Fast-Track to the Moon: NASA Opens Call for Artemis Lunar Landers
NASA is seeking proposals for human lunar landing systems designed and developed by American companies for the Artemis program, which includes sending the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon by 2024.
The final call to industry comes after NASA issued two drafts on July 19 and Aug. 30, encouraging companies to send comments to help shape a key component of the agency’s human exploration Artemis partnerships. NASA is expected to make multiple awards to industry to develop and demonstrate a human landing system. The first company to complete its lander will carry astronauts to the surface in 2024, and the second company will land in 2025.
Proposals to build a landing system are due Nov. 1—an ambitious timeline consistent with the sequence of events leading to this point—however, companies have been preparing for, reviewing, and commenting on several drafts of NASA’s broad agency announcement since mid-July and should be ready for this tight timeline.
“In order to best accelerate our return to the Moon and prepare for Mars, we collaborated with industry on ideas to streamline the procurement process,” said Marshall Smith, director of the Human Lunar Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The private sector was eager to provide us feedback throughout this process, and we received more than 1,150 comments on the draft solicitations issued over the summer.”
Typical spaceflight hardware can take six to eight years to develop. With less than five years to land astronauts on the Moon, every word and requirement counts.
After reviewing the comments, NASA removed requirements that industry perceived as potential barriers to speed while preserving all the agency’s human safety measures. For example, industry stated that delivery of a high number of formal technical reports would require a company to spend considerable resources and incur undue schedule risk. Taking this into consideration, NASA has designed a less formal insight model that will be used for accessing critical contractor data while minimizing administrative overhead. As a result, NASA reduced the number of required contract deliverables from 116 to 37.
“Reports still are valuable and necessary, but to compromise and ease the bulk of the reporting burden on industry, we are asking for access to the companies’ systems to monitor progress throughout development,” said Nantel Suzuki, the Human Landing System program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “To maximize our chances of successfully returning to the Moon by 2024, we also are making NASA’s engineering workforce available to contractors and asking proposers to submit a collaboration plan.”
When called to accelerate its return to the Moon, NASA said it would meet this ambitious goal by “any means necessary.” The agency’s preferred approach to a lunar landing is for the crew in the Orion spacecraft and the uncrewed human landing system to launch separately and meet in lunar orbit at the Gateway, which is critical to long-term exploration of the Moon. NASA wants to explore all options to achieve the 2024 mission and remains open to alternative, innovative approaches.
Another shift centered around how to best achieve sustainability on the Moon by 2028. In addition to greater performance, such as global lunar surface access and higher payload mass capacity, NASA originally required the Human Landing System to be refuelable as a means to ensure a more sustainable exploration architecture. Multiple companies had concerns about this requirement, and NASA agreed to remove it so that industry has greater flexibility to address the more fundamental attribute of sustainability, which is long-term affordability.
“They were absolutely right,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, the Human Landing System program manager at NASA’s Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “We are operating on a timeline that requires us to be flexible to encourage innovation and alternate approaches. We still welcome the option to refuel the landing system, but we removed it as a requirement.”
NASA’s Artemis program includes sending a suite of new science instruments and technology demonstrations to study the Moon, landing the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024, and establishing a sustained presence by 2028. The agency will leverage its Artemis experience and technologies to prepare for the next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars.
September 30, 2019
Kool-Aid
Conservative Kool-Aid Is Powerful Stuff
KEVIN DRUM
Apostate Republican Peter Wehner asks today, “What’s the matter with Republicans?” His answer is the usual one: tribalism, self-interest, and fear of constituents who love Donald Trump. All true, I’m sure, but it misses perhaps the most important factor: Kool-Aid.
For the past 20 years Republicans have been drinking their own Kool-Aid. They believe that Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt politician of our era. They believe that Barack Obama engaged in a calculated campaign of illegal executive orders throughout his entire second term. They believe that Democrats secretly—or not so secretly—favor open borders with Mexico as a cynical ruse to increase the number of Democratic voters. They believe that progressives, if given power, will make it all but illegal to practice the Christian faith.
