg, the top lawyer for the NSC.

It is not clear whether Bolton also spoke to Eisenberg or raised his concerns about the issue with Trump. Two weeks later, Bolton insisted that he alone, and not Sondland, handle Trump’s pre-call brief ahead of the president’s controversial July 25 conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, according to U.S. officials.

Bolton briefed the president, who was in the White House residence. When he finished, Sondland was patched through on a separate call with the help of acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, according to the U.S. officials. One week earlier Trump had halted nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine over the objections of most of his top national security experts, including Bolton.

Despite the rancor in the run-up to the call and the troubling hold on the aid, Bolton chose not to listen into the president’s conversation with Zelensky in the Situation Room with other top officials. Instead he dispatched his deputy to monitor it and report back.

At the same time, senior officials across the Pentagon, State Department and CIA were scrambling to figure out the reason for the hold. Interagency staff members convened at least three times to make the case for the money. The Pentagon produced an analysis certifying the effectiveness of the assistance and calling for it to be restored.

Most officials expected Bolton to call a meeting of the president’s national security cabinet to reaffirm the need for the assistance and put more pressure on Trump to release the money.

Privately, Bolton gave others the indication that he was pursuing the matter internally. Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. testified in the impeachment inquiry that Bolton informed him at one point that he was working to enlist the “two secretaries” — an apparent reference to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper — as well as CIA Director Gina Haspel to get the hold on military aid reversed.

But August passed without a meeting. “It just seemed to sit for the month,” said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “No one knew why it wasn’t happening.”

Separately, Bolton was on increasingly shaky ground with Trump who was frustrated that his national security adviser’s “maximum pressure campaigns” on Iran and Venezuela were not showing faster results. The national security adviser was also feuding with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over a proposed peace deal in Afghanistan that Bolton believed made too many concessions to the Taliban.

In late August Bolton flew to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky. Before departing he told aides he wanted to “stay out of politics,” according to text message written by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and released as part of the impeachment inquiry.

Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, told House investigators he assumed that meant Bolton wanted to avoid discussions related to Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, who was pressuring Kyiv for investigations of Biden as well as unfounded allegations of Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory Giuliani appeared to have embraced.

In Bolton’s mind, Giuliani was a “hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry.

In Kyiv, Bolton did not discuss the freeze on military aid with Zelensky’s aides who, despite the mounting worry in Washington, still did not realize it was on hold. Instead his talks focused on U.S. concerns regarding the pending sale of a Ukrainian aerospace company to the Chinese. “That was the focal point for him, not the aid or investigations,” said a former U.S. official with knowledge of his trip.

During his visit, Bolton met with Taylor and encouraged the acting ambassador to send a diplomatic cable to Pompeo voicing his concern about the apparent withholding of aid as leverage against Ukraine. Taylor testified that he did so the next day, Aug. 28.

When Politico published a piece on the aid freeze, Zelensky and his top aides were left wondering why Bolton had not even mentioned the issue before departing Ukraine.

Five days later, Bolton and Vice President Pence were scheduled to meet with Zelensky and his top aides on the sidelines of a World War II commemoration in Warsaw. The morning of the meeting Taylor warned the Ukrainians that if the money was not released by Sept. 30, they would lose it.

It was an “all or nothing proposition” he told Ukraine’s national security adviser, according to Taylor’s testimony.

Meanwhile, Bolton and Pence were huddling in Warsaw to discuss how to address the frozen aid. The meeting with the vice president offered Bolton an opportunity to sound the alarm about Giuliani’s and Sondland’s actions at the highest levels of the administration.

But he chose not to discuss his concerns with Pence, said U.S. officials. Bolton emphasized the importance of the aid to Ukraine but held his tongue on the pressure campaign. Officials close to Pence insist he was unaware of Trump’s efforts to press Zelensky for damaging information about Biden. Pence had access to the transcript of the July 25 phone call, but it is unclear if he read it.

In the meeting with Pence, Zelensky made a case for the American aid, which he insisted was important not only militarily but also as a symbol of American commitment in the face of Russian aggression.

“You are the only country providing military assistance,” one of the Ukrainian officials told Pence. “You are punishing us.”

Pence offered no explanation for the hold beyond a vague insistence that the Ukrainians crack down on corruption, then he promised to raise the matter with Trump in Washington.

Bolton, meanwhile, was quiet and left the session before it was even over to catch his plane, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Bolton’s brief appearance left the Ukrainians wondering if he was avoiding them, officials in Kyiv said.

Nine days later, Trump, under heavy pressure from a bipartisan group of lawmakers, authorized the release of the Ukrainian aid. He also tweeted that he had fired Bolton, who had clashed with Trump on Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela and Afghanistan policy.

Bolton texted his rejoinder to a handful of reporters: “Let’s be clear: I resigned.”

In the weeks that followed Bolton blasted Trump’s North Korea policy in a speech, inked a lucrative book deal and restarted his political action committee, which supports Republican candidates who share his hard-edge foreign policy views.

He has also watched from the sidelines as three of his former subordinates have come forward to testify in the House impeachment inquiry, defying the White House’s orders that they keep quiet.

Bolton has indicated he is in a different legal category than other witnesses because of his rank and is waiting on a decision from the courts on whether he should comply with the White House’s order or Congress’s subpoena.

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‘Talk to Rudy’: Testimony from diplomats highlights Giuliani’s central role in driving Ukraine policy

By Josh Dawsey | Published November 06 at 3:48 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 6, 2019 |

Three ominous words uttered in the Oval Office led two American diplomats on a journey that ended in a Capitol basement room as key witnesses in the House impeachment inquiry: “Talk to Rudy.”

President Trump’s instruction in May to a U.S. delegation that had just returned from Ukraine made clear that his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani was playing the driving role in shaping the president’s view of that country — and that top officials needed to cater to him, according to transcripts of testimony released this week.

“Rudy had some bad issues with Ukraine, and until Rudy was satisfied, the president wasn’t going to change his mind,” European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland said in his testimony to House investigators.

After the May 23 Oval Office meeting, Kurt Volker, then-special envoy to Ukraine, reached out to Giuliani, attempting to court his support for U.S. foreign policy goals, and also put him in touch with a top Ukrainian official. At one point, he and Sondland even conferred with Giuliani on the language of a public statement that the new Ukrainian president was considering making, text messages show.

In a sign of his disproportionate influence, Giuliani was cited by name 480 times during Sondland’s and Volker’s depositions — more than any Trump White House or Cabinet official. The lawyer was repeatedly described as inexplicably powerful and difficult to control.

“He was always swirling around somewhere,” Sondland said of Giuliani, adding that he did not believe anyone wanted to deal with the former New York mayor.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment. He has previously said he was working on behalf of the president and in conjunction with the State Department, and that he kept Volker and Sondland apprised of his interactions with Ukrainians.

But the testimony and documents that have emerged in the ongoing impeachment inquiry underscore how much Giuliani — someone without a government portfolio — was driving official U.S. policy.

In his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump told the newly elected leader to deal with his personal attorney.

“I will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call,” Trump said, according to a rough transcript released by the White House.

Meanwhile, the top diplomats were scrambling to figure out how to handle Giuliani, someone they viewed as poisoning the president’s view of Ukraine.

From the early days of his tenure, Volker said, Trump told the pair that Giuliani had told him the Ukrainians are “all corrupt, they’re all terrible people, that they were — they tried to take me down — meaning the president in the 2016 election.”

Sondland said he believed the State Department should be in charge of foreign policy, but officials were powerless to thwart the former mayor, according to his testimony.

“It’s something we have to deal with,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said of Giuliani, rolling his eyes, according to Sondland’s testimony.

After Zelensky was elected, Sondland, Volker, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) went to the Oval Office to brief Trump on a trip they had taken to Ukraine and to push for a meeting between the two leaders. They were excited about the new government, according to the testimony.

But Trump was uninterested, Sondland said, “going on and on and on about his dissatisfaction with Ukraine. He didn’t even want to deal with it anymore.”

“And he basically said, go talk to Rudy, he knows all about Ukraine,” Sondland said, recounting that the Oval Office meeting was cut short. Giuliani was not present.

Sondland said the group was “disappointed” but felt they faced an impossible choice: either abandon the goal of a meeting between Trump and Zelensky, or deal with Giuliani.

Volker voiced that resignation a few days later in a text to a longtime State Department colleague, William B. Taylor Jr., who was considering returning to Kyiv as ambassador: “I don’t know if there is much to do about the Giuliani thing.”

Taylor later told House investigators that he believed Giuliani led Volker astray.

“When he got involved with Mr. Giuliani, I think that that pulled him away from, or it diverted him from, being focused on what I thought needed to be focused on,” Taylor told lawmakers, according to a transcript released Wednesday. “The Giuliani factor, I think, affected Ambassador Volker.”

After the Oval Office meeting, Volker set up a channel to Giuliani, texting him on the morning of July 10 asking him to “meet for coffee or lunch in the next week or so.”

In a series of texts over the summer, the veteran diplomat sought to gently lobby and cajole the president’s lawyer.

According to his testimony, Volker tried to warn Giuliani that a former Ukrainian prosecutor general with whom Giuliani met on several occasions was “not credible.” He also “pushed back” on Giuliani’s fixation with former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s role as a board member of a Ukrainian gas company, telling him at a breakfast meeting on July 19 that “it is simply not credible to me that Joe Biden would be influenced in his duties as vice president by money or things for his son or anything like that.”

He also warned the Ukrainians that Giuliani was shaping the president’s negative views of their country, a message that prompted Andrey Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky, to request a meeting with Giuliani.

The Ukrainians believed, Volker said, that if they spoke to Giuliani, the “information flow would reach the president.”

Volker reported back to Giuliani with good news. He told Trump’s personal attorney that he had an “opportunity to get you what you need” on the subject of Ukraine, according to text messages released Tuesday. He then helped set up a meeting between Giuliani and Yermak.

That sit-down in Madrid three weeks later created a new set of problems, Volker testified, adding that he believes that is when the idea was hatched for the Ukrainians to put out a statement vowing to open the corruption investigations that Trump was seeking.

A week before, Trump had asked Zelensky to investigate whether Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and Hunter Biden, the transcript of their call shows.

After the Madrid meeting, Yermak sent Volker a draft statement that referred to “the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States,” text messages show.

Volker and Sondland consulted with Giuliani on the statement. The president’s lawyer did not find it “convincing,” Volker recalled.

“Mr. Giuliani was the one giving the input as to what the president wanted in the statement. He wanted Burisma and 2016 election mentioned in the statement. And I don’t believe the Ukrainians were prepared to do that,” Sondland said.

Sondland said he was worried.

“What I was concerned about was that Zelensky would say whatever he would say on live television and it still wouldn’t be good enough for Rudy/the president, and then we would be having to go back and tell Zelensky, sorry, not good enough, and that would be extremely embarrassing,” Sondland said.

Sondland suggested the Ukrainians provide a summary of what they planned to say to the Americans “so that it can be run by Mayor Giuliani first to nail down what it is exactly that the president was asking or Giuliani was asking versus what Zelensky was intending to say. I didn’t want there to be a false press statement made live that was inadequate in some way.”

In a group text with Sondland, Volker sent back new language to Yermak that included “2 key items” — specific references to Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden served, as well as the 2016 election.

But privately, Volker said he warned Yermak that releasing the statement “was not a good idea” and could entangle the Ukrainians in U.S. domestic politics.

“Because of conversations with Giuliani, I wanted to make sure that I was cautioning the Ukrainians, ‘Don’t get sucked in,’ ” Volker recounted.

Later, Volker said, when the Ukraine scandal broke into public view, Giuliani sought to get him to put out a misleading statement about the role he had played.

In a Sept. 22 text message to Volker, Giuliani urged him to “tell the truth” that he had “reported back to you and Sondland” about his interactions with the Ukrainians.

But Volker refused to comply with Giuliani’s request because it was “not the truth” that the president’s lawyer was acting at the direction of the State Department, he told lawmakers.

“I wasn’t giving any direction to him in any way,” Volker said.

______

Andrew Ba Tran, Mike DeBonis, Karoun Demirjian, Greg Jaffe, Elise Viebeck and Aaron C. Davis contributed to this report.

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4 big takeaways from Bill Taylor’s full transcript

By Aaron Blake | Published November 06 at 3:58 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 6, 2019 |

House Democrats on Wednesday released the impeachment inquiry’s full testimony of the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, William B. Taylor.

We already knew Taylor was the first U.S. official to indicate that an explicit quid pro quo was communicated to top Ukrainian officials, based upon his publicly released opening statement. That claim that has since been confirmed by White House aide Tim Morrison and European Union Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who personally conveyed the quid pro quo.

Below are some takeaways from Taylor’s full testimony.

1. A SECOND QUID PRO QUO

The quid pro quo that we knew Taylor had explicitly outlined was one involving military aid; he said he had been told that Sondland told a Ukrainian official that the investigations Trump wanted would need to be announced for the aid to go through.

But in his further testimony, he also indicates that he was told in slightly less-certain terms that there was a quid pro quo involving a meeting with Trump. Taylor hinted at this in his opening statement, but he clarified it in his testimony:

Q: On page 5 of your testimony, in the third paragraph, you say: “But during my subsequent communications with Ambassador [Kurt] Volker and Sondland, they relayed to me that the President, quote, “wanted to hear from Zelensky,” unquote, “before scheduling the meeting in the Oval Office. It was not clear to me what this meant.” Now, I take it, ambassador, you used that word “before” deliberately — that is, they wanted to hear from Zelensky before they would schedule this meeting. Is that right?

A: That is correct.

Taylor says elsewhere in his testimony that he didn’t know the full details at the time but that he came to understand that the condition was that Ukraine would announce certain investigations, including one involving the company that employed former vice president Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

“By mid-July, it was becoming clear to me that the meeting President Zelensky wanted was conditioned on investigations of Burisma and alleged Ukrainian influence in the 2016 elections,” Taylor said in his opening statement. “It was also clear that this condition was driven by the irregular policy channel I had come to understand was guided by Mr. Giuliani.”

He was further asked whether “when you talk about ‘conditioned,’ did you mean that if they didn’t do this — the investigations — they weren’t going to get that, the meeting and the military assistance?”

“That was my clear understanding,” Taylor said.

2. He points the finger at Giuliani, not at Trump personally.

I wrote earlier Wednesday about how the testimonies of Volker and Sondland appear to be pointing in the direction of Republicans laying all this at the feet of Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. The two of them suggested they never had an explicit quid pro quo conveyed to them, and Sondland said he instead just “presumed” one was in place. What’s more, they both indicated Giuliani’s actions were problematic, if not illegal (in the case of Sondland).

Taylor’s testimony also stops short of directly implicating Trump. Taylor indicates that the quid pro quo was coming from Giuliani and says he didn’t know whether Trump was behind it.

REP. LEE ZELDIN (R-N.Y.): So where was this condition coming from if you’re not sure if it was coming from the President?

TAYLOR: I think it was coming from Mr. Giuliani.

ZELDIN: But not from the president?

TAYLOR: I don’t know.

Taylor adds that he doesn’t “know what was in the president’s mind.”

That doesn’t mean Trump wasn’t involved; indeed, someone like Taylor would have a difficult time knowing that, given that he wasn’t central to this effort. (He says he didn’t speak with Trump and didn’t even get a summary of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president, for instance.) Nor does it mean Giuliani didn’t have Trump’s blessing; he was serving as Trump’s lawyer, after all, and Trump has talked about the same investigations Giuliani was seeking, including in the July 25 call.

