If you haven’t already read the NY Times’s Behind the Ukraine Aid Freeze: 84 Days of Conflict and Confusion (The inside story of President Trump’s demand to halt military assistance to an ally shows the price he was willing to pay to carry out his agenda), don’t wait too long to do so. It’s fascinating stuff.
Interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials, congressional aides and others, previously undisclosed emails and documents, and a close reading of thousands of pages of impeachment testimony provide the most complete account yet of the 84 days from when Mr. Trump first inquired about the money to his decision in September to relent.
What emerges is the story of how Mr. Trump’s demands sent shock waves through the White House and the Pentagon, created deep rifts within the senior ranks of his administration, left key aides like Mr. Mulvaney under intensifying scrutiny — and ended only after Mr. Trump learned of a damning whistle-blower report and came under pressure from influential Republican lawmakers.
The name Mulvaney keeps coming up in this thing. As Charles Pierce says, lots of people are feeding Mulvaney to the wolves. He was, the article says, a “key conduit for transmitting Mr. Trump’s demands for the freeze across the administration.” And all kinds of people scattered through many offices of government were involved in at least a piece of this mess.
Greg Sargent has a good synopsis of the piece and argues that life has just gotten a lot harder for Mitch McConnell.
What makes all this new information really damning, however, is that many of these officials who were directly involved with Trump’s freezing of aid are the same ones Trump blocked from appearing before the House impeachment inquiry.
This should make it inescapable that McConnell wants a trial with no testimony from these people — Democrats want to hear from Mulvaney, Bolton, Duffey and Blair — precisely because he, too, wants to prevent us from ever gaining a full accounting.
We now have a much clearer glimpse into the murky depths of just how much more these officials know about the scheme — and just how much McConnell and Trump are determined to make sure we don’t ever learn. That’s so indefensible that it might even breach the levee of the media’s both-sidesing tendencies.
Colin Kalmbacher writing for Law and Crime points to the illegality of the whole mess.
Attorneys for the White House and the Department of Justice (DOJ) scrambled to piece together a legal justification after President Donald Trump withheld military aid to the Ukraine earlier this year.
According to the New York Times, those efforts were focused on sidestepping the Impoundment Control Act of 1974–a law which requires the executive branch to notify Congress if and when already-appropriated funds are being withheld. And, in service of that goal, various attorneys developed a somewhat novel legal theory.
Basically, the argument was that the hold on the funds had to be kept secret because of ongoing negotiations about “corruption.” But Kalmacher goes on to explain that the law doesn’t give the administration any discretion on funds appropriated by Congress. If for some reason he doesn’t want the money to be spent as appropriated, he has to go back to Congress about it.
So busted.
It's not that Ukraine is corruption-free, it's that the corruption in tRUMP's America is already bad, and growing worse by the day.
And that tRUMP's BS about corruption in Ukraine is a diamond-hard and crystal-clear example of projection!
The Teapot Dome scandal was – pardon the bad pun – a "tempest in a teapot" compared to the corruption in tRUMP's DC, the Republican Party, and "Movement Conservatism."
We are at a tipping-point.
The separation of powers is rapidly being whittled down to a toothpick with which tRUMP can use to loosen fast-food particles in his mouth, while he's sitting on his gilded commode, shitting on the US Constitution. Again.
Unchecked, his behavior will get even more Authoritarian, criminal, brazen, and corrupt. And we all know that Moscow Mitch, Miss Leningrad Limpseed Graham-crackers, and too many GOP Senators aren't about to check tRUMP's corrupt and criminal behavior.
He needs to be impeached! But I doubt he'll even get a stern lecture.
Let's face it, we are f-uc-k-e-d! ROYALLY fucked, by King Donald I.
Those of us who can still walk and shout will have to hit the streets! Sadly, that's not something I can still do. So, youngsters, you'll have to take your turn at trying to correct and save representative democracy here in the USA. I tried. But I guess I didn't do a good enough job. Sorry…
Gulag..That's not a bad pun at all. It's a pretty good one if you ask me.
Bowel Movement Conservatism?
Now is the time for Nancy Pelosi to announce she's going to delay sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate because she wants to add more superseding articles to the ones already in place.
Seeing how it's all going to be a big political shitfest where Trump is expected to walk away without any accountability she might as well crank up the visibility and suck up all the oxygen in the news cycles. I would wager that the nation's eyes are no longer on Trump, everybody knows he's a shitbag, but the attention has to be focused on those who will risk their careers and reputations to allow his criminal behavior to continue.
It really doesn't matter if additional investigative hearing result in additional articles of impeachment, or whether they seem frivolous or petty. The point would be to draw attention to Trump's criminal behavior. Stormy Daniels – obstuction of justice, campaign violations. This latest criminal violation of the Impoundment Control Act or anything that would delay or confound the GOP Senate from blithely running roughshod over the truth. Exact a cost by allying with the truth. Exposure is the friend of truth.
Pull out the stops because the GOP battling against the truth. The truth will prevail!
I wish we had a great communicator for this issue because the GOP position should be indefensible!. The reason I say that is because they are calling their accusers liars while they block those with direct involvement from testifying. I can't fathom how any rational being can fail to see a cover-up.
I believe Clinton's articles were held until January and Congress reconvened. The so called delay is useful especially as there seem to be a few cracks and stories of unraveling are coming out.
Moscow mitch has obstructed the constitutionalbum duty of the Senate before (merrick garland ). He is the one who said witnesses would be MAD. Mutually assured destruction. He can have a meaningless quickie, but everyone, even the MAGATS know, it is a sham. The Ukrainians wondered who these gold chain wearing wiseguys were. They were used to oligarchs that at least wore suits. Now it is US that is corrupt . The entire Republican party.
So Joe Biden, don't fall for the Republican running mate garbage. The "Democrat " field is already to full of independents and billionaires. I want this wrapped around Republican necks forever.
At the top of his form, the c u n d gulag delivers inspiration for the new decade. Miss Leningrad Limpseed Graham-crackers, gets my highest creativity award. What style.
At this point, the "I was fighting corruption in Ukraine defense", is dead in the water. I keep telling Republicans to go to the insanity defense, but they must think I am telling them to act like they have all gone insane. Miscommunication is always a problem when trying to communicate with this cult. They tend to reject any idea that does not fit with their favorite ideology or conspiracy theory. No wonder they find meaning in word salad rhetoric spouted with authority.
Bowel movement conservatism has replace tea-tardation. The cult is now saying sham because it sounds like scam. A scam is what we are dealing with, which is defined as a fraudulent scheme or a swindle. More and more facts support this being the correct word. To be a sham it would be fake or false, but you would have to be insane to conclude that. That defense still is not the insanity defense I am talking about.
Anyway, on to a new year and decade. Wishing all the best of both.
Happy new year to all, though it's likely to be interesting in the sense of the Chinese curse. Here's hoping that, overall, America can hit the perfect Yin and Yang of outrage and good nature.
Somewhere along that curve Mulvaney is most responsible for feeding Mulvaney to wolves. His admission of quid pro quo and demand we "get over it" in front of TV cameras was an example of Trumpism as a snake eating its tail.