Against that backdrop, ask yourself this: is it really that big a deal to ask the Ukrainian leader to investigate Joe Biden? I mean, sure, maybe Trump shouldn’t have done it. But compared to everything Democrats have done—IRS targeting, Benghazi, emails, killing the filibuster, Kavanaugh, DACA, the list is just endless—it maybe rates a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a trivial molehill that Democrats and their media enablers are trying to turn into a mountain.
And besides, even if Trump was a little over his skis in his conversation with Ukraine’s president, there really is a huge scandal surrounding Joe Biden. Right? Clearly the guy tried to call off the Ukrainian dogs in order to help his son make a ton of money, and used a billion dollars in taxpayer money to make his threat good.
Don’t just shake your head at this. Lots of Republicans believe it. And frankly, a lot of you probably believe equally crazy things about them. The big difference is that while some liberals may watch more MSNBC than is good for them, they also ingest other news that prevents them from going entirely over the edge. A great many conservatives don’t. It’s just Fox and Hannity and Breitbart 24/7.
So they stick with Trump. Some of them do it because they’re cynical and just want to hold onto power, but a lot of them do it because they aren’t cynical and truly believe Ukrainegate is a minor thing that wouldn’t rate a blurb on page A10 if a Democrat did it. They are entirely unaware that the narrative they hear on Fox is anything but the straight story. This is true of both Republican members of Congress as well as the rank and file.
The Kool-Aid is powerful. Don’t underestimate it. And don’t expect even smart Republicans to admit that it’s the real problem. Even the smart ones are afraid of it, after all.
KEVIN DRUM
Apostate Republican Peter Wehner asks today, “What’s the matter with Republicans?” His answer is the usual one: tribalism, self-interest, and fear of constituents who love Donald Trump. All true, I’m sure, but it misses perhaps the most important factor: Kool-Aid.
For the past 20 years Republicans have been drinking their own Kool-Aid. They believe that Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt politician of our era. They believe that Barack Obama engaged in a calculated campaign of illegal executive orders throughout his entire second term. They believe that Democrats secretly—or not so secretly—favor open borders with Mexico as a cynical ruse to increase the number of Democratic voters. They believe that progressives, if given power, will make it all but illegal to practice the Christian faith.
Against that backdrop, ask yourself this: is it really that big a deal to ask the Ukrainian leader to investigate Joe Biden? I mean, sure, maybe Trump shouldn’t have done it. But compared to everything Democrats have done—IRS targeting, Benghazi, emails, killing the filibuster, Kavanaugh, DACA, the list is just endless—it maybe rates a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a trivial molehill that Democrats and their media enablers are trying to turn into a mountain.
And besides, even if Trump was a little over his skis in his conversation with Ukraine’s president, there really is a huge scandal surrounding Joe Biden. Right? Clearly the guy tried to call off the Ukrainian dogs in order to help his son make a ton of money, and used a billion dollars in taxpayer money to make his threat good.
Don’t just shake your head at this. Lots of Republicans believe it. And frankly, a lot of you probably believe equally crazy things about them. The big difference is that while some liberals may watch more MSNBC than is good for them, they also ingest other news that prevents them from going entirely over the edge. A great many conservatives don’t. It’s just Fox and Hannity and Breitbart 24/7.
So they stick with Trump. Some of them do it because they’re cynical and just want to hold onto power, but a lot of them do it because they aren’t cynical and truly believe Ukrainegate is a minor thing that wouldn’t rate a blurb on page A10 if a Democrat did it. They are entirely unaware that the narrative they hear on Fox is anything but the straight story. This is true of both Republican members of Congress as well as the rank and file.
The Kool-Aid is powerful. Don’t underestimate it. And don’t expect even smart Republicans to admit that it’s the real problem. Even the smart ones are afraid of it, after all.