But it’s significant that Taylor stops short of saying he could trace this to Trump. And Republicans will continue to argue that Trump never explicitly called for a quid pro quo.

3. The plot thickens on ‘very sympathetic’ John Bolton.

Former national security adviser John Bolton looms large over this, as he would seem to be a rather motivated witness. Other aides have described him angrily cutting short a July 10 meeting in which Sondland broached the investigations with Ukrainian officials and telling aides to report their concerns about the situation.

The big question is whether Bolton will testify; for now, he’s awaiting some court rulings.

But Taylor provides even more of a window into Bolton’s reservations about this entire operation. He had said in his opening statement that Bolton told him to send a first-person cable to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stating his concerns about the military aid being withheld. And now, in his further testimony, we learn that Bolton went even further.

Taylor says that Bolton had “indicated that he was very sympathetic” to Taylor’s concerns and that Bolton “was also trying, with the two secretaries and the director of the CIA [Gina Haspel], to get this decision reversed.” (At another point, Taylor indicates that the “two secretaries” were Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper.)

Taylor also says Bolton warned against holding the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, because he “thought it was going to be a disaster.”

“He thought that there could be some talk of investigations or worse on the call,” Taylor said. “Turned out he was right.”

The Bolton Plot Thickens

4. Taylor is going to be a very important witness next week.

While Bolton would be a massive witness, Taylor will set the tone. He is one of two witnesses slated for the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry next week, along with George Kent. And Taylor’s testimony Nov. 13 is looming larger than ever.

Volker and Sondland have shown that they aren’t terribly interested in blowing the lid off the Ukraine scandal, with Volker denying knowledge of a quid pro quo and Sondland disclosing his only after others implicated him (he issued a clarification to his testimony Monday).

Taylor, by contrast, seemed to come into the job wary of the Giuliani setup, and he describes a process of gradually having his worst fears confirmed. Taylor also says he has “always kept careful notes, and I keep a little notebook where I take notes on conversations, in particular when I’m not in the office.”

Those notes could prove crucial, as could Taylor’s willingness to say things that other political appointees are warier of.

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Trump makes falsehoods central to impeachment defense as incriminating evidence mounts

By Toluse Olorunnipa and Philip Rucker |Published November 06 at 6:00 AM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 6, 2019 |

Standing before a crowd of supporters this week in Lexington, Ky., President Trump repeated a false claim he has made more than 100 times in the past six weeks: that a whistleblower from the intelligence community misrepresented a presidential phone call at the center of the impeachment inquiry that threatens his presidency.

“The whistleblower said lots of things that weren’t so good, folks. You’re going to find out,” Trump said Monday at a campaign rally. “These are very dishonest people.”

Behind him were men and women in “Read the Transcript” T-shirts — echoing through their apparel Trump’s attempt to recast an incriminating summary of his July 25 call with Ukraine’s president as a piece of exonerating evidence.

It’s a form of gaslighting that has become the central defense strategy for the president as he faces his greatest political threat yet. But the approach is coming under increasing strain as congressional Democrats release transcripts and prepare to hold public hearings presenting evidence that directly undercuts Trump’s claims.

That the whistleblower report essentially mirrors the set of facts that have since been revealed by a stream of documented evidence and sworn testimony has not stopped Trump from repeatedly claiming otherwise. He has also pushed other specious arguments in his harried attempt to counter the growing evidence from witnesses implicating his administration in a quid pro quo scheme linking military aid to Ukrainian investigations targeting Democrats.

Without evidence, Trump has claimed that his own administration officials who have complied with congressional subpoenas are “Never Trumpers.” He has recounted conversations in which senators deemed him “innocent,” only to have the lawmakers deny making the statements. He has dismissed polls that show growing support for impeachment as “fake,” while repeatedly claiming levels of Republican support that exceed anything that exists in public polling.

“I don’t know whether he believes all these things or he takes pleasure in inventing false narratives, but I think the most important thing here is that no president can sustain his hold on the public for long when he loses his credibility,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian.

Trump’s repetitive use of false claims represents an attempt to immunize himself from impeachment by seeding favorable information in the minds of the public, even when that information is incorrect, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.

“We know from work in social psychology that repeated exposure to a claim increases the likelihood that you think it’s accurate,” she said. “As you hear or read something repeatedly, you are more likely to think it’s accurate even if faced with evidence that it’s not.”

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

While Trump has made more than 13,000 false and misleading claims since he became president, his attempts to distort reality have crashed headlong into a fast-moving impeachment process that has secured damaging testimony from several Trump administration officials who have contradicted him under oath.

Since Democrats began their impeachment inquiry in September, Trump’s most consistent defense has been the false assertion that the whistleblower complaint “bears no resemblance” to his July 25 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump has referred to the whistleblower’s allegations as “false,” “fraudulent,” “wrong,” “incorrect,” “so bad,” “very inaccurate,” and “phony.”

But the whistleblower’s account — which documented how Trump pressed Zelensky to work with Attorney General William P. Barr and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter — has been corroborated by the reconstructed transcript released by the White House. Witness testimony has also backed up most of the whistleblower report’s main conclusions, including that White House lawyers sought to “lock down” records of the call by moving it onto a highly classified system.

In his repeated claims disputing the accuracy of the whistleblower’s account, Trump has only rarely gone into any detail to say what he considered inaccurate. Trump has misquoted the report each time he has attempted to provide evidence of the whistleblower’s alleged errors.

“The whistleblower said ‘quid pro quo’ eight times,” Trump said last month. “It was a little off — no times.”

The whistleblower report did not make any references to “quid pro quo,” let alone eight.

Trump’s willingness to repeatedly mislead the public represents an attempt to protect himself by creating doubt about the fundamental nature of truth, said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

“One thing we’ve all noticed with Trump is he knows how to strategically create confusion,” he said. “To go on the record with a bald-faced lie, it doesn’t matter whether you fact-check him in real time, it doesn’t matter if there’s a hue and cry afterwards, his calculation is that there’s enough confusion that you don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.”

Trump has also sought to draw other Republicans into his truth-defying defenses, drawing rare pushback from lawmakers who disputed his accounts of their conversations.

Last month, Trump quoted conversations with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), claiming that both lawmakers deemed his conduct with Ukraine “innocent.”

“I read Mitch McConnell’s statement yesterday, and he read my phone call. And, as you know, he put out a statement that said that was the most innocent phone call he’s read,” Trump told reporters last month. “And I spoke to him about it, too. He read my phone call with the President of Ukraine. Mitch McConnell — he said, ‘That was the most innocent phone call that I’ve read.’ ”

McConnell never released such a statement, and when asked about Trump’s claim, said, “We’ve not had any conversations on that subject.” Asked if the president was lying, McConnell responded: “You’d have to ask him.”

Trump also claimed that Scott made a statement saying that “the president is innocent. Forget about due process. He’s innocent.”

Scott, when asked if he had said what Trump claimed he had, said “yeah, no,” disputing the claim that he did not care about due process. He did say, for the first time publicly, that he considered Trump “innocent of an impeachable offense.”

Trump’s defenders say his unorthodox style is what allowed him to connect with voters and win the presidency three years ago. Many dismiss hand-wringing over the accuracy of Trump’s statements as a sign of Washington’s disconnectedness from average voters.

“This is another case in American politics of those on each side taking the same written words and reaching their own conclusions,” said Ed Brookover, a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign adviser. “Just as with the so-called Russian collusion case, you’re going to find a whole lot of nothing here again. . . . When the president says, ‘Here we go again,’ it’s a very believable message.”

Public polling has shown steadily increasing support for the Democratic-led impeachment probe into whether Trump abused his power for personal and political gain. Officials from the State Department and White House have provided sworn testimony describing the Trump administration’s attempt to secure political investigations by the government in Ukraine while the president withheld almost $400 million in congressionally approved military aid and the chance for a visit with Zelensky.

Trump has dismissed the unfavorable poll numbers as “fake,” claiming on Saturday that he had “the real polls.” Trump has tweeted several times that he has 95 percent support within the Republican Party, an inflated number that far exceeds the 74 percent figure in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. No other public polling has shown Trump’s GOP support at 95 percent.

But the president’s varying assertions have had trouble gaining a foothold amid mounting incriminating information from the impeachment probe, which has begun to enter a more public-facing phase.

On Tuesday, Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union, acknowledged telling one of Zelensky’s advisers that resumption of U.S. aid was tied to anti-corruption investigations that would target Democrats.

The acknowledgment in a deposition released Tuesday was a reversal from his earlier testimony, which Trump had previously cited in an attempt defend himself from charges of a quid pro quo.

The testimony from Sondland, a Trump donor and political appointee, could be more difficult for the president to dismiss than the allegations of several other Trump administration officials who have also described a political quid pro quo.

Trump has claimed without evidence that those officials were “Never Trumpers” peddling false accusations.

It’s part of a strategy to paint all incriminating information as emanating from biased sources, said Jamieson.

“If you can construct the world that anybody who says anything negative about the president is a venal partisan, you never have to get into any of the evidence because you distort the evidence and discredit the source of it,” she said. “That’s what Donald Trump does.”

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RECORDING OF TRUMP CALLING FOR YOVANOVITCH’S OUSTER APPEARS TO CORROBORATE PARNAS’S ACCOUNT

By Colby Itkowitz and Rosalind S. Helderman | Published January 24 at 4:18 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 24, 2020 |

President Trump is allegedly heard on an audio recording demanding the firing of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch during a private dinner with top donors in April 2018, according to an audio file obtained by ABC News.

“Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it,” Trump is heard saying, according to ABC News, which said it reviewed the tape.

The recording, which The Washington Post has not independently verified, corroborates an account of the evening by Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani. In a recent interview, Parnas said he told Trump that evening that Yovanovitch was working against him.

“I do remember me telling the president the ambassador was bad-mouthing him and saying he was going to get impeached, something to that effect,” Parnas told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last week.

In the interview, he apologized to Yovanovitch, saying he now believes he was wrong about her.

The Post first reported that Parnas and his business partner Igor Fruman bad-mouthed Yovanovitch to Trump at the dinner and that the president reacted strongly, saying she should be fired. The recording of the conversation was made by Fruman, ABC reported.

The report of the recording’s existence, released in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial against Trump, helps bolster Parnas’s claims about the access he had to the president and his inner circle.

But the 2018 conversation about Yovanovitch also raises questions about the impetus behind the effort to push her out, indicating that it began before the Ukraine pressure campaign.

The dinner took place before Parnas and Fruman began working with Giuliani and seven months before Giuliani has said he began his Ukraine investigation — suggesting that the duo were agitating against the ambassador for another reason and may have biased Trump against her early on.

Todd Blanche, a lawyer for Fruman, declined to comment.

Parnas’s attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, said that the recording was not leaked by him or his client, but that it validates Parnas’s recollection of that event with Trump.

“For some time, Mr. Parnas has indicated that he had previously heard such a recording. We do not possess the recording, and all of Mr. Parnas’s statements regarding that event were based on his independent recollection of that event rather than the contents of the tape,” he said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump’s personal attorney Jay Sekulow, asked about the tape, told reporters in the Capitol that he’s “not concerned about that at all.”

Vice President Pence was asked about the tape Friday during an impromptu news conference with reporters in Italy.

“I have not heard the tape and would not be prepared to comment on it. All of the ambassadors for the United States of America serve at the pleasure of the president of the United States,” Pence said, according to a pool report.

The audio, he added, “will only confirm what people already know: is that the president had concerns, and in his authority this president made a decision.”

The recording provides further evidence of the long-running effort to push out Yovanovitch, whose ouster was sought by Yuri Lutsenko, formerly Ukraine’s top prosecutor.

Text messages from last year, released by the House this month, indicated that Lutsenko agreed to provide Parnas with damaging information related to former vice president Joe Biden if the Trump administration recalled the ambassador.

The messages, written in Russian, show Lutsenko urging Parnas to force out Yovanovitch in exchange for cooperation regarding Biden. At one point, Lutsenko suggests he won’t make any helpful public statements unless “madam” is removed.

“It’s just that if you don’t make a decision about Madam — you are calling into question all my declarations. Including about B,” Lutsenko wrote to Parnas in a March 22 message on WhatsApp.

It’s unclear if “B” is a reference to Biden or to Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, served from 2014 to 2019.

Four days later, Lutsenko told Parnas that work on the case against the owner of the gas company was proceeding successfully and evidence of the money transfers of “B” had been obtained.

“And here you can’t even remove one fool,” Lutsenko lamented, using a sad-face emoticon as he again appeared to push for Yovanovitch’s ouster.

“She’s not a simple fool[,] trust me,” Parnas responded. “But she’s not getting away.”

Parnas, days later, told Lutsenko that “soon everything will turn around and we’ll be on the right course.” Lutsenko responded that he had copies of payments Burisma made to an investment firm co-founded by Hunter Biden.

The following month, Yovanovitch was removed from her post at Giuliani’s urging. Lutsenko later said publicly that he found no evidence of wrongdoing under Ukrainian law by Hunter or Joe Biden.

______

Paul Sonne contributed to this report.

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DAMNING NEW AUDIO OF TRUMP ILLUMINATES THE UKRAINE SCANDAL’S BACK ALLEYS

By Greg Sargent | Published January 24 at 2:03 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 24, 2020 |

Given that Donald Trump was elected president of the United States shortly after a video surfaced featuring him boasting of committing sexual assault with impunity, you might be forgiven for thinking that a damning new audio recording of Trump that’s directly relevant to the Ukraine scandal might not end up mattering much.

But this new scoop from ABC News is remarkable, and raises questions about what’s going on in this scandal’s subterranean passageways that might not be evident at first:

A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — two former business associates of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.

The recording appears to contradict statements by Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump’s impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.

“Get rid of her!” is what the voice that appears to be President Trump’s is heard saying. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it.”

Most superficially, this contradicts the president’s repeated denials that he knew Parnas, who was recently charged with campaign finance crimes and has since turned on Trump, spilling potentially incriminating new information on Trump’s Ukraine scheme.

As a side note, it’s worth noting here that when Trump claims not to know an associate who has just been busted for wrongdoing — which happens rather often — what he’s really doing is telling the world, and the rest of the gang, that this person is now dead to him.

The recording also suggests new detail about just how involved Trump was in the campaign to oust Yovanovitch. As you’ll recall, Yovanovitch had to be removed — which Trump ultimately did — to clear the way for the corrupt scheme that Giuliani was preparing to orchestrate in an effort to extort Ukraine into announcing investigations that would help Trump politically.

If it’s true, as ABC News reports, that this audio recorded Trump in spring 2018, that might suggest the scheme to oust Yovanovitch had been in the works for longer than we thought. It’s difficult to say whether Trump is merely responding to being told by his henchmen that Yovanovitch has been “bad-mouthing” him, as ABC News reports, or whether there’s something else going on. But there is this:

Parnas appears to say: “The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we gotta get rid of the ambassador. She’s still left over from the Clinton administration,” Parnas can be heard telling Trump. “She’s basically walking around telling everybody 'Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.”

That sure sounds like they’re talking about a more concerted scheme.

It’s worth noting here how bat-bleep insane it is that Trump, who has the power to recall ambassadors, is talking with his goons about this. Remember that Giuliani launched an epic smear campaign to hound her out of office. Trump finally did remove the ambassador, but if there were legitimate reasons to do so, why this secretive campaign against her?

“The president can say, ‘I’m recalling this ambassador,’ ” former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner told me. “Why in the world instead of doing that do you yell to two underworld characters like Parnas and Fruman, ‘get rid of her,’ going around the entire machinery of government?”

That’s why it’s extremely suggestive, as ABC reports, that the audio was made by Fruman.

It’s also why this part of the ABC story jumps out:

A copy of the recording is now in the custody of federal prosecutors in New York’s Southern District, who declined to comment to ABC News.

One big outstanding question about this whole scandal is what’s going in with prosecutors at the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York or SDNY. You’ll recall that Fruman and Parnas were indicted by prosecutors in that office for funneling campaign contributions to a congressman as part of their efforts to oust Yovanovitch.

You’ll also recall that the New York Times recently reported that Giuliani is also under criminal investigation by that office. Giuliani has denied any lawbreaking — the law in question requires disclosure of contacts with the U.S. media or the government at the direction of foreign officials, and Giuliani claims he wasn’t thusly directed. But Giuliani was indeed trying to oust Yovanovitch in collaboration with foreign officials.

What we don’t know is how far along this SDNY investigation is, or how wide a net it has cast. It seems clear the scheme to remove Yovanovitch is being examined. And, of course, that scheme was carried out by Giuliani at Trump’s direction. The new audio underscores Trump’s targeting of her.

It’s possible that Fruman merely gave this audio to prosecutors to get it out into the public domain, Kirschner told me. But he added that it also raises at least the possibility that the SDNY investigation is far wider than we thought.

Kirschner noted that Yovanovitch testified that she had been abruptly recalled from Ukraine amid warnings about “my security,” and that she didn’t know what that meant. And, of course, Trump told the Ukrainian president that “she’s going to go through some things.”

“It seems like there could be an investigation into a conspiracy to do something to Yovanovitch,” Kirschner told me. “SDNY is or should be looking at all of this.”

All of which is a reminder that we still have only the foggiest understanding of the role Attorney General William P. Barr is playing. Is Barr allowing this investigation — whatever it’s examining — to proceed wherever the facts lead? We just don’t have any idea.

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Here are the times that we know Lev Parnas interacted with President Trump

(Fascinating photos, worth a look!)

By Philip Bump | Published January 24 at 4:31 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 24, 2020 |

To hear President Trump tell it, Lev Parnas was just … a guy, a donor who wormed his way into some pictures. Or, perhaps, worse: a “con man,” as Trump said this week, “sort of like a groupie.”

“Parnas, I don’t know,” Trump said to reporters on Wednesday, “other than he probably contributed to the campaign along with tens of thousands of other people.”

Ask Parnas, though, and the relationship is much different. As an associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, there’s little question that Parnas had an at least indirect connection to the president. Speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow earlier this month, Parnas suggested a more direct one.

“I was with Rudy more than — I mean, four or five days out of the week,” Parnas said. “I mean, I was in constant contact with him. So — and I was with Rudy when he would speak to the president, plenty of times.”

On numerous occasions, he said, he’d tell foreign officials that he was representing Giuliani and the president.

This is an issue of ongoing importance. On Friday, ABC News reported on the existence of an April 30, 2018, recording in which Trump demanded the firing of then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. That comment appears to have followed disparagement of Yovanovitch by Parnas, who told the president that Yovanovitch was “basically walking around telling everybody, ‘Wait, he’s gonna get impeached, just wait.’ ” (The Post first reported on Parnas’s conversation with Trump last November.) A year later, Yovanovitch was recalled from her position after a prolonged pressure campaign with Giuliani at its center.

That’s just one example. When Trump has denied having a relationship with Parnas, Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, has posted images on social media showing his client and the president together. By now, there’s a glut of images showing Parnas with Trump and other officials, suggesting a deep integration with Trump’s team and political allies.

But is that suggestion accurate? Is there validity to Trump’s assertion that Parnas was simply an opportunist, eager to document his proximity to Trump on those occasions where he had any? Or is it Trump who’s misrepresenting their relationship?

In an effort to answer those questions, we looked through all of the images including both Trump and Parnas that we could find. We identified 11 discrete occasions on which the two were in the proximity of one another — several of which have since been reported to have included detailed political conversations.

March 7, 2014. This encounter was one of several identified by CNN last year. Well before Trump launched his presidential campaign, he and Parnas met at a golf tournament at Trump’s club in Miami.

Oct. 23, 2015. Parnas and Trump met again at Doral. This time, Trump was a candidate for president and the event was a fundraiser.

The encounter between the two was one of a number of images captured on Parnas’s private Instagram account. The Wall Street Journal gained access to the account last year and compiled an overview of what it showed.

The image from the October 2015 event can be seen at the 1:57 mark in the Journal’s video. It shows Parnas, Trump and Parnas’s son with the caption, “Next president and future president!”

October 2016. Parnas attended another fundraiser in Florida at the home of a Trump donor. In a photo, Parnas is seen standing next to Trump in front of a large door in the donor’s foyer.

According to a report from USA Today, this was the month that Parnas first made contributions to a federal political campaign: Trump’s.

December 2016. After Trump denied familiarity with Parnas last week, Parnas’s attorney, Bondy, released a brief video of Parnas encountering Trump during an event at Mar-a-Lago.

You’ll notice that this video, like the preceding photos (and many of those that follow), doesn’t seem to suggest a close relationship between Trump and Parnas. At this point, though, Parnas and Giuliani weren’t yet working together.

Jan. 19, 2017. Parnas attended a pre-inauguration event at Washington’s Union Station. Photos uncovered by CNN show Parnas among a large crowd of people surrounding the president-elect. It’s not clear that the two actually met at the event.

That wasn’t the only inauguration-related event Parnas attended. He was also photographed with Donald Trump Jr. at what appears to be a luncheon, as seen in a photograph turned over to the House Intelligence Committee by Bondy.

April 30, 2018. The dinner during which Parnas and Trump discussed the firing of Yovanovitch appears to have been part of an event in support of America First Action, a political action committee that was part of the web of contributions that eventually led to Parnas’s indictment for alleged campaign finance violations.

It took place at Trump’s D.C. hotel, with Parnas posting on Facebook a number of images and video of himself with or near the president.

June 18, 2018. Parnas’s contributions to America First earned him VIP status at an event the PAC held at Trump’s D.C. hotel. A photograph provided to the House Intelligence Committee appears to show Parnas approaching Trump at that event as Trump puts a piece of paper or envelope in his jacket pocket.

Oct. 20, 2018. The indictment against Parnas alleged that he’d made illegal contributions to a political candidate in Nevada and attended a political rally in support of him. CNN tracked down video of the rally at which Trump spoke, identifying Parnas among a crowd of people on the risers behind the stage.

Dec. 6, 2018. Weeks later, Parnas accompanied Giuliani to a Hanukkah event at the White House. New York Times photographer Doug Mills captured the pair during the event. Parnas is visible between Giuliani and the phone being held in the air by someone in the audience.

There are a number of other photographs of the event, including one that can be seen at the 4:11 mark in the Journal video. The material provided to the House Intelligence Committee includes a blurry shot of Parnas appearing to show Trump something on his phone during the event.

In November, CNN’s Vicky Ward reported that Parnas and Giuliani joined Trump for a private meeting. Two people who’d spoken with Parnas at the time told Ward that “Parnas said that ‘the big guy,’ as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and [Giuliani associate Igor] Fruman with what Parnas described as ‘a secret mission’ to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate [former vice president] Joe Biden and his son Hunter.”

Possibly March 30, 2019. Included in the material turned over to the House Intelligence Committee are a number of images from an event hosted at Mar-a-Lago. It appears to be a donor roundtable, a high-dollar event in which contributors get access to the president. The date of the event isn’t clear, though Trump’s public calendar and press reports identify a number of dates on which such roundtables were held at the club: March 2, 2018, April 20, 2018, March 8, 2019 and March 30, 2019. Our unconfirmed estimate is that the photos are from the last of those events. (Efforts to validate with Bondy have not yet been successful.)

The images show that Parnas was seated next to Trump and that he posed with the president both in the room where the roundtable was held and in front of the flags of the United States and the state of Florida.

Date unknown. There’s one additional photo of Trump and Parnas together that, like the one above, shows the two posing in front of the same flags.

The date of the photo isn’t clear.

It, like many of the other public photos, don’t clarify the central question about the relationship between the two men. They are, overwhelmingly, photos of someone at events making casual contact with the president. While they also overlap with reports about closer conversations between Trump and Parnas, they don’t, of themselves, prove that the two had an intimate working relationship.

But the number of photos allows Parnas to claim that they did — and the distance allows Trump to claim that they didn’t. Making the emergence of audio of the two interacting in April 2018 a significant boost to Parnas’s case.

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Schiff puts a fine point on the argument for removal: Trump will always put Trump first

By Philip Bump | Published January 24 at 11:36 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 24, 2020 |

Late Thursday evening, lead House impeachment manager Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) turned to the most important question facing the senators sitting in judgment of President Trump: With an election looming, why is it important that Trump be removed from office?

Schiff began by pointing to Trump’s approach to his position.

“Does anybody really question whether the president is capable of what he’s charged with?” Schiff said. “No one is really making the argument ‘Donald Trump would never do such a thing.’ Because, of course, we know that he would. And of course, we know that he did.”

“It’s a somewhat different question, though, to ask, okay, it’s pretty obvious — whether we can say it publicly or we can’t say it publicly” — a nod to the Republican majority listening to his speech — “we all know what we’re dealing here with this president,” he said.

Schiff then outlined why that assessment of Trump’s motives meant that Trump needed to be removed from office.

“Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own FBI director. He chose Rudy Giuliani over his own national security advisers. When all of them were telling him this Ukraine 2016 stuff is kooky, crazy Russian propaganda. He chose not to believe them. He chose to believe Rudy Giuliani.”

“That makes him dangerous. To us. To our country.”

“That was Donald Trump’s choice. Now, why would Donald Trump believe a man like Rudy Giuliani over a man like [FBI Director] Christopher Wray? Okay. Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over Christopher Wray? Because he wanted to and because what Rudy was offering him was something that would help him personally. And what Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the truth. What Christopher Wray was offering him was merely the information he needed to protect his country and its elections. But that’s not good enough. What’s in it for him? What’s in it for Donald Trump? This is why he needs to be removed.”

This is the heart of Schiff’s point: When push comes to shove, whose side will Trump take, his own or the country’s? He used the example of possible Russian interference in the upcoming election, something that Trump’s own intelligence agencies say is underway.

“Can you have the least bit of confidence that Donald Trump will stand up to [Russia] and protect our national interests over his own personal interest? You know you can’t,” Schiff said. “Which makes him dangerous — to this country.”

That first question, whether Trump can be trusted to put the national interest first, is one most Americans would answer in the way that Schiff does: You can’t.

A poll released by Fox News in October put the question directly. More than half of respondents said that they thought Trump found that doing what was best for himself was more important than doing what was best for the country. That included nearly a fifth of Republicans.

But, of course, that also means that three-quarters of Republicans disagreed.

A CNN-SSRS poll released the following month asked respondents if they felt that Trump’s focus on Ukraine was meant to benefit himself personally as opposed to fighting corruption in that country — a claim which Schiff spent much of Thursday trying to prove. On that question, too, most thought Trump was putting himself first, though three-quarters of Republicans again disagreed.

Those poll results cast Schiff’s remarks Thursday night in a particular light. While most agreed with his line of argument, the people he most wanted to reach, those Republican senators — or, really, their constituents — say they don’t accept it.

Schiff nonetheless pressed the point.

“Can any of us really have the confidence that Donald Trump will put his personal interests ahead of the national interest?” Schiff asked, apparently accidentally reversing the intent of his statement. “Is there really any evidence in this presidency that should give us the iron clad confidence that he would do so? You know you can’t count on him to do that. That’s the sad truth. You know, you can’t count on him to do that. The American people deserve a president they can count on to put their interests first.”

He invoked testimony from Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman during a public impeachment hearing last year.

Vindman noted that his father, an immigrant from Ukraine, was concerned about Vindman’s publicly opposing the president since, where he came from, that was “the ultimate risk.” Asked why he was nonetheless confident in doing so, Vindman replied: “Because this is America. This is the country I have served and defended, that all of my brothers have served. And here, right matters.”

“No constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter any more,” Schiff said Thursday night. “And you know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump.”

Schiff was visibly emotional as he made the point, no doubt a function in part of the lengthy day that was reaching its end. He completed his remarks and stepped away from the lectern.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rose and moved that the Senate adjourn for the day. As is almost always the case, he did not himself appear to be particularly emotional.

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There’s a critical witness impeachment is missing

By George T. Conway III | Published Jan 24 at 3:16 PM EST | Washington Post |

Posted January 24, 2020 |

There is an important missing witness in the impeachment of President Trump, and his last name, for all the fulminations of the president’s defenders, isn’t Biden.

No, that witness is Trump himself — and the best case for calling him has been established by an argument advanced by the president’s own lawyers. Trump’s testimony is actually pertinent for precisely the reason the Bidens’ testimony is not.

Trump’s lawyers contend that a president should not be impeached and removed for making a bona fide policy judgment, whether or not that judgment turns out to be misguided or wrong. On that point, they’re absolutely right. If a president makes a reasoned decision about what best serves the nation’s interests, even if he turns out to be wrong, he has committed no impeachable offense. The Framers didn’t intend, through impeachment, to transform such policy disputes or mistakes into high crimes.

The claim that Trump acted for legitimate reasons ostensibly serves as the basis for his backers’ suggestions that former vice president Joe Biden or his son Hunter should be called to testify. The theory of summoning the Bidens would be to lend credence to the contention that Trump’s involvement in Ukraine was genuinely motivated by concern over corruption there.

But that argument presumes Trump has to meet a higher burden in showing his innocence than he actually bears. Precisely because the Constitution allows presidents to make non-corrupt mistakes in judgment, the true facts about Hunter Biden’s well-paid service on the board of a Ukrainian energy company or the vice president’s role in ousting a Ukrainian prosecutor don’t strictly matter. What does matter is Trump’s state of mind: What he actually believed, and what basis he personally had for that belief, should determine whether he committed an abuse of power.

All of which means that it’s Trump, and not the Bidens, who should take the stand here. Trump needn’t come to the well of the Senate for that; in deference to the presidency, he could be allowed to testify from the White House, the venue from which President Bill Clinton testified before independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s grand jury two decades ago.

But if Trump were to testify, it wouldn’t be enough for him to baldly assert that his motives were pure, or “perfect,” as he is wont to say. And even if he truly believes he acted in good faith, that wouldn’t be enough to acquit him, either. The president’s duty to faithfully execute his office includes not only a duty of loyalty to the nation but also a duty of care — a duty to act with reasonable diligence and upon a reasonable basis. President George W. Bush, for example, couldn’t have been impeached merely because he blundered into a war in Iraq. But Bush could be impeached if he decided to launch the invasion based on the advice of a Ouija board or a Magic 8-Ball.

Which means that the cross-examination of witness Trump would determine his fate. Trump would have to answer specific questions about what he did, what he knew and when he knew it:

Your advisers told you that the Ukranians didn’t interfere with the 2016 election, but that the Russians did, right? You, yourself, ordered that the aid to Ukraine be held up? And your advisers repeatedly told you that was a bad thing, right? You were told about the whistleblower complaint before it became public, weren’t you? It was after you knew about that complaint that you told Ambassador Gordon Sondland that you didn’t want a quid pro quo, isn’t that true? And you didn’t release the aid until after you were told about the complaint, right? In fact, you released the aid only after the House announced it was investigating the whistleblower’s allegations, correct?