Campaign Is Demanding
The Biden Campaign Is Demanding That TV Execs Stop Booking Guiliani
“By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”
ALI BRELAND
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is reportedly asking television news executives to not book Rudy Guiliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, on their channels.
The Biden campaign sent out an unusual letter on Sunday morning addressed to top TV news executives and prominent anchors. The letter, written by two top Biden advisers, said Guiliani’s repeated spread of disinformation about Biden and his son Hunter should disqualify him from appearing on their networks, according to The Daily Beast.
“We are writing today with grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump. While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation,” the letter reportedly says.
“We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative,” they added.
The letter goes on to make the case that Guiliani “is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves.” The campaign also requested that “an equivalent amount of time … to a surrogate for the Biden campaign” in segments where Guiliani is scheduled to appear.
Guiliani disparaged the letter as “ left-wing censorship,” in a comment to The Daily Beast.
Brian Stelter, a media reporter at CNN, tweeted that ABC’s “This Week” and “Face the Nation” on CBS were offered a Biden campaign surrogate today, though according to a Biden campaign source, both shows declined. Still, Stelter pointed out that the Biden campaign has been largely unavailable in the run-up to primary season compared to other campaigns.
Both ABC’s “This Week” and “Face the Nation” on CBS were offered a Biden campaign surrogate to respond to Rudy today, a Biden campaign source tells me. Seems like both shows declined.
The Daily Beast reported that the letter was sent to all major network heads including NBC President Noah Oppenheim, CBS News President Susan Zirinsky and CNN President Jeff Zucker, along with hosts like CNN’s Jake Tapper, NBC’s Chuck Todd, and Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
In recent days, Guiliani has consistently repeated debunked claims about the work of Biden’s son, Hunter, in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s efforts to remove a prosecutor there. Trump’s personal lawyer has tried to position Biden’s criticisms of the Ukranian prosecutor as a corrupt attempt to protect his son. Meanwhile, Guiliani has failed to mention that the prosecutor was facing global pressure to step down and was not handling the then-dormant case in the country that involved Biden’s son.
“Your obligation is to provide the American people with an informed, fact-based and responsible,“ the Biden campaign letter reads. “Rudy Giuliani has made very clear that his only obligation is to protect Donald Trump, and that he will willingly lie to do so.”
“By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation.”
ALI BRELAND
Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is reportedly asking television news executives to not book Rudy Guiliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, on their channels.
The Biden campaign sent out an unusual letter on Sunday morning addressed to top TV news executives and prominent anchors. The letter, written by two top Biden advisers, said Guiliani’s repeated spread of disinformation about Biden and his son Hunter should disqualify him from appearing on their networks, according to The Daily Beast.
“We are writing today with grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump. While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation,” the letter reportedly says.
“We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative,” they added.
The letter goes on to make the case that Guiliani “is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves.” The campaign also requested that “an equivalent amount of time … to a surrogate for the Biden campaign” in segments where Guiliani is scheduled to appear.
Guiliani disparaged the letter as “ left-wing censorship,” in a comment to The Daily Beast.
Brian Stelter, a media reporter at CNN, tweeted that ABC’s “This Week” and “Face the Nation” on CBS were offered a Biden campaign surrogate today, though according to a Biden campaign source, both shows declined. Still, Stelter pointed out that the Biden campaign has been largely unavailable in the run-up to primary season compared to other campaigns.
Both ABC’s “This Week” and “Face the Nation” on CBS were offered a Biden campaign surrogate to respond to Rudy today, a Biden campaign source tells me. Seems like both shows declined.
The Daily Beast reported that the letter was sent to all major network heads including NBC President Noah Oppenheim, CBS News President Susan Zirinsky and CNN President Jeff Zucker, along with hosts like CNN’s Jake Tapper, NBC’s Chuck Todd, and Fox News’ Chris Wallace.