He’d be confronted on cross-examination with the incriminating statements he and others have made, which the House managers have already used compellingly in their opening arguments:

Here’s video of you on the South Lawn saying that what you wanted on the July 25 call was for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to “start a major investigation of the Bidens” — you said that, right? You also said the Chinese should investigate the Bidens, too, didn’t you? And when you spoke to Sondland on July 26, you asked him whether Zelensky was going to do the investigations you wanted, didn’t you?

Confronted by a skilled examiner, Trump would melt down in minutes. He’d be humiliated, and he knows it — which is why he’s too terrified to give testimony under oath, and why it won’t happen. But it’s the logical conclusion of the argument the president’s lawyers have been making. They have, to use Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow’s wording, “opened the door” to calling Trump.

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Trump’s lawyers shouldn’t be allowed to use bogus legal arguments on impeachment

By Laurence H. Tribe | Published Jan 19 at 5:19 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 24, 2020 |

Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard and the co-author, most recently, of “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.” His Twitter handle is @tribelaw.

The president’s lawyers have made the sweeping assertion that the articles of impeachment against President Trump must be dismissed because they fail to allege that he committed a crime — and are, therefore, as they said in a filing with the Senate, “constitutionally invalid on their face.”

Another of his lawyers, my former Harvard Law School colleague Alan Dershowitz, claiming to represent the Constitution rather than the president as such, makes the backup argument that the articles must be dismissed because neither abuse of power nor obstruction of Congress can count as impeachable offenses.

Both of these arguments are baseless. Senators weighing the articles of impeachment shouldn’t think that they offer an excuse for not performing their constitutional duty.

The argument that only criminal offenses are impeachable has died a thousand deaths in the writings of all the experts on the subject, but it staggers on like a vengeful zombie. In fact, there is no evidence that the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was understood in the 1780s to mean indictable crimes.

On the contrary, with virtually no federal criminal law in place when the Constitution was written in 1787, any such understanding would have been inconceivable. Moreover, on July 20, 1787, Edmund Randolph, Virginia’s governor, urged the inclusion of an impeachment power specifically because the “Executive will have great opportunitys of abusing his power.” Even more famously, Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 65 defined “high crimes and misdemeanors” as “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.”

Any number of such violations of the public trust — such as working with foreign governments in ways that make the president beholden to their leaders, or cooperating with those governments to bolster the president’s reelection — clearly must be impeachable even though they might violate no criminal law and indeed no federal statute at all.

The related suggestion that, even if some noncriminal offenses might be impeachable, “abuse of power” is not among them is particularly strange. No serious constitutional scholar has ever agreed with it. The suggestion turns the impeachment power on its head.

The logic of impeachment as applied to the presidency is that the president has unique authority conferred by Article II. If he abuses that authority for personal advantage, financial or political, he injures the country as a whole. That is precisely why the framers rejected the idea of relying solely on an election to remove an abusive president from office. Indeed, waiting for the next election is an option that is obviously insufficient when the abuse of power is directed at cheating in that very election.

Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1833 that there are “many” impeachable offenses, none of which is “alluded to in our statute book,” because the abuses of power that constitute “political offences” are “of so various and complex a character, so utterly incapable of being defined, or classified, that the task” of enumerating them all through “positive legislation would be impracticable.”

As if to match one great justice with another, Dershowitz on Sunday cited Justice Benjamin Curtis, a dissenter from the infamous Dred Scott decision. Curtis, after stepping down from the court, represented President Andrew Johnson in the 1868 impeachment trial and, Dershowitz claimed, prevailed by insisting that abuse of power is not an impeachable offense.

That is false. They actually lost a Senate majority (and avoided by a single vote the supermajority needed to remove Johnson) only because one senator appears to have been bribed to vote for the president. And, so far as the arguments themselves were concerned, Dershowitz is also misrepresenting. The fact is that Curtis, in his opening statement representing the president, and Attorney General Henry Stanbery, in his closing statement, insisted both that Johnson had broken no valid law and that he had not abused his presidential powers in any way.

They objected to impeaching Johnson on the basis of his unsuccessful attempts to fire his secretary of war in violation of the Tenure of Office Act, arguing that Johnson hadn’t actually violated the act and that in any event was within his rights to deem it unconstitutional, as it ultimately was held to be. They objected to impeaching Johnson for the manner of his “executive administration.” They objected to impeaching him for having disgraced the office through his outlandish insults to members of Congress, arguing that doing so would undermine the “precious right … of free speech.”

But, far from viewing “abuse of power” as unimpeachable, the defense team in Stanbery’s closing took the opposite tack, saying of Johnson that he never misused “public money” or injured any “public officer” or “appropriated the public funds … unlawfully to his own use” but, rather, “stood firm as a rock against all temptation to abuse his own powers or to exercise those which were not conferred upon him.”

The president is entitled to robust legal representation. But his lawyers should not be allowed to use bogus legal arguments to mislead the American public or the senators weighing his fate.

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Mitch McConnell doesn’t care what you think. He just wants to win.

By Ben Terri's | Published January 24 at 5:00 AM EST | Washington Post | Posted January 24, 2020 |

First, the smirk.

Mitch McConnell’s smirk is a frown by another name. The corners of his mouth either remain flat enough to level a picture frame, or plunge downward, as if unwilling to do battle with the laws of gravity. All signs of satisfaction lie within his squinting, glinting eyes.

Though its exact meaning is open for interpretation — a sign of self-assurance? a mask of self-doubt? an attempt to trigger his detractors? — the Senate majority leader, famously a man of few words, lets his smirk do much of his talking. Deciding not to confirm President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court pick in an election year, but saying he’d do so for President Trump? Smirk. Trying to hold an impeachment trial in the dead of night? Smirk.

It’s a subtle look, and one difficult to capture. In the many political cartoons drawn over the years, artists tend to focus on the jowls, the sunken eyes, or the thinness — rather than the trajectory — of his lips. There have been more than 650 of these comics, a fact known to McConnell and his staff because he keeps them all.

Every illustration of him bathing in a tub full of money, or making it rain dollar bills on a Senate candidate who’s gyrating in a G-string; of him as an out-of-breath tortoise who “won the race” to become President Trump’s “greatest enabler,” or sitting at a Senate desk behind the nameplate “Moscow Mitch.”

Some he hangs gleefully from the walls of his Senate office for gawking visitors. The rest, which have been flowing in at a record pace in recent years, he keeps in an archive in Louisville. McConnell, who declined an interview request for this article, has discussed turning them into a coffee-table book and scoffed when one of his staffers suggested they might have to be censored.

“There were a ton during the Obama administration, and as you can imagine, in the age of Trump there have been a lot of insane ones,” McConnell’s spokeswoman Stephanie Penn said on a tour of his office, just hours before the Senate’s impeachment trial of Trump. “But he has a good sense of humor about it. Better to have people talking about you and making fun of you than not talking about you at all.”

Such is the McConnell mantra: do what it takes to rise to power, and enjoy the criticism.

Being a man unbothered has served the 77-year-old McConnell well over the years. Immune to cries of hypocrisy, McConnell has changed stances on any number of issues since reaching public office, including his thoughts about Trump.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that he wasn’t early on the Trump bandwagon,” said Janet Mullins Grissom, McConnell’s former chief of staff and campaign manager.

But on that and much else, he is, as Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), one of McConnell’s confidants in the Senate, puts it: “the ultimate pragmatist.”

It’s become a common theme in Washington to discuss what an odd partnership McConnell has forged with Trump. They do have their differences: McConnell likes to fade into the background of a room while the president demands to be the center of attention; McConnell is the consummate lever-puller, while Trump is more of a button-pusher. McConnell worked with his staff in secret to outline rules for an impeachment trial that would favor Trump, while the president sent out a record number of tweets calling the process a “sham.”

And yet, McConnell has done more for Trump than perhaps any other Republican. He helped him in 2016 by blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland and allowing Trump to dangle the Supreme Court as bait to wary Republicans. His Senate has given Trump a win to run on in 2020 by confirming, by his office’s count, 187 judges to the federal bench. This week, he willfully took on the role as the president’s most important defender against impeachment-hungry Democrats — working hand-in-glove with the White House to create a trial with no guarantee of witnesses, after having already admitted to having no intention of being a “impartial juror.”

Perhaps the answer for why is simple. In at least one way, Trump and McConnell, two politicians with shifting ideological cores, really aren’t all that different: their unyielding desire to win.

“Mitch has been as focused as anyone I’ve ever known on . . . his political power,” said Rep. John Yarmuth, his fellow Kentuckian, who, before becoming a Democrat got to know McConnell working alongside him on a Republican Senate campaign in 1968. “He gets up every day since [he was] 5 years old, and the first thing he thinks about is ‘What can I do to enhance my political power?’ ”

The first time he dealt with a president barreling toward impeachment, McConnell felt the need to say something about it.

It was the spring of 1973, and McConnell was the young and — don’t cancel your subscription — almost-handsome new chairman of the city-county Republican executive committee in Louisville, his hometown. From the time he was a boy, McConnell had designs on rising up in the party, perhaps one of the only teenagers in Kentucky who daydreamed about becoming majority leader in the U.S. Senate. (He willed his way into student council politics in high school despite, as he told his mother at the time, not “having even one friend.”)

As a 31-year-old, McConnell was a moderate: in favor of civil rights bills since the ’60s, a believer that money in politics was a “cancer,” and a seeker of union support. He and his young wife at the time had named their cat Rocky, after the centrist New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. None of this was particularly unusual for Republicans at the time, especially for an up-and-comer looking to put a fresh face on the party.

But McConnell’s news conference in the wake of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal still came as a surprise to many.

“Clearly a crisis of confidence confronts both the national administration and the Republican Party at all levels,” McConnell said at the local GOP headquarters, just one week after his election as chairman. He called the break-in at the Watergate “totally repugnant,” denounced it as an “unconscionable,” and called on Nixon to “rid the administration and the party of the ‘stench of Watergate’ by cleaning house from top to bottom.”

The party was suffering from what McConnell called a “moral crisis,” the Louisville Courier Journal reported, and he was there to help make sure Republicans began operating “within the guidelines of principle and decency.” Even if that meant calling out the behavior of the conservative administration in the White House.

A casual observer might wonder what happened over the course of the last four decades. How McConnell could go from that teller of hard truths to become President Trump’s Mitch. In almost every way he seems to have changed: The boyish Republican moderate has become the taciturn grim reaper of the Senate.

But is McConnell really that different than he was 37 years ago? His maverick demands about housecleaning in the Nixon administration were the scolds of a man on the hunt for his own real estate in Washington; now that he owns the land, he’s just looking to keep everyone off his lawn.

“Mitch has never really been a philosopher so much as an engineer,” said V. Lance Tarrance Jr., who worked as the pollster for McConnell’s first Senate run in 1984. “He’s reflecting the changes in the world. What kind of technician wouldn’t honor data?”

In this way, none of McConnell’s changes over the years feel particularly surprising. Take his view on money in politics. When the idea of trying to keep up in the fundraising game seemed daunting, the obstacle that could keep a little guy like him from gaining traction, it was a “cancer.” But when he realized his ability to raise money was an asset, well, maybe it was benign after all.

“On a more personal level, my first run for the Senate brought these issues to light in a concrete way,” McConnell once wrote. “I never would have been able to win my race if there had been a limit on the amount of money I could raise and spend.”

And as for being willing to team up with a brash, win-at-all-costs type? Tarrance had McConnell do that before, too, enlisting Roger Ailes — the future Fox News chairman who cut his teeth as Richard Nixon’s media consultant during the 1968 presidential run — to help out on his Senate campaign.

Without Ailes there might not even be a Senator McConnell. In the summer of ’84, McConnell’s campaign team was so hard up for cash that they’d taken to collect-call gimmicks to save themselves a dime when calling into the office. Knowing his campaign was in trouble, McConnell suggested to Ailes that maybe they should film some kind of ad highlighting his biography. Ailes suggested that if he wanted to win it’d be best to go hard on his opponent, incumbent Democratic Sen. Dee Huddleston.

And that he did. Ailes filmed a now-infamous spot in which a pack of baying bloodhounds were set loose to find the “absentee” senator, highlighting the fact that he’d missed some votes to give paid speeches.

The ad put McConnell back on the map, helping him raise enough money to stay afloat and ride into Congress on Ronald Reagan’s wave of support in Kentucky.

McConnell was grateful to Ailes, despite a partnership that could be difficult at times. McConnell was, as Tarrance put it, the “librarian” to the admaker’s “hard-charging general.” And while Ailes may have seen McConnell as “weak,” he did respect one thing.

“He found someone who wanted to win as much as he did,” said Tarrance.

In the summer of 2016, as Trump was wrapping up the Republican nomination, McConnell released his memoir: "The Long Game." The book tells the story of an ambitious politician, one who beat polio as a child, realized he could never be a professional baseball player so he entered the contact sport of politics, wanted to have his name in the history books alongside greats like Henry Clay, and has always had a true love for the Republican Party and for the machinations of Congress's upper Chamber.

Trump is not mentioned in its pages, but his name became a regular presence on the book tour.

“Does the Republican Party have an identity crisis?” the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked McConnell at the time. “Because Donald Trump said he is going to change the nature of the party.”

“I think he’ll be just fine,” McConnell responded.

It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement from a top Republican, but it wasn’t a denunciation either. There was no “moral crisis,” no “stench” to be dealt with. And, if you ask his Democratic critics, such normalizing from someone like McConnell may have made all the difference.

“He was the first to become really afraid of Trump, and his party stepped in right behind him,” said former Senate majority leader and McConnell’s old sparring partner Harry M. Reid of Nevada. Reid has said that no one “enabled” Trump more than McConnell and that he seemed to fear what getting on the wrong side of the candidate could do to his chances of keeping the Senate in Republican control. Now, in his role as keeper of the Senate trial, he has been at the forefront of protecting him.

“It’s clear Senator McConnell is hellbent on making it much more difficult to get witnesses and documents and intent on rushing the trial through,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in response to McConnell’s proposed rules for the proceedings. “On something as important as impeachment, Senator McConnell’s resolution is nothing short of a national disgrace.”

McConnell’s job has never been to do public relations for the president; his help is much more behind the scenes, much quieter. In the weeks leading up to the Senate trial he kept his proposal for the process a secret, even from many of his own members.

“He’s a man of few words, and I think that creates a mystery that works to his advantage,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. “He doesn’t speak any more than he has to, which means he doesn’t tip his hand more than he needs to. Knowledge is power in war and politics.”

As to whether he’s simply doing President Trump’s bidding, McConnell would almost certainly smirk at the suggestion. But he is not a man immune to thoughts about his legacy. He does, after all, keep all those comics in an archive, alongside his many papers and an oral history (hidden from public view) that he has been compiling over the years.

“The idea that he’s Trump’s handmaiden is just ridiculous on its face,” said Mullins Grissom, McConnell’s former campaign manager. An honest view of his place in history, she said, must capture it all: his ability to transform the judiciary into something vastly more conservative, the times he’s worked behind the scenes to keep the Trump administration on track.

“His legacy will not be defined by the president,” she said. “He was here long before Trump and he’ll be here long after.”

Indeed he has a whole memoir’s worth of accomplishments. In fact, a new edition just came out last month.

This time Donald Trump makes an appearance. He wrote the foreword.

*********

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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Former White House officials say they feared Putin influenced the president’s views on Ukraine and 2016 campaign

By Shane Harris, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig | Published December 19 at 5:09 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted December 20, 2019 |

Almost from the moment he took office, President Trump seized on a theory that troubled his senior aides: Ukraine, he told them on many occasions, had tried to stop him from winning the White House.

After meeting privately in July 2017 with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, Trump grew more insistent that Ukraine worked to defeat him, according to multiple former officials familiar with his assertions.

The president’s intense resistance to the assessment of U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia systematically interfered in the 2016 campaign — and the blame he cast instead on a rival country — led many of his advisers to think that Putin himself helped spur the idea of Ukraine’s culpability, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

One former senior White House official said Trump even stated so explicitly at one point, saying he knew Ukraine was the real culprit because “Putin told me.”

Two other former officials said the senior White House official described Trump’s comment to them.

The Ukraine theory that has consumed Trump’s attention has now been taken up by Republicans in Congress who are defending the president against impeachment. Top GOP lawmakers have demanded investigations of Ukrainian interference for which senior U.S. officials, including the director of the FBI, say there is no evidence.

Allegations about Ukraine’s role in the 2016 race have been promoted by an array of figures, including right-wing journalists whose work the president avidly consumes, as well as Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer. But U.S. intelligence officials told lawmakers and their staff members this past fall that Russian security services played a major role in spreading false claims of Ukrainian complicity, said people familiar with the assessments.

The concern among senior White House officials that Putin helped fuel Trump’s theories about Ukraine underscores long-standing fears inside the administration about the Russian president’s ability to influence Trump’s views.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The Russian Embassy in Washington declined to address whether Putin told Trump that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 campaign, saying only that information about the two leaders’ conversations is available on the Kremlin’s website.

This article is based on interviews with 15 former administration and government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer their candid views about the president.

Aides said they have long been confounded by the president’s fixation on Ukraine — a topic he raised when advisers sought to caution him that Russia was likely to try to disrupt future elections.

“He would say: ‘This is ridiculous. Everyone knows I won the election. The greatest election in the world. The Russians didn’t do anything. The Ukrainians tried to do something,’ ” one former official said.

Trump, the official said, offered no proof to support his theory of Ukraine’s involvement.

“We spent a lot of time . . . trying to refute this one in the first year of the administration,” Fiona Hill, a former senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council, told impeachment investigators in October.

A DEBUNKED THEORY TAKES HOLD

The claims that Ukraine sought to tilt the 2016 election have taken several forms. One early version was promoted by Paul Manafort, Trump’s then-campaign chairman, who suggested to campaign aides as early as the summer of 2016 that Ukrainians may have been behind a hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), rather than the Russians, his deputy, Rick Gates, later told federal investigators.

Gates said that Manafort’s theory “parroted a narrative” that was advanced at the time by Konstantin Kilimnik, an employee of Manafort’s whom the FBI has assessed to have connections to Russian intelligence. (Kilimnik, who is believed to be in Moscow, has denied such ties.)

Two weeks after Trump took office, Putin floated another claim: that figures in Ukraine had helped boost Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

“As we know, during the election campaign in the U.S., the current Ukrainian authorities took a unilateral position in support of one of the candidates,” Putin said at a news conference in Budapest on Feb. 2, 2017. “Moreover, some oligarchs, probably with the approval of the political leadership, financed this candidate.”

Ukrainian steel magnate Viktor Pinchuk’s foundation donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, but there is no evidence that he contributed money to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, which would be prohibited under federal law. Pinchuk has also supported Trump: In 2015, he made a $150,000 donation to Trump’s foundation.

RT, the Russian government-funded media network, spotlighted other arguments that Ukraine worked to help Clinton’s campaign, focusing on contacts between a part-time DNC consultant and Ukrainian Embassy officials in Washington.

“Democrat-Ukraine collusion seems far deeper than anything so far proven between the Trump campaign and Russia,” an op-ed columnist wrote in July 2017.

Trump added his own twist on the conspiracy theory in April 2017, in his first public allegation about Ukraine’s role.

In an interview with the Associated Press, the president claimed that CrowdStrike, a computer security company the DNC hired to investigate the breach of its email systems, was based in Ukraine and played some role in hiding evidence from the FBI.

“Why wouldn’t [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta and Hillary Clinton allow the FBI to see the server? They brought in another company that I hear is Ukrainian-based,” Trump said. “I heard it’s owned by a very rich Ukrainian, that’s what I heard. But they brought in another company to investigate the server. Why didn’t they allow the FBI in to investigate the server?”

In fact, CrowdStrike is based in California, and it is not owned by a Ukrainian. Dmitri Alperovitch, the company’s co-founder, is a Russia-born U.S. citizen who is an expert in cybersecurity and national security.

It is unclear where Trump first got the idea of a Ukrainian connection to CrowdStrike. At the time, the notion was not yet being widely discussed on Twitter, his social media platform of choice and a fertile bed for disinformation, according to social media experts.

“Prior to Trump’s mentioning it in his interview with the Associated Press, the idea that CrowdStrike was Ukrainian based and concocted the story of the DNC hack existed on social media but was far from mainstream,” said Darren Linvill, an associate professor of communication at Clemson University who studies social media and online disinformation and conducted an analysis of tweets during that period for The Washington Post.

“On Twitter, messages pushing the argument can be measured in the hundreds, not even the thousands, and in this context those are small numbers,” Linvill said.

Trump has returned to the false Ukraine-CrowdStrike connection many times, arguing that the company had covered up Ukraine’s hacking of the DNC and that it had even spirited the DNC server to Ukraine, former White House officials said.

In June, for instance, he called in to Sean Hannity’s Fox News program and repeated his complaint that the FBI hadn’t taken possession of the DNC email server.

“How come the FBI didn’t take the server from the DNC? Just think about that one, Sean,” Trump said.

That same day, Breitbart News had published a story about the FBI relying on information from CrowdStrike.

In fact, the bureau’s forensic experts had taken complete copies of dozens of servers used by the DNC, which then-FBI Director James B. Comey later testified was an “appropriate substitute” for examining the actual equipment. The intelligence community also knew months before CrowdStrike was hired that the Russians had infiltrated the DNC.

Most significantly, Trump raised CrowdStrike in the July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that led to his impeachment.

“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike . . . I guess you have one of your wealthy people. . . . The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump said, according to a memorandum the White House released of the call.

Privately, officials tried in vain to convince the president that CrowdStrike was not a Ukrainian company and that it would be impossible for the server to be located there, a former administration official said.

One of the officials who Hill said tried to convince Trump, former homeland security adviser Thomas P. Bossert, publicly pleaded with the White House in September to drop the Ukraine theory, which he called “completely debunked.”

“The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go,” he told ABC News’s “This Week.” “If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.”

Bossert pointed to Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, as a persistent source of the server claim. “I am deeply frustrated with what [Giuliani] and the legal team is doing in repeating that debunked theory to the president. It sticks in his mind when he hears it over and over again.”

An early coolness

Trump’s suspicions about Ukraine manifested in other ways. Early in the administration, then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was eager to secure a White House meeting with Trump — ideally before he met publicly with Putin — to demonstrate U.S. commitment to defending Ukraine against Russia.

But Trump resisted the meeting, according to former U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the matter. White House aides were confused: Ukraine was an ally in a war against a country that had just undermined the U.S. elections. Meeting with Poroshenko was a “no-brainer,” one former official said. “It was utterly mystifying to us why Trump wouldn’t agree.”

Another former official said it was clear from the beginning of Trump’s presidency that he wanted to improve relations with Russia and form a bond with Putin.

John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff from mid-2017 until the end of 2018, marveled to other aides that Trump expressed far less skepticism of Putin, whom Trump sometimes called “my friend,” than other leaders, said a former senior White House official.

Kelly tried to get U.S. experts to speak to Trump before his scheduled calls with the Russian president to push back on some of Trump’s misconceptions, the official said.

Some wondered whether Trump’s coolness toward Ukraine was intended not to offend Putin.

Poroshenko came to the White House on June 20, 2017, to meet with Vice President Pence. Trump had a short “drop-in” with the Ukrainian leader, allaying some U.S. officials’ concerns that he wouldn’t bother to say hello.

The two leaders posed for photos with reporters in the Oval Office and made short remarks. (Notably, Trump did not mention Ukraine’s war with Russia.) But the brevity of their encounter underscored Trump’s reticence. He had already met with several foreign leaders for more formal, longer meetings, followed by joint news conferences. Trump hadn’t snubbed Poroshenko, but he hadn’t strongly embraced him, either.

The meeting stood in stark contrast to Trump’s warm reception a month earlier of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Sergey Kisylak, who was then Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Trump told his guests that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted White House officials to limit access to the remarks to an unusually small number of people, according to three former officials with knowledge of the matter.

U.S. officials who had been working to deter Russia were aghast. They thought the Russians would take it as a signal that they were free to interfere in upcoming U.S. elections and those in Europe, as well.

A PRIVATE MEETING

On July 7, 2017, Trump had his first in-person encounter with Putin, at the G-20 meeting in Hamburg. Their highly anticipated formal conversation lasted more than two hours. But later that day, they met informally for an additional hour, at a dinner for heads of state and their spouses.

At the time, U.S. and Russian officials didn’t disclose the conversation. During the meal, Trump left his chair and sat next to Putin. Trump went alone, and Putin was assisted by his interpreter.

For some White House officials struggling to understand Trump’s obsession with Ukraine, the Hamburg meetings were a turning point.

Three former senior administration officials said Trump repeatedly insisted after the G-20 summit that he believed Putin’s assurances that Russia had not interfered in the 2016 campaign. The officials said Kelly, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all tried to caution Trump not to rely on Putin’s word, and to focus on evidence to the contrary that U.S. intelligence agencies had collected.

Over the next several months, Trump privately told aides on several occasions that he believed Ukraine had interfered and tried to help Clinton win the White House, former officials said.

“The strong belief in the White House was that Putin told him,” one former official said.

Trump repeatedly told one senior official that the Russian president said Ukraine sought to undermine him, the official said.

There was no evidence that Putin pushed the Ukraine theory with Trump in their official phone calls and meetings, which were witnessed by interpreters and aides, several former administration officials said.

However, White House aides were not part of Trump’s private conversation with Putin in Hamburg, or a later meeting he had in Helsinki for two hours with the Russian president, when they were accompanied by only their interpreters.

Trump also took steps to conceal the details of his formal meeting with Putin in Hamburg, taking the notes away from his interpreter and instructing her not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, The Post reported earlier this year.

In the wake of Hamburg, top leaders were dispatched to try to convince him that Russia interfered in the campaign. On different occasions, Kelly asked Bossert, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and his principal deputy, Sue Gordon, to brief the president on the intelligence community’s Russia assessment, said former officials with knowledge of the briefings.

They did not convince him.

A year after Trump met Putin in Hamburg, they reconvened at a summit in Helsinki. After his one-on-one with the Russian president, Trump expressed doubt that the Kremlin interfered in the campaign.

“My people came to me, Daniel Coats came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia,” Trump said at a joint news conference, standing beside the Russian leader. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be, but I really do want to see the server.”

Intelligence officials were stunned that Trump would publicly side with Putin over his own advisers. His comments also revealed that he still clung to his suspicions about Ukraine.

“I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server,” Trump said.

Later that day, Coats issued a public statement that read like a rebuke.

“The role of the Intelligence Community is to provide the best information and fact-based assessments possible for the President and policymakers,” Coats said. “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy, and we will continue to provide unvarnished and objective intelligence in support of our national security.”

But after returning to Washington, Trump continued to press the Ukraine theory with more frequency, former officials said. They worried that his meeting with Putin had again influenced his thinking.

The narrative takes hold

In the run-up to Trump’s impeachment, some GOP lawmakers have echoed the Ukraine-did-it theory, weaving together events that did occur — such as the then-Ukrainian ambassador’s criticism of Trump in a 2016 op-ed — as part of a conspiracy they equate with the Kremlin’s intelligence operation.

“The Democrats cooperated in Ukrainian election meddling,” Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, alleged at a Nov. 14 hearing to collect evidence for the impeachment.

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (La.) suggested in a Fox News appearance that Ukraine, not Russia, may have broken into the DNC’s email system. He later retracted the comment, but in a subsequent interview on “Meet the Press,” Kennedy said “both Russia and Ukraine” had interfered in 2016.

Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) told the same program this month that there was “considerable evidence” that Ukraine had interfered.

This fall, U.S. intelligence officials informed lawmakers about what they have concluded has been an organized campaign by Russian propagandists to spread the Ukraine theory on social media, said people with knowledge of the reporting.

The reports by intelligence analysts cite evidence that the propagandists were taking credit for helping to spread disinformation that equated Ukraine’s actions to Russia’s, and celebrating the traction it was getting, particularly with conservative news organizations.

The intelligence reports were shared with members of Congress and their staff, including lawmakers who have in recent weeks become some of the most vocal advocates for investigating Ukraine’s alleged interference, said people with knowledge of the matter. The New York Times first reported the briefings to lawmakers.

In her public testimony in the impeachment proceedings, Hill, the NSC’s former Russia director, admonished lawmakers not to take the Kremlin’s bait.

“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did,” she said. “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Hill implored the lawmakers not to help Russia’s campaign. “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

Last month, RT rejected the idea that Russia had promoted such a narrative, noting that Putin said in July that he did not think the actions of wealthy individuals in that country amounted to “interference by Ukraine.”

More recently, however, the Russian president has expressed satisfaction in the new focus on Ukraine.

“Thank God no one is accusing us of interfering in the U.S. elections anymore; now they’re accusing Ukraine,” the Russian president said at a news conference in Moscow in November. “Well, let them sort this out among themselves.”

______

Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller contributed to this report.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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House Democrats look to take impeachment probe public as soon as mid-November

By Rachael Bade and Karoun Demirjian | Published October 23 at 8:27 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 23, 2019 |

House Democrats are preparing to move their largely private impeachment inquiry onto a more public stage as soon as mid-November and are already grappling with how best to present the complex Ukraine saga to the American people.

Over the past three weeks, a parade of current and former Trump administration officials have testified behind closed doors, providing House investigators with a compelling narrative of President Trump’s campaign to extract political favors from Ukrainian officials. But on Wednesday, after conservative lawmakers stormed the hearing room and delayed the proceedings for five hours, some Democrats were feeling pressure to advance public hearings in hopes of avoiding further disruptions.

Among the witnesses Democrats hope to question in open session are the acting ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., and his predecessor, former ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. Both are seasoned diplomats who, in earlier House testimony, effectively conveyed outrage over a White House plan to withhold much-needed military aid from Ukraine, a long-standing ally battling pro-Russian separatists.

In testimony Tuesday, Taylor also directly contradicted Trump’s account of his interactions with Ukrainian officials, making clear that Trump demanded that President Volodymyr Zelensky order an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his family in exchange for the release of nearly $400 million in military aid and a meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.

Another top priority for many Democrats is John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, who made known around the White House his visceral opposition to the campaign to pressure Zelensky, a campaign directed in part by Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Testimony from Bolton could be particularly devastating for the White House, though it was unclear whether Democrats would subpoena him or when. After Bolton resigned last month, he told The Washington Post that he would “have my say in due course.”

Democrats have long been expected to shift to public hearings, which offer the opportunity to build the case against Trump while also building support among American voters.