In recent days, Guiliani has consistently repeated debunked claims about the work of Biden’s son, Hunter, in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s efforts to remove a prosecutor there. Trump’s personal lawyer has tried to position Biden’s criticisms of the Ukranian prosecutor as a corrupt attempt to protect his son. Meanwhile, Guiliani has failed to mention that the prosecutor was facing global pressure to step down and was not handling the then-dormant case in the country that involved Biden’s son.
“Your obligation is to provide the American people with an informed, fact-based and responsible,“ the Biden campaign letter reads. “Rudy Giuliani has made very clear that his only obligation is to protect Donald Trump, and that he will willingly lie to do so.”
Bombshell Report
The Washington Post Published a Bombshell Report About Trump and Russia
This is a big deal for 2020.
TIM MURPHY
On Friday night, the Washington Post published an absolute bombshell report about President Donald Trump:
President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted alarmed 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.
You’ve heard about this meeting before, because it was a big deal at the time—that’s the same one where he revealed classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As with many weird and scandalous things the president does, it momentarily dominated the political discussion and then sort of faded away.
But the meeting has taken on new significance in the wake of the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine. The complaint alleged—and the administration subsequently confirmed—that the White House had taken unusual steps afterward to “lock down” the details of the call, by storing it on a separate classified server and restricting access. (Another Friday report by CNN shed more light on the White House’s attempts to shield several of Trump’s sensitive calls from the public’s eye.)
Per the Post:
It is not clear whether a memo documenting the May 10, 2017, meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak was placed into that system, but the three former officials said it was restricted to a very small number of people.
As with seemingly everything having to do with Trump, there are really two different layers of scandal here. One is the suppression of records. That’s not a small deal—it is a subject of the impeachment investigation, after all. But the other is a very large one: The Post story catches the president explicitly telling the hostile power that attacked his political rival and interfered with the cornerstone of American democracy that is was all totally fine with him. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to wonder what that means for 2020.
This is a big deal for 2020.
TIM MURPHY
On Friday night, the Washington Post published an absolute bombshell report about President Donald Trump:
President Trump told two senior Russian officials in a 2017 Oval Office meeting that he was unconcerned about Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States did the same in other countries, an assertion that prompted alarmed 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.
You’ve heard about this meeting before, because it was a big deal at the time—that’s the same one where he revealed classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. As with many weird and scandalous things the president does, it momentarily dominated the political discussion and then sort of faded away.
But the meeting has taken on new significance in the wake of the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine. The complaint alleged—and the administration subsequently confirmed—that the White House had taken unusual steps afterward to “lock down” the details of the call, by storing it on a separate classified server and restricting access. (Another Friday report by CNN shed more light on the White House’s attempts to shield several of Trump’s sensitive calls from the public’s eye.)
Per the Post:
It is not clear whether a memo documenting the May 10, 2017, meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak was placed into that system, but the three former officials said it was restricted to a very small number of people.
As with seemingly everything having to do with Trump, there are really two different layers of scandal here. One is the suppression of records. That’s not a small deal—it is a subject of the impeachment investigation, after all. But the other is a very large one: The Post story catches the president explicitly telling the hostile power that attacked his political rival and interfered with the cornerstone of American democracy that is was all totally fine with him. It doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to wonder what that means for 2020.
Sixth GOPer
Sixth GOP House member from Texas announces plans to leave Congress
By Haley Byrd
Rep. Mac Thornberry on Monday became the sixth Texas Republican to announce plans to head for the exits of Capitol Hill, saying in a statement that he will not seek reelection in 2020.
"It has been a great honor to serve the people of the 13th District of Texas as their congressman for the last 25 years," he wrote. "We are reminded, however, that 'for everything there is a season,' and I believe that the time has come for a change. Therefore, this is my last term in the U.S. House of Representatives."
Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has served in Congress since he was first elected in 1994. Texas's 13th congressional district is considered a safe Republican seat: In 2018, Thornberry won reelection by nearly 65 points.