“It’s going to be the difference between reading a dry transcript and actually hearing the story from the people who were in the room,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee. “I think the story needs to be told, you know, the story of the abuse of power. . . . People like the various ambassadors who have come to testify need to come tell it.”

The move toward the public spotlight comes as Trump and his Capitol Hill allies have cast Democrats’ closed-door investigation as a secretive smear campaign against the president.

On Wednesday, House Republicans delayed impeachment proceedings for more than five hours when about two dozen of them, over Democrats’ objections, barged into a secure room where Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Laura Cooper was set to testify about what happened to the military aid Trump ordered withheld from Ukraine for several weeks this summer.

Some Democrats are concerned that repeated protests by Republicans, similar to Wednesday’s disruption, could make it impossible for them to question witnesses and could completely stop the process.

Most of the Republican insurgents are not members of the three investigative committees probing the Ukraine matter. The committee members, including dozens of Republicans, have been taking part in impeachment depositions for weeks, with the chance to cross-examine witnesses. The circuslike display was the latest attempt by Republicans to change the narrative from the substance of the allegations against Trump to their displeasure with the process.

“This is a sham proceeding, and the Democrats don’t want the public to see what’s going on, because they’re using [impeachment] as a political weapon rather than as a tool that is provided for by the United States Constitution,” said Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who participated in the protest.

Democrats argue that past impeachments have also included a closed-door investigative phase before findings are presented to the public and that the secrecy of the proceedings is necessary to preserve the integrity of the testimony, much like that of witnesses before a grand jury. At some point, Democrats expect to release transcripts of witness interviews and pull together a comprehensive report laying out their findings.

“I think everybody just needs to be patient,” said Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “This is, in a sense, a grand-jury proceeding, and then whatever comes out of it, you present to the full body.”

In the meantime, however, Democrats are struggling with what to do if Republicans continue to disrupt depositions. While impeachment investigators planned to collect evidence and methodically build their case by interviewing senior members of the Trump administration before moving to public action, Democrats’ timeline to go public may be affected by Republican disruptions.

The chief challenges for the Democrats in going public will be finding a compelling roster of witnesses to drive home the case against the president — and making sure they do not mishandle what may be their best opportunity to sell voters on impeachment, with a message that will resonate through the rest of the 2020 election season.

Polls remain in Democrats’ favor, with a majority of Americans backing Trump’s removal from office. But there is also the matter of selling the case in the Republican-controlled Senate if they hope to successfully oust Trump from office — and to do that, House Democrats are acutely aware they need to make an ironclad case.

Democrats believe that they have at least two smoking guns. One is the rough transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which he pressured the Ukrainian leader to investigate the Bidens and a conspiracy theory about the Democrats and the 2016 election. The second is acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s October acknowledgment of a quid pro quo.

Taylor’s testimony this week, many lawmakers believe, further bolstered their case.

“You have to tell the American people the story,” said Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.). “It’ll be a combination of documents, a report and some live testimony. And the combination of other things will tell the American people the full story about the president of the United States using the power of his office, or abusing the power of his office, to gin up a bogus investigation against one of his political opponents.”

Several Democrats expressed confidence after Taylor’s testimony Tuesday that he would be an ideal public witness to lay out the narrative of how the Giuliani-led camp of Trump appointees steered Ukraine policy from U.S. national security objectives and toward delivering political favors for the president, noting that his experience and sincerity as a professional made him an ideal public voice.

Democrats argue that Yovanovitch would be a compelling witness, both for her substantive knowledge of Ukraine and her personal, emotional story of being victimized by Giuliani’s actions.

Democrats are more divided about the high-ranking witnesses who have not yet been tested behind closed doors. Many are convinced that Bolton has to be part of the process, but while there is palpable excitement among Democrats about having a handpicked Trump appointee deliver potentially scathing testimony against him, that is also coupled with jitters about how to turn Bolton — who up to this point was more reviled than adored — into a star witness against the president.

Democrats don’t have unlimited time to decide how to move forward. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and her leadership team still hope to hold an impeachment vote before the holidays, though increasingly Democrats are privately acknowledging the inquiry could easily drag into December. Multiple Democratic officials said they hope to finish private depositions in early November so they can use the two-week work period just before Thanksgiving to have public hearings.

First, however, Democrats have to iron out questions of process that could compromise their ability to present a united front and avoid any air of the turf disputes that dogged the House’s Russia-focused investigation earlier this year. Typically, lawmakers are entitled to five minutes each to question a witness — but there are about 100 lawmakers among the three panels running the impeachment probe, far too many to accommodate in a single hearing. Democrats are also acutely concerned about creating a situation in which GOP members who joined Wednesday’s protest could hijack an all-important public hearing, muddying their case.

That means leaders will all but assuredly have to take the rare step of persuading lawmakers to sideline their egos and defer management of the hearing to skilled staff lawyers, and potentially the members with prosecutorial or relevant administrative experience. That format would largely mirror the regular process for closed-door hearings, where lawyers chiefly run the questioning but members of both parties are allowed to hop in with queries of their own.

Democrats overwhelmingly expect House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), whom Pelosi deputized to run the impeachment probe, to lead the public charge as well.

Schiff staffers, including his investigations director, Daniel Goldman, could also do some of the Democrats’ questioning. Goldman boasts experience in the office of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York prosecuting Russian organized-crime networks.

But others are less sure about who else would sit on the dais.

One Democrat suggested it was possible that different committees would take the lead on witnesses, depending on which has jurisdiction over the topic. The House Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees have been working in partnership with the House Intelligence Committee on the impeachment inquiry since it commenced with a focus on Ukraine.

There is also a question about whether members should have any opportunity to pose questions in public, with some arguing not only that staff lawyers would stand the best chance of eliciting answers but that it is important to keep the focus on the witnesses. Some lawmakers pointed to how Judiciary Committee counsel Barry H. Berke was successful in pinning down a combative Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, during a September hearing that was otherwise widely panned.

“There is an advantage to having counsel take the lead in questioning, because you have an uninterrupted thread of questioning,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.). “Five minutes each is very truncated, and frankly the personal dictates of a member may or may not interrupt the flow.”

But Connolly added, “On the other hand, our folks back home want to see that we’re doing something, and being at a hearing silent is a frustrating experience for us and for our constituents back home.”

Other Democrats were not torn at all. Rep. Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.) said staffers should absolutely take the lead, as they have done in the private depositions. “That way it is as consistent and serious and no one can say anyone is playing politics,” he said.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) agreed, arguing that questioning witnesses is “a very special skill, and frankly it requires a lot of preparation.”

Elise Viebeck contributed to this report.

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Bill Taylor spent years fighting corruption in Ukraine. His last four months under Trump were the ‘antithesis’ of that.

By John Hudson and Carol Morello | Published October 23 at 6:11 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 23, 2019 |

Before the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine became the most explosive witness in the House’s impeachment inquiry, he was anything but a household name in the United States. But in Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr.’s reputation preceded him.

He had spent much of the 1990s telling Ukrainian politicians that nothing was more critical to their long-term prosperity than rooting out corruption and bolstering the rule of law, in his role as the head of U.S. development assistance for post-Soviet countries.

But in the summer of 2019, he and his colleagues were sending a very different message to Ukraine.

Instead of encouraging government officials to follow the letter of the law, U.S. diplomats were pressuring Ukraine to open investigations that could benefit President Trump politically in the 2020 election, Taylor told House investigators Tuesday.

“It was the antithesis of a big part of his career. And my guess is that really bothered him,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who has known Taylor for 25 years.

That experience of policy whiplash is what many of Taylor’s current and former colleagues said led to his transformation from a typically low-key diplomat to the man who delivered an unsparing critique of the Trump administration’s Ukraine policy.

The texts, emails and phone conversations Taylor recalled to lawmakers have provided the most detailed account to date of an alleged quid pro quo between Trump and the Ukrainian government and exposed contradictions in the testimonies of other U.S. officials who have denied knowing that the president was pushing Ukraine to investigate his political rival Joe Biden.

After Taylor’s testimony, the White House derided the “radical unelected bureaucrats” taking part in a “coordinated smear campaign” against the president, invective that probably will make Taylor’s job more difficult as foreign officials question his standing within the administration. The top diplomat to Ukraine returned to his job in Kyiv on Wednesday, said a person familiar with his movements, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity as Taylor continues in his job.

In a tweet Wednesday, Trump called Taylor a “Never Trumper” and expressed frustration that he was hired in the first place. “It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats. Nothing good will ever come from them!” Trump said.

The State Department has not issued a statement in defense of Taylor and did not respond to a request for comment about whether Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would keep him in that job despite the president’s criticisms. Taylor was hired for a six-month assignment and has about two months left.

For the half-dozen current and former colleagues of Taylor’s who spoke to The Washington Post, the diplomat’s explosive testimony stood in stark contrast to his understated professional demeanor. His former colleagues were particularly amused by the White House’s attempt to categorize him as a “radical.”

“There’s nothing exciting about Bill,” said George Ingram, a former senior official for the U.S. Agency for International Development who worked with Taylor in Moscow in the late 1990s. “That speaks to the type of person he is. He’s a straightforward, by-the-book, stand-up guy who is going to follow the rules and regulations.”

Taylor had retired from the Foreign Service but accepted his current job in Kyiv four months ago at the request of Pompeo following the unceremonious ouster of the former U.S. ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch.

In his testimony, Taylor said his wife urged him in “no uncertain terms” to turn down the job, but he accepted it anyway after consulting one of his mentors.

“If your country asks you to do something, you do it — if you can be effective,” the person said, according to Taylor’s 15-page opening statement.

In previous administrations, Washington has linked U.S. aid to Ukraine’s pursuit of anti-corruption efforts. But in the scenario methodically laid out by Taylor, almost $400 million in security aid was withheld to encourage the Ukrainian president to appear on CNN to announce an investigation into Biden’s son, who served on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm.

“In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened,” Taylor told lawmakers, reflecting on the moment in a July conference call when a White House official said a hold was being put on security assistance to Ukraine.

The efforts by diplomats working at Trump’s direction were “running contrary to the goals of long-standing U.S. policy,” he testified.

Pifer said the attempted arrangement must have exasperated Taylor. “He had been telling the Ukrainians dating back to the 1990s about what they had to do to build a modern, robust economy, and a big part of that was fighting corruption,” Pifer said.

John Herbst, another former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who has known Taylor for years, said Taylor’s opening statement probably was strategic. “His testimony knocked my socks off because of the detail,” he said. “I can only surmise that he included so much because he wanted to make sure the policy stayed in the right direction.”

Taylor, a svelte 72-year-old, began developing his expertise in Ukraine in 1992 when he served as the coordinator for U.S. assistance to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In 2006 he was appointed by President George W. Bush to be ambassador to Ukraine, a country he described in his testimony as “important to the security of the United States.”

Taylor’s penchant for staying active but below the radar even translated to his love of tennis. While serving as ambassador during the Bush administration, he played a private match against Viktor Yanukovych, the former Ukrainian president ousted in the 2014 revolution. Taylor won, according to two people familiar with the competition, but he told close friends not to tell anyone so as not to embarrass the Ukrainian politician.

A former colleague said the incident perfectly captured his essence: This was “so Bill,” she said.

Until this week, Taylor wasn’t known for taking a scorched-earth approach to bureaucratic politics, but he wasn’t a passive bystander either.

When he worked as the coordinator for aid to the Soviet space in the 1990s, Taylor’s colleagues said he was masterful at figuring out ways to keep programs going after they had been targeted for budget cuts.

Chris Crowley, who went to Ukraine in 1999 as head of the USAID mission for the former Soviet states, said Taylor would listen to their defense of the program and make the case it should continue. When possible, Crowley said, Taylor looked for other places to make cuts.

“He had widespread respect, not only among the USAID people with whom he worked but within the State Department,” Crowley said. “He was always there, always thoughtful and reasonable in terms of issues and support.”

Though former co-workers described Taylor as unflappable and competent, few recalled what he typically did in his free time.

“I don’t want to say he’s a workaholic,” said a former senior Foreign Service officer at USAID. “But he’s a very hard worker. He was at his desk at 6 a.m. and worked till it shut down. In his down time, he was usually on his cell talking to people who could make change happen in the world.”

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Trump told Republicans to fight. They took the brawl underground.

By Elise Viebeck, Rachael Bade, Mike DeBonis and Kayla Epstein | Published

October 23 at 8:26 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 23, 2019 |

President Trump told them to “take the gloves off.” A day later, House conservatives breached security on Capitol Hill, stormed a secure room and started tweeting.

It began with a call to action from one of Trump’s favorite lawmakers.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the Fox News regular, led dozens of Republican members to the basement of the Capitol on Wednesday morning to disrupt the impeachment inquiry by temporarily blocking testimony from a Pentagon official summoned to detail her knowledge of the administration’s decision to withhold military aid for Ukraine.

What unfolded next was one of the most bizarre and theatrical days of the probe to date, full of partisan fury, genuine security violations, unclaimed pizza and several TV appearances likely to please the president.

Occupying a deposition room marked a dramatic escalation in the GOP’s effort to stop the impeachment inquiry. In the end, the Republicans managed to freeze the probe and steal the media narrative for five hours. But to do that, they broke long-standing bipartisan rules governing the most restricted area of the Capitol, where technology is forbidden so that lawmakers may review sensitive material without fear of surveillance.

The unusual protest came on what was expected to be a calm day for the impeachment inquiry. Only one witness, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Laura Cooper, was scheduled to testify, and she was not expected to make much news. This account is based on interviews with more than 20 people familiar with the day’s events, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer candid details about what happened behind closed doors.

At 9:45 a.m., Gaetz and his group stood before microphones outside the secure area of the Capitol and decried “Soviet-style” tactics they said Democrats were embracing as part of their impeachment inquiry.

Several accused Democratic leaders of trying to undo the 2016 election result, rallying behind a talking point promoted by Trump and House GOP leaders.

“If behind those doors, they intend to overturn the result of an American presidential election, we want to know what’s going on,” said Gaetz, accusing Democrats of being “obsessed with attacking a president who we believe has not done anything to deserve impeachment.”

After several speakers made their case, the group moved past a set of double doors into the secure area, out of reporters’ view, and were met by two security guards. After stopping for a time, the group barged past into the deposition room with chants of “let us in.”

Then all hell broke loose, according to witnesses.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) — a Trump favorite who regularly defends the president on television — started shouting about “injustices against the president!”

Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), who is running for Senate in his state, railed about the perceived unfairness of the Democrats’ decision to make the process private. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) snapped back at Byrne, “There are no cameras here, so it won’t help your Senate campaign.”

Several of the protesting members entered the room with their cellphones, a major security breach, and started using them.

“Reporting from Adam Schiff’s secret chamber,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote on Twitter just before noon, referring to the House Intelligence Committee chairman and de facto point man for the impeachment inquiry. Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) snapped and tweeted pictures of the scene.

Democrats were seething.

“They not only brought in their unauthorized bodies, they may have brought in the Russians and the Chinese with electronics into a secure space, which will require that the space at some point in time be desensitized,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), who sits on the Intelligence Committee.

Inside the room, Schiff (D-Calif.) declared a violation of House rules. He warned Republicans he was “formally” notifying them that they were compromising the facility with their devices — an admonition that prompted one House Republican, longtime Intelligence Committee member Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), to collect fellow Republicans’ phones.

With Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) more than an hour away attending the funeral of her brother in Baltimore, Democrats were without a leader. Schiff left to call the House Sergeant at Arms to discuss how to respond.

For a brief period, Democrats considered having the U.S. Capitol Police remove the Republicans. But they ultimately decided against it, determining that it would only further the GOP’s talking points.

In fact, several of the protesters were members of the committees involved in the impeachment inquiry — meaning they already had access to witnesses and the ability to cross-examine them.

“People have to see this for the total fraud that it is,” said Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), who was there and remarked on what he characterized as the absurdity of some Republicans protesting despite their involvement in the witness interviews. “Their attempt to act like Freedom Riders is really an attack on the committee system in Congress. . . . Obviously they’re just trying to shut it down.”

When Schiff walked to his office from the deposition room, three Republicans followed and made repeated entreaties to release the interview transcripts. Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Mark Meadows (N.C.) and Lee Zeldin (N.Y.) — all members of the panels leading the investigation — argued that it wasn’t fair that lawmakers are facing questions from constituents but lack access to the testimony to adequately respond.

Schiff, who has said he intends to release the transcripts at some point, told them the one transcript they did get to see was promptly leaked, though it was not clear what he meant. He refused to compromise.

That’s when Republicans returned to the deposition room and continued their sit-in. Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), an ex-police chief, told them they should be ashamed of themselves for defending a president like Trump. She even quoted from the Gospel of Mark: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

As the political drama unfolded, Cooper sat in a separate room, awaiting her testimony. Democrats and Republicans began to speculate that they may need to postpone her interview.

The GOP protest was striking because Republicans had used the very same space — and format — for their own politically sensitive investigations in the past. Just a few years ago, former congressman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) led an investigation into the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya, a probe Democrats derided as a witch hunt against former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was then running for president.

During that investigation, Gowdy told then-Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to leave a private deposition. Issa had tried to sit in and listen to testimony, though he was not on the committee running the probe.

At the time, Gowdy — as the Democrats have done now — defended the closed-door format as necessary to get honest information from witnesses.

“If you want to get on the news, then go rob a bank,” Gowdy told his colleagues in 2014 when they pushed him to have his Benghazi hearings in public.

As the protest dragged into the afternoon, Democrats privately began to fret about what they would do if Republicans refused to yield. Some questioned whether they would have to move their private investigation into the public sphere before they were ready.

Around 1:30 p.m., a cart with 15 large pizzas from Domino’s mysteriously appeared outside the secure area. It was unclear who paid for them, but Meadows, the conservative from North Carolina, encouraged the assembled reporters to partake.

“There is no quid pro quo. You can eat it!” he said. The press declined, noting that they cannot accept gifts from lawmakers, and soon the cart disappeared.

The protest petered out by 3 p.m., with several participants exiting the secure area to vote — and never coming back. This allowed Cooper’s testimony to resume.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) stated that by bringing cellphones into the secure room, the Republicans violated “the Oath all Members of Congress sign to gain access to classified information” and “security controls established by the [CIA] for the protection of classified information.”

“I am requesting you take action with respect to the Members involved in the breach,” Thompson (D-Miss.) wrote in a letter to the House Sergeant at Arms.

Other Democrats tried to crack jokes at the GOP’s expense, arguing that the best way to respond to the protest was with humor.

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said he offered a Snickers bar to the animated GOP members who came in, with the candy’s “you’re not yourself” commercial in mind.

“I offered them a Snickers bar because you’re not yourself when you’re not eating,” he said. “I’m not sure it worked.”

Karoun Demirjian, Greg Jaffe and John Wagner contributed to this report.

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U.S. judge says he will order State Dept. to begin releasing Ukraine records in 30 days

By Spencer S. Hsu | Published October 23 at 5:27 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted October 23, 2019 |

A federal judge said Wednesday that he will order the State Department to begin releasing Ukraine-related documents in 30 days, potentially making public sensitive records and communications at the heart of an ongoing House impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

The decision, by U.S. District Judge Christopher R. “Casey” Cooper of Washington, D.C., came in a public records lawsuit filed Oct. 1 by a government watchdog group, American Oversight.

The group in May asked the State Department for records related to alleged efforts by Trump and his administration to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political opponent, former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the group sought communications, such as those between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. It also sought records and communications since March 2018 related to the recall of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

Cooper said during an emergency hearing Wednesday that he would order the State Department to begin producing records in 30 days, American Oversight said. The 30-day deadline falls amid a House impeachment inquiry, which Democratic leaders have signaled they wish to conclude by year’s end.

“Despite the ongoing obstruction of Congress, the Trump administration will now have to start releasing records concerning its dealings with Ukraine,” Austin Evers, the executive director of American Oversight, said in a statement.

Cooper cited the critical importance of the documents and ordered the State Department to fast-track the release by working with American Oversight to search and process requested, nonexempt records.

“Whether or not Secretary Pompeo plans to obstruct the impeachment inquiry, the public will begin to see the paper trail detailing the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine,” the group said in a statement.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

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House Democrats Issue First Subpoena in Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/27/us/politics/house-democrats-impeachment-trump.html

House Democrats Issue First Subpoena in Impeachment Inquiry

Three committee chairmen issued the first subpoena in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, seeking documents and witnesses regarding his dealings with Ukraine.

By Nicholas Fandos and Sheryl Gay Solberg | Published Sept. 27, 2019 Updated 6:15 PM ET | New York Times | Posted September 27, 2019 6:48 PM |

WASHINGTON — House Democrats, kick-starting their impeachment inquiry into President Trump, subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday, demanding he produce a tranche of documents related to the president’s dealings with Ukraine. Separately, they instructed him to make five State Department officials available for depositions in the coming two weeks.

A failure to do so, the leaders of three House committees wrote jointly, would be construed as “evidence of obstruction of the House’s inquiry” — an offense Democrats have made clear they view as grounds for impeachment.

It was the first major action in the rapidly escalating impeachment investigation, which began this week amid revelations that Mr. Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate a leading political rival, possibly using United States aid as leverage. It came as House Democrats planned an aggressive pace for their inquiry, eyeing their first hearing on the matter as early as next week.

The Intelligence Committee has also scheduled a private briefing for next Friday with Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community inspector general, who first attempted to share a whistle-blower complaint outlining the matter with Congress, according to a committee official.

Mr. Atkinson met with House lawmakers last week, but was restricted from discussing any of the complaint’s substance. This time, Mr. Atkinson will be freer to describe his efforts to corroborate the complaint, which he ultimately deemed a matter of “urgent concern” that “appears credible.”

The letters to Mr. Pompeo were sent by Representative Eliot L. Engel of New York, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee; and Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, the chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee.

“The committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression,” the three chairmen wrote.

[Read the letter from three House committee chairmen informing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about the subpoena.]

The subpoena for documents seeks any communications or other paperwork related to a call between the two leaders, efforts by the president’s private lawyer to advance the effort, as well as the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily withhold $391 million in security aid from Ukraine.

The two letters pointed to an aggressive strategy on the part of House Democrats to pressure the Trump administration to furnish crucial information surrounding Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine or risk strengthening their case for impeaching the president based on obstruction of Congress.

The officials that the Democrats said must appear for depositions in early October were Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine; Ambassador Kurt Volker, the United States special envoy to Ukraine; George Kent, a deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs; T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a State Department counselor; and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union. The officials were either mentioned in a whistle-blower complaint related to the Ukraine matter released this week or are connected to American policy work in the region.

“This subpoena is being issued by the Committee on Foreign Affairs after consultation with the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Oversight and Reform. The subpoenaed documents shall be part of the impeachment inquiry and shared among the Committees,” the Democrats wrote. “Your failure or refusal to comply with the subpoena shall constitute evidence of obstruction of the House’s impeachment inquiry.”

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the letters.

Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

"It was not clear whether Mr. Trump asked Mr. LaPierre for his support, or if the idea was pitched by the N.R.A. During the meeting, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting said."

Trump Meets With LaPierre to Discuss How N.R.A. Could Support Political Defense

By Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni | Published Sept. 27, 2019 Updated 6:23 PM ET | New York Times | Posted September 27, 2019 6:40 PM ET |

President Trump met in the Oval Office on Friday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, and discussed prospective gun legislation and whether the N.R.A. could provide support for the president as he faces impeachment and a more difficult re-election campaign, according to two people familiar with the meeting.

It was not clear whether Mr. Trump asked Mr. LaPierre for his support, or if the idea was pitched by the N.R.A. During the meeting, Mr. LaPierre asked that the White House “stop the games” over gun control legislation, people familiar with the meeting said.

It was unclear what the N.R.A.’s financial support would look like, and whether it would pay for ads, as it did during Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Mr. LaPierre has been a leader in an aggressive campaign by gun rights advocates to influence the White House in the months since the back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio. In a series of calls and meetings, he has tried to move Mr. Trump away from proposing any sort of background check measures that he said after the mass shootings he might support.

Privately, Mr. Trump has raised questions with his aides about the N.R.A.’s ability to help back his 2020 campaign the way it did in 2016, when it poured over $30 million into his election, more than any other outside group.

Since then, the N.R.A. has been plagued by internal fighting, investigations, financial strains and scandal. But aides have reassured him that the group is in good financial shape, while his own political fortunes have shifted since the mass shootings.

‘The New Berlin Wall’: Why Ukraine Is Central to the Scandal

By Andrew Higgins | Published Sept. 27, 2019 Updated 5:57 PM ET |New York Times | Posted September 27, 2019 6:45 PM ET |

IVANO-FRANKIVSK, Ukraine — His voice crackling over what he complained was a “terrible” sound system, Donald J. Trump in September 2015 heaped praise on the oligarch who had invited him to speak by video link from New York to a conference in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian oligarch, Victor Pinchuk, had secured 20 minutes of Mr. Trump’s time — and a heap of flattery from the future president, who described him as “a very, very special man” — with a donation of $150,000 to Mr. Trump’s now defunct foundation.

Mr. Pinchuk, a steel magnate long enmeshed with Ukraine’s business and political elite, had earlier donated more than $10 million to the Clinton Foundation and been invited to dine at the Washington home of Hillary and Bill Clinton.

The equal opportunity largess of powerful Ukrainians like Mr. Pinchuk helps explain why so many of the most dimly lit and hazardous roads of American politics keep leading back to Ukraine, a poor, dysfunctional country on Europe’s eastern fringe.

[Read more about how Ukraine landed in the middle of an American political drama.]

Caught between the clashing geopolitical ambitions of Russia and the West, Ukraine has for years had to balance competing outside interests and worked hard to cultivate all sides, and also rival groups on the same side — no matter how incompatible their agendas — with offers of money, favors and prospects for career advancement.

Paul Manafort, Rudolph Giuliani, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter and Hillary Clinton have all, at one time or another, found their way there, escorted by Ukrainian guides with deep pockets and a keen sense of how to appeal to their vanities, ambitions and greed.

“The fact is Ukraine is an amazing place,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Pinchuk’s conference in 2015. “I’ve known so many people over so many years in the Ukraine.”

He told Ukraine’s new president, Volodomyr Zelensky, much the same thing this week when they met in New York, though the only specific person from Ukraine he wanted to tell Mr. Zelensky about was a former Miss Universe contestant.

Ukraine, said Serhii Plokhy, a Harvard historian whose books include “The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine,” has for centuries been tugged in different directions by rival suitors, and became a “battlefield” between Russia and the West when it declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

“The front lines are always places that attract both heroes and villains who go there from world capitals to make a name, advance a career, make a fortune, etc. — and then carry back home legacies, memories and skeletons for their closets,” Mr. Plokhy said.

Ukraine’s allure for American carpetbaggers, political consultants and adventurers has put it at the center of not just one but now two presidential elections in the United States and a host of second-tier scandals.

Before becoming Mr. Trump’s campaign manager before the 2016 election, Mr. Manafort made millions of dollars in Ukraine, working as an adviser to the country’s leadership out of an office in Kiev. Mr. Giuliani — who has also wound up working with opposing sides in internal Ukrainian battles — has repeatedly looked to the same city and a new set of Ukrainian leaders for dirt on Mr. Trump’s political foes ahead of the 2020 poll.

Yevhen Hlibovytskyi, a lecturer in philosophy at the Ukrainian Catholic University, said Ukraine’s pivotal position in geopolitical struggles had made Kiev, a picturesque capital of cobblestoned streets on the Dnepr River, into the 21st century’s equivalent of Cold War dens of intrigue like Vienna and Berlin, or Casablanca during World War II.

“Ukraine is the country that hosts the Berlin Wall at the moment,” he said. “Ukraine is the country where the clash between the free and unfree world takes place. It’s only natural that some players will be seeking protection in the West,” sometimes by crossing palms with silver.

Put upon over the centuries by more powerful neighbors claiming their land, notably Russia, Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ukrainians have rarely had firm allies or even their own functioning state, a situation that has encouraged a highly transactional approach to foreign and also domestic affairs.

Unlike Russia, ruled since the time of Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century by a single, strong leader, usually a tyrant, Ukraine has always been a land of competing power centers. This has made it a fertile ground for democracy but also left it a highly fractured nation with an ever shifting constellation of feuding power-brokers who often look to foreigners for help in their internal struggles.

The whistle-blower’s complaint released on Thursday revealed how Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, played into this dynamic, focusing his efforts to get Mr. Biden and his son investigated on a group of senior law-enforcement officials in Ukraine who had been locked for months in a bitter turf war with rival factions within the same state structure.

The officials Mr. Giuliani sought out in the name of fighting corruption were engaged in a long feud with Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. The bureau, which has worked closely with the F.B.I. and was set up in 2014 with strong support from the Obama administration, is one of the few government agencies in Ukraine that Western diplomats in Kiev view as reasonably honest and competent.

Mr. Giuliani has his own business history in the country as well. More than two years ago, his company, Giuliani Security and Safety, signed a contract with a wealthy Ukrainian, Pavel Fuks, to consult on emergency planning in Mr. Fuks’s hometown, Kharkiv.

At the time, Mr. Fuks and others had become entangled in a complicated $1.5 billion deal to buy Ukrainian government bonds. In an investigation, Al Jazeera reported that the real sellers were sanctioned former insiders in the government of the disgraced former president of Ukraine, Viktor F. Yanukovych.

Political survival in Ukraine has for centuries often hinged on finding a strong patron abroad. This sometimes led to disaster, most famously in the case of Ivan Mazepa, the Cossack leader of an embryonic state in eastern Ukraine in the 17th century. Initially an ally of Peter the Great of Russia, Mazepa, worried by the rise of powerful Cossack rivals, switched sides to ally with Russia’s great enemy at the time, Sweden, which he thought would offer protection. Instead, it led him to crushing defeat by Russia at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.

“Ukrainians all the time tried to form an alliance with the stronger side,” said Volodymyr Yermolenko, editor in chief at Ukraine World, an online magazine. Mazepa, despite his defeat, is revered as a national hero in Ukraine for trying, albeit with catastrophic consequences, to hold Russia at bay by finding a powerful patron in the West.

Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager and now a convicted fraudster, made a fortune in Ukraine by convincing its since toppled pro-Russian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, that he could, for a hefty fee, help woo Europe and blacken the reputation of his main political rival, Yulia Timochenko, who had been thrown in jail.

Mr. Biden’s son Hunter earned at least $850,000 for serving on the board of a Cyprus-registered Ukrainian gas company that needed help in cleaning up its image after falling foul of anticorruption investigators in Ukraine. The company insisted it was the victim of internal score-settling.