His departure isn't entirely shocking — in recent weeks he had been noncommittal about running again, saying in September that "people should not make too much of the fact that folks who have been in a while or have put limits on themselves, how long they would serve, have decided to do something else."
He was also set to reach the term limit for the Armed Services Committee next year. Since 1994, House Republicans have limited committee chairmanships to six years, including time spent as ranking member in the minority, unless members obtain a waiver from the Republican Steering Committee. Democrats don't have the same rule.
Thornberry joins more than a dozen other House Republicans who have opted to leave the chamber in the past several months. Most of those departures are unrelated to term limits for committee chairmanships, but President Donald Trump has called for the House GOP Conference to abolish the term limits in order to give members more incentive to stay in Washington.
"House Republicans should allow Chairs of Committees to remain for longer than 6 years. It forces great people, and real leaders, to leave after serving," Trump tweeted earlier this month.
House leaders have been resistant to that idea, saying the limits provide younger members with opportunities to lead.
By Haley Byrd
Rep. Mac Thornberry on Monday became the sixth Texas Republican to announce plans to head for the exits of Capitol Hill, saying in a statement that he will not seek reelection in 2020.
"It has been a great honor to serve the people of the 13th District of Texas as their congressman for the last 25 years," he wrote. "We are reminded, however, that 'for everything there is a season,' and I believe that the time has come for a change. Therefore, this is my last term in the U.S. House of Representatives."
Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, has served in Congress since he was first elected in 1994. Texas's 13th congressional district is considered a safe Republican seat: In 2018, Thornberry won reelection by nearly 65 points.
His departure isn't entirely shocking — in recent weeks he had been noncommittal about running again, saying in September that "people should not make too much of the fact that folks who have been in a while or have put limits on themselves, how long they would serve, have decided to do something else."
He was also set to reach the term limit for the Armed Services Committee next year. Since 1994, House Republicans have limited committee chairmanships to six years, including time spent as ranking member in the minority, unless members obtain a waiver from the Republican Steering Committee. Democrats don't have the same rule.
Thornberry joins more than a dozen other House Republicans who have opted to leave the chamber in the past several months. Most of those departures are unrelated to term limits for committee chairmanships, but President Donald Trump has called for the House GOP Conference to abolish the term limits in order to give members more incentive to stay in Washington.
"House Republicans should allow Chairs of Committees to remain for longer than 6 years. It forces great people, and real leaders, to leave after serving," Trump tweeted earlier this month.
House leaders have been resistant to that idea, saying the limits provide younger members with opportunities to lead.
Life on Mars
NASA is close to finding life on Mars but the world isn't ready for the discovery, the agency's chief scientist says
By Scottie Andrew
NASA's next mission to Mars will be its most advanced yet. But if scientists discover there was once life -- or there is life -- on the Red Planet, will the public be able to handle such an extraterrestrial concept?
NASA chief scientist Jim Green doesn't think so.
"It will be revolutionary," Green told the Telegraph. "It will start a whole new line of thinking. I don't think we're prepared for the results. We're not."
The agency's Mars 2020 rover, set to launch next summer, will be the first to collect samples of Martian material to send back to Earth. But if scientists discover biosignatures of life in Mars' crust, the findings could majorly rock astrobiology, said Green, the director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA.
"What happens next is a whole new set of scientific questions," he said. "Is that life like us? How are we related?"
The Mars 2020 rover, along with the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover, will drill into the Martian crust. The surface of the Red Planet is believed to be radioactive, so if there is life on Mars, it likely lives below ground.
"We've never drilled that deep," he told the Telegraph. "When environments get extreme, life moves into the rocks."
The principle's been proven on our home planet: After drilling miles into the Earth, researchers found more life in the Earth's crust than on its surface, he said.
"The bottom line is, where there is water there is life."
And if the agencies' new rovers find proof that water once flowed on Mars, he said, the confirmation could come weeks or months of landing -- so buckle up, space lovers. The realm of possibility might get much wider very soon.
The next mission to Mars
NASA's Mars 2020 rover will launch in July 2020 and land at the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021 (Mars is 140 million miles from Earth, after all). It's equipped with two high-definition cameras and a detachable helicopter to take aerial images of the planet's cliffs, caves and craters.
The mission's main aim is to search for signs of life. The rover will look for past habitable environments, find biosignatures in rock and will test those samples back on Earth.
But if scientists fail to find evidence of life, that won't end the hope for human exploration. Mars 2020 will test oxygen production on the planet and monitor Martian weather to evaluate how potential human colonies could fare on Mars.
By Scottie Andrew
NASA's next mission to Mars will be its most advanced yet. But if scientists discover there was once life -- or there is life -- on the Red Planet, will the public be able to handle such an extraterrestrial concept?
NASA chief scientist Jim Green doesn't think so.
"It will be revolutionary," Green told the Telegraph. "It will start a whole new line of thinking. I don't think we're prepared for the results. We're not."
The agency's Mars 2020 rover, set to launch next summer, will be the first to collect samples of Martian material to send back to Earth. But if scientists discover biosignatures of life in Mars' crust, the findings could majorly rock astrobiology, said Green, the director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA.
"What happens next is a whole new set of scientific questions," he said. "Is that life like us? How are we related?"
The Mars 2020 rover, along with the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover, will drill into the Martian crust. The surface of the Red Planet is believed to be radioactive, so if there is life on Mars, it likely lives below ground.
"We've never drilled that deep," he told the Telegraph. "When environments get extreme, life moves into the rocks."
The principle's been proven on our home planet: After drilling miles into the Earth, researchers found more life in the Earth's crust than on its surface, he said.
"The bottom line is, where there is water there is life."
And if the agencies' new rovers find proof that water once flowed on Mars, he said, the confirmation could come weeks or months of landing -- so buckle up, space lovers. The realm of possibility might get much wider very soon.
The next mission to Mars
NASA's Mars 2020 rover will launch in July 2020 and land at the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021 (Mars is 140 million miles from Earth, after all). It's equipped with two high-definition cameras and a detachable helicopter to take aerial images of the planet's cliffs, caves and craters.
The mission's main aim is to search for signs of life. The rover will look for past habitable environments, find biosignatures in rock and will test those samples back on Earth.
But if scientists fail to find evidence of life, that won't end the hope for human exploration. Mars 2020 will test oxygen production on the planet and monitor Martian weather to evaluate how potential human colonies could fare on Mars.
GOPer to plead guilty...
Republican lawmaker to plead guilty in insider trading case
By Erica Orden
New York Rep. Chris Collins is expected to plead guilty Tuesday to federal charges in an insider trading case, according to court documents filed Monday and a person familiar with the matter.
The first sitting congressman to back President Donald Trump's bid for the White House, Collins was reelected to office several months after he was originally indicted in the insider trading case.
He faces reelection in 2020, and a guilty plea wouldn't necessarily cause him to immediately lose his congressional seat unless he resigns or if the House of Representatives expels him, which would require a full vote of the House.
It's not clear if Collins, who was charged by the Manhattan US Attorney's office, is set to plead guilty to precisely the same set of charges contained in the indictment against him, which was originally filed in August 2018 and was revised the following August.
Collins' attorneys, Jonathan New and Jonathan Barr, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Collins' co-defendants -- his son and another man -- are also set to change their pleas on Thursday, according to court filings.
Collins and his co-defendants had pleaded not guilty twice in the case, once after the original set of charges in August 2018 and a second time -- to the revised charges contained in what's known as a superseding indictment -- earlier this month.
Federal prosecutors in the Manhattan US Attorney's office allege that the defendants acted on non-public information about the results of a drug trial, which was then used to trade on the stock of the pharmaceutical company, Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited, of which Collins was a board member.
The indictment didn't allege that Collins himself traded on information about the failed results of a drug trial, but that he passed the information to his son so that his son could execute trades. The superseding indictment narrowed the charges against Collins, dropping some, but not all, of the securities fraud counts.
Speaking outside the courthouse after his second not guilty plea, Collins said he hadn't decided whether to run for reelection in 2020, adding that he would decide by the end of this year. "I look forward to being exonerated in due course," he said at the time.
By Erica Orden
New York Rep. Chris Collins is expected to plead guilty Tuesday to federal charges in an insider trading case, according to court documents filed Monday and a person familiar with the matter.
The first sitting congressman to back President Donald Trump's bid for the White House, Collins was reelected to office several months after he was originally indicted in the insider trading case.
He faces reelection in 2020, and a guilty plea wouldn't necessarily cause him to immediately lose his congressional seat unless he resigns or if the House of Representatives expels him, which would require a full vote of the House.
It's not clear if Collins, who was charged by the Manhattan US Attorney's office, is set to plead guilty to precisely the same set of charges contained in the indictment against him, which was originally filed in August 2018 and was revised the following August.
Collins' attorneys, Jonathan New and Jonathan Barr, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Collins' co-defendants -- his son and another man -- are also set to change their pleas on Thursday, according to court filings.
Collins and his co-defendants had pleaded not guilty twice in the case, once after the original set of charges in August 2018 and a second time -- to the revised charges contained in what's known as a superseding indictment -- earlier this month.
Federal prosecutors in the Manhattan US Attorney's office allege that the defendants acted on non-public information about the results of a drug trial, which was then used to trade on the stock of the pharmaceutical company, Innate Immunotherapeutics Limited, of which Collins was a board member.
The indictment didn't allege that Collins himself traded on information about the failed results of a drug trial, but that he passed the information to his son so that his son could execute trades. The superseding indictment narrowed the charges against Collins, dropping some, but not all, of the securities fraud counts.
Speaking outside the courthouse after his second not guilty plea, Collins said he hadn't decided whether to run for reelection in 2020, adding that he would decide by the end of this year. "I look forward to being exonerated in due course," he said at the time.
Circulates quote...
Trump circulates quote invoking 'civil war-like fracture' if he's removed from office
By Maegan Vazquez
President Donald Trump spent the weekend on Twitter defending himself against Democrats' upcoming impeachment inquiry by quoting his supporters on cable news, including a pastor's inflammatory prediction that the country could be destroyed and a civil war would ensue if the President was removed from office.
Evangelical pastor and Fox News contributor Robert Jeffress claimed on the network, "Democrats don't care if they burn down and destroy the nation in the process" of impeachment.
"I have never seen the Evangelical Christians more angry over any issue than this attempt to illegitimately remove this President from office, overturn the 2016 (...) Election, and negate the votes of millions of Evangelicals in the process," Trump tweeted, selectively quoting and amending what Jeffress said. "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal."
Jeffress, a longtime Trump ally, made the comments on "Fox & Friends Weekend" Sunday morning. The evangelical pastor at a Texas megachurch has a long record of controversial comments. Earlier this year, he compared Christians who don't support Trump to German Christians who did not try to stop the Nazis. He's also compared Trump's much touted border wall to the gates of heaven.
Jeffress is not the first person to publicly raise the notion that a civil war-like fracture is mounting, but these fears are typically left to the political fringe. The American Civil War began in 1861 over the future of the enslavement of black people in the United States.
These days, however, some fringe Republicans are suggesting a new civil war is on the horizon between Democrats and Republicans. Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, for example, has shared an image joking about the potential for a civil war is between blue states and red states -- the latter, the image says, have "about 8 trillion bullets."
The President's tweets quoting Jeffress garnered swift criticism from several Democrats, and the statement unnerved one sitting Republican congressman, California Rep. Adam Kinzinger, enough to say it was "beyond repugnant."
"I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @RealDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant," Kinzinger, a veteran who has served missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, tweeted Sunday.
Trump has previously made veiled -- and sometimes explicit -- encouragements of violence, going back to the 2016 campaign when his rallies would be interrupted frequently by protesters. And he's been criticized for talking about how tough his supporters are while at the same time implying they might not remain peaceful.
The Jeffress tweet was one among dozens Trump sent over the weekend distracting and defending himself from the impeachment inquiry -- which ranged from clips from supporters defending him on cable television, dredging up accusations against his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and sharing a tweet saying a Fox news anchor and chief national correspondent "got his ass handed to him" by conservative radio host Mark Levin.
Trump's weekend tweet marathon comes as the President and his allies are attempting to mount a defense of Trump's behavior and track record amid a Democratic impeachment inquiry into his interactions with Ukraine, part of a series of allegations made in an intelligence community whistleblower report released to the public last week.
By Maegan Vazquez
President Donald Trump spent the weekend on Twitter defending himself against Democrats' upcoming impeachment inquiry by quoting his supporters on cable news, including a pastor's inflammatory prediction that the country could be destroyed and a civil war would ensue if the President was removed from office.
Evangelical pastor and Fox News contributor Robert Jeffress claimed on the network, "Democrats don't care if they burn down and destroy the nation in the process" of impeachment.
"I have never seen the Evangelical Christians more angry over any issue than this attempt to illegitimately remove this President from office, overturn the 2016 (...) Election, and negate the votes of millions of Evangelicals in the process," Trump tweeted, selectively quoting and amending what Jeffress said. "If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal."
Jeffress, a longtime Trump ally, made the comments on "Fox & Friends Weekend" Sunday morning. The evangelical pastor at a Texas megachurch has a long record of controversial comments. Earlier this year, he compared Christians who don't support Trump to German Christians who did not try to stop the Nazis. He's also compared Trump's much touted border wall to the gates of heaven.
Jeffress is not the first person to publicly raise the notion that a civil war-like fracture is mounting, but these fears are typically left to the political fringe. The American Civil War began in 1861 over the future of the enslavement of black people in the United States.
These days, however, some fringe Republicans are suggesting a new civil war is on the horizon between Democrats and Republicans. Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, for example, has shared an image joking about the potential for a civil war is between blue states and red states -- the latter, the image says, have "about 8 trillion bullets."
The President's tweets quoting Jeffress garnered swift criticism from several Democrats, and the statement unnerved one sitting Republican congressman, California Rep. Adam Kinzinger, enough to say it was "beyond repugnant."
"I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @RealDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President. This is beyond repugnant," Kinzinger, a veteran who has served missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, tweeted Sunday.
Trump has previously made veiled -- and sometimes explicit -- encouragements of violence, going back to the 2016 campaign when his rallies would be interrupted frequently by protesters. And he's been criticized for talking about how tough his supporters are while at the same time implying they might not remain peaceful.
The Jeffress tweet was one among dozens Trump sent over the weekend distracting and defending himself from the impeachment inquiry -- which ranged from clips from supporters defending him on cable television, dredging up accusations against his 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, and sharing a tweet saying a Fox news anchor and chief national correspondent "got his ass handed to him" by conservative radio host Mark Levin.
Trump's weekend tweet marathon comes as the President and his allies are attempting to mount a defense of Trump's behavior and track record amid a Democratic impeachment inquiry into his interactions with Ukraine, part of a series of allegations made in an intelligence community whistleblower report released to the public last week.
Fact-checks....
Tapper fact-checks GOP Rep. Jim Jordan on Ukraine scandal
By Devan Cole
Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, and CNN's Jake Tapper got into a contentious exchange Sunday after the lawmaker made false and misleading claims about the unfolding Ukraine drama that has led to an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
During a tense interview with Tapper on "State of The Union," the Ohio Republican attempts to give his spin on