Yevhen Mahda, director of the Institute of World Policy, a research group, compared Ukraine’s recruitment of people like Mr. Manafort to the medieval practice of paying the Catholic Church for “indulgences,” which were supposed to reduce God’s punishment for sinful behavior.

“A lot of Ukrainian politicians have this stereotype that you pay an influential figure in the West, from Europe or America, and they will cleanse you of your sins,” he said.

The pursuit of foreign protectors and patrons has been a common feature of Ukraine’s political and business elite, no matter what their own political leanings.

Ukraine’s former president Petro O. Poroshenko, elected after street protests toppled his pro-Russian predecessor in February 2014, made good relations with the Obama administration his top foreign relations priority and then invested heavily in wooing the Trump administration, despite having favored Mrs. Clinton in the 2016 election.

Mr. Poroshenko’s eagerness to win over Mr. Trump and his growing fears that political rivals would thwart his re-election opened the way for Mr. Giuliani to press Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuri Lutsenko, who has since been fired, to help Mr. Trump’s own re-election by investigating Mr. Biden and his son.

How Mr. Poroshenko expected the Trump administration to help lift his sagging fortunes ahead of Ukraine’s presidential election, held in two rounds in March and April this year, is unclear. He got trounced anyway, losing emphatically to Mr. Zelensky, whose own officials quickly became the Trump team’s new targets in its drive to damage Mr. Biden.

While Democrats want Mr. Trump impeached over his dealings with Ukraine, the president and his allies have counterattacked with their own Ukraine-focused scandals. They have revived a debunked theory that the country colluded with the Clinton campaign to hurt Mr. Trump’s chances in 2016 and asserted, with little evidence, that Mr. Biden used his position as vice president to prevent Ukraine from investigating his son.

Ukrainians, jaded after years of watching their own leaders trade the power and privileges of office for personal financial or political gain, have mostly shrugged off what, for Mr. Trump, is possibly the most serious scandal to buffet the White House since Watergate toppled President Richard Nixon in 1974.

That a country few Americans paid much attention to in the past now commands center stage in Washington has stirred mostly bemusement in Ukraine. Those feelings are also tinged with a touch of pride that, after centuries in the shadow of Russia, its giant neighbor to the east, the nation is no longer seen as a backwater but a pivot around which the fate of the world’s most powerful country implausibly turns.

Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine’s foreign minister under Mr. Poroshenko, said in a wry Twitter message this week that going down in history “as the country that led to the impeachment of the U.S. president” was “not a very fun prospect.” But, he added, “Now everyone understands what we are capable of.”

Andrew Kramer contributed reporting from Kiev, Ukraine.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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This is way beyond anything Roy Cohn ever imagined. This is the complete obliteration of Constitutional checks and balances, separation of powers, the rule of law in America...all for the purposes of corruption and betrayal.

"If it’s Ukraine, then this looks very much like a promise of US arms or other aid in return for dirt on a political opponent’s family (Biden’s son Hunter) — both a violation of federal campaign law and bribery, an explicitly impeachable offense. Smoking howitzer, anyone?" Lawrence Tribe @TribeLaw

"Viewing this developing story in tandem with Trump’s lawyers’ claims today in the tax return litigation that he can’t be investigated, let alone prosecuted, makes clear we’re on a deeply disturbing trajectory, deeply disturbing even for this White House & it’s Roy Cohn." Joyce Vance

Whistleblower complaint about President Trump involves Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter

By Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, Greg Miller and Carol D. Leonnig | Published

September 19 at 8:04 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted September 19, 2019 10:30 PM ET |

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch.

The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said.

Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May.

That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment.

The Democrats’ investigation was launched earlier this month, before revelations that an intelligence official had lodged a complaint with the inspector general. The Washington Post first reported on Wednesday that the complaint had to do with a “promise” that Trump made when communicating with a foreign leader.

On Thursday, the inspector general testified behind closed doors to members of the House Intelligence Committee about the whistleblower’s complaint.

Over the course of three hours, Michael Atkinson repeatedly declined to discuss with members the content of the complaint, saying he was not authorized to do so.

He and the members spent much of their time discussing the process Atkinson followed, the statute governing his investigation of the complaint and the nature of an “urgent concern” that he believed it represented, according to a person familiar with the briefing, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity.

“He was being excruciatingly careful about the language he used,” the person said.

Atkinson made clear that he disagreed with a lawyer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who had contradicted the inspector general and found that the whistleblower complaint did not meet the statutory definition of an urgent concern because it involved a matter not under the DNI’s jurisdiction.

Atkinson told lawmakers that he disagreed with that analysis — meaning he felt the matter was under the DNI’s purview — and also that it was urgent “in the common understanding of the word,” the person said.

Atkinson told the committee that the complaint did not stem from just one conversation, according to two people familiar with his testimony.

Following the meeting, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the committee, warned of legal action if intelligence officials did not share the whistleblower complaint.

Schiff described acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire’s refusal to share the complaint with Congress as “unprecedented” and said he understood the Justice Department was involved in that decision.

“We cannot get an answer to the question about whether the White House is also involved in preventing this information from coming to Congress,” Schiff said, adding: “We’re determined to do everything we can to determine what this urgent concern is to make sure that the national security is protected.”

Someone, Schiff said, “is trying to manipulate the system to keep information about an urgent matter from the Congress … There certainly are a lot of indications that it was someone at a higher pay grade than the director of national intelligence.”

Trump has denied doing anything improper. In a tweet Thursday morning, the president wrote, “Virtually anytime I speak on the phone to a foreign leader, I understand that there may be many people listening from various U.S. agencies, not to mention those from the other country itself.

“Knowing all of this, is anybody dumb enough to believe that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on such a potentially ‘heavily populated’ call,” Trump wrote.

In a Sept. 17 letter to intelligence committee leaders, Atkinson wrote that he and Maguire “are at an impasse” over how the whistleblower could contact the congressional committees. Ordinarily, a matter of urgent concern that the inspector general deems credible is supposed to be forwarded to the intelligence oversight panels in the House and Senate.

But Maguire prevented Atkinson from doing so, according to correspondence that has been made public. Atkinson wrote that he had requested permission from Maguire to inform the congressional intelligence committees about the general subject matter of the complaint, but was denied.

Maguire, Atkinson wrote, had consulted with the Justice Department, which determined that the law didn’t require disclosing the complaint to the committee because it didn’t involve a member of the intelligence community or “an intelligence activity under the DNI’s supervision.”

Atkinson faulted the Justice Department’s conclusion “particularly … and the Acting DNI’s apparent agreement with the conclusion, that the disclosure in this case does not concern an intelligence activity within the DNI’s authority.”

Maguire is scheduled to testify before the Intelligence Committee in a public session next Thursday.

In letters to the White House and State Department, top Democrats earlier this month demanded records related to what they say are Trump and Giuliani’s efforts “to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity” — one to help Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is in prison for illegal lobbying and financial fraud, and a second to target the son of former vice president Joe Biden, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Trump.

“As the 2020 election draws closer, President Trump and his personal attorney appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump’s reelection campaign, and the White House and the State Department may be abetting this scheme,” the chairmen of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees wrote, citing media reports that Trump had threatened to withhold $250 million in aid to help Ukraine in its ongoing struggle against Russian-backed separatists.

Lawmakers also became aware in August that the Trump administration may be trying to stop the aid from reaching Ukraine, according to a congressional official.

Giuliani dismissed the reports of the whistle blower and Trump’s “promise” to a foreign leader.

“I’m not even aware of the fact that he had such a phone call,” Giuliani said Thursday. “If I’m not worried about it, he’s not worried about it.”

House Democrats are looking into whether Giuliani traveled to Ukraine to pressure that government outside of formal diplomatic channels to effectively help the Trump reelection effort by investigating Hunter Biden about his time on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company.

The filing of the whistleblower complaint has led to what veterans of U.S. spy agencies described as an unprecedented situation with potentially grave consequences for the already troubled relationship between the president and the nation’s powerful intelligence community.

It remains unclear how the whistleblower gained access to details of the president’s calls — whether through “readouts” generated by White House aides or through other means.

Memos that serve as transcripts of such calls are created routinely. But if that is the source in this instance, it would appear to mean that White House aides made a formal record of comments by the president later deemed deeply troubling by the intelligence community’s chief watchdog.

John Wagner, Karoun Demirjian, Robert Costa and Josh Dawsey contributed reporting.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Mounting legal threats surround Trump as nearly every organization he has led is under investigation

https://wapo.st/2UN2687

Mounting legal threats surround Trump as nearly every organization he has led is under investigation

By David A. Fahrenthold, Matt Zapotosky and Seung Min Kim | December 15 at 1:43 PM EST | Washington Post | Posted December 15, 2018 |

Two years after Donald Trump won the presidency, nearly every organization he has led in the past decade is under investigation.

Trump’s private company is contending with civil suits digging into its business with foreign governments and with looming state inquiries into its tax practices.

Trump’s 2016 campaign is under scrutiny by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, whose investigation into Russian interference has already led to guilty pleas by his campaign chairman and four advisers.

Trump’s inaugural committee has been probed by Mueller for illegal foreign donations, a topic that the incoming House Intelligence Committee chairman plans to further investigate next year.

Trump’s charity is locked in an ongoing suit with New York state, which has accused the foundation of “persistently illegal conduct.”

The mounting inquiries are building into a cascade of legal challenges that threaten to dominate Trump’s third year in the White House. In a few weeks, Democrats will take over in the House and pursue their own investigations into all of the above — and more.

The ultimate consequences for Trump are still unclear. Past Justice Department opinions have held that a sitting president may not be charged with a federal crime.

House Democrats may eventually seek to impeach Trump. But, for now, removing him from office appears unlikely: It would require the support of two-thirds of the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans.

However, there has been one immediate impact on a president accustomed to dictating the country’s news cycles but who now struggles to keep up with them: Trump has been forced to spend his political capital — and that of his party — on his defense.

On Capitol Hill this week, weary Senate Republicans scrambled away from reporters to avoid questions about Trump and his longtime fixer Michael Cohen — and Cohen’s courtroom assertion that he had been covering up Trump’s “dirty deeds” when he paid off two women who claimed they had affairs with the president before he was elected.

“I don’t do any interviews on anything to do with Trump and that sort of thing, okay?” said Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho).

“There’s no question that it’s a distraction from the things that obviously we would like to see him spending his time on, and things we’d like to be spending our time on,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). “So that’s why I’m hoping that some of this stuff will wrap up soon and we’ll get answers, and we can draw conclusions, and we can move on from there.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), summed it up another way: “It’s been a bad week for Individual Number One,” referring to the legal code name prosecutors in Manhattan used in court filings to refer to the president.

Trump attorney Rudolph Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did White House or Trump Organization officials.

As the bad news has rolled in, the president has cut back his public schedule. He spent more time than usual in his official residence this week, with more than two dozen hours of unstructured “executive time,” said a person familiar with his schedule.

In several tweets on Thursday, Trump sought to cast doubt on two former advisers who have cooperated with investigators. Cohen, Trump said, just wanted a reduced prison sentence. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, he said, was the victim of scare tactics by the FBI.

Then — after wordy explanations of how both men had gone wrong — Trump tried to sum up his increasingly complex problems with a simple explanation.

“WITCH HUNT!” he wrote.

“He’s just never been targeted by an investigation like this,” said Timothy L. O’Brien, a reporter who wrote a biography of Trump, adding that the longtime real estate mogul had contended with extensive litigation in his business career, but never legal threats of this scale. “The kind of legal scrutiny they’re getting right now — and the potential consequences of that scrutiny — are unlike anything Donald Trump or his children have ever faced.”

THE SPECIAL COUNSEL PROBE

Mueller’s investigation began in May 2017 after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey. The special counsel’s mandate: to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and whether the Kremlin worked with Trump associates. Mueller is also examining whether the president has sought to obstruct the Russia probe.

So far, Mueller has charged 33 people. That includes 26 Russian nationals — some of whom allegedly stole emails and other data from U.S. political parties, others of whom allegedly sought to influence public opinion via phony social media postings.

Several Trump aides have also pleaded guilty.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was found guilty in August of tax and bank fraud charges and pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and obstruction charges unrelated to his work for the campaign. He agreed to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation — though the special counsel’s office recently asserted he has been lying to investigators.

Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, admitted to lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador. Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, admitted to conspiracy and lying to the FBI. Former foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts. Cohen admitted to lying about efforts to build a Trump project in Moscow that lasted into Trump’s presidential run. All agreed to cooperate with investigators.

It’s unclear where Mueller’s inquiry is headed — and whether it will end with a spate of indictments reaching further into Trump’s world or with a written report submitted to the Justice Department.

Trump has repeatedly denied there was any “collusion” between his associates and Russia and has attacked the investigation as a fishing expedition led by politically biased prosecutors. Advisers said he has recently ramped up his attacks — hoping to undermine confidence in Mueller’s work — because he believes the probe is at a critical stage.

THE CAMPAIGN-FINANCE INVESTIGATION

Separately, federal prosecutors in Manhattan have pursued another investigation that emerged out of the 2016 campaign: hush-money payments Cohen made to two women who said they’d had extramarital affairs with Trump.

Cohen, who was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for what a judge called a “veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct,” pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations in connection to the payments.

Cohen also named who told him to pay off the women: Trump.

“He was very concerned about how this would affect the election,” Cohen told ABC News in an interview that aired Friday.

Trump has denied he directed Cohen to break the law by buying the silence of former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal and adult-film star Stormy Daniels. He also said Cohen, as his lawyer, bore responsibility for any campaign finance violations.

“I never directed him to do anything wrong,” Trump told Fox News on Thursday. “Whatever he did, he did on his own.”

Prosecutors also revealed Wednesday they had struck a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, the company that produces the National Enquirer tabloid, for its role in the scheme.

The company admitted it had helped pay off one of Trump’s accusers during the campaign. It said it had done so in “cooperation, consultation, and concert with” one or more members of Trump’s campaign, according to court filings.

It is unclear whether prosecutors will pursue charges against campaign or Trump Organization officials as part of the case.

But at the White House, advisers have fretted that this case — and not Mueller’s — could be the biggest threat to Trump’s presidency. House Democrats have already indicated the campaign-finance allegations could be potential fodder for impeachment proceedings.

SCRUTINY OF THE INAUGURAL COMMITTEE

The nearly $107 million donated to Trump’s inaugural committee has drawn the attention of Mueller, who has probed whether illegal foreign contributions went to help put on the festivities.

The special counsel already referred one such case to federal prosecutors in Washington. In late August, an American political consultant, W. Samuel Patten, admitted steering $50,000 from a Ukrainian politician to the inaugural committee through a straw donor.

Patten pleaded guilty to failing to register as a foreign lobbyist and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.

On Friday, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said his panel plans to investigate possible “illicit foreign funding or involvement in the inauguration.”

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that federal prosecutors in New York are examining whether the inaugural committee misspent funds. The Washington Post has not independently confirmed that report.

Officials with the committee, which was chaired by Trump’s friend Tom Barrack, said they were in full compliance “with all applicable laws and disclosure obligations” and have not received any records requests from prosecutors.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters this week that questions about the committee’s practices have “nothing to do with the president of the United States.”

THE EMOLUMENTS LAWSUITS

Trump also faces a pair of civil lawsuits alleging he has violated the Constitution by doing business with foreign and state governments while in office.

#donald trump #politics #trump administration #u.s. news #legal issues #trump #white house #conflict of interest #politics and government #robert mueller #russia investigation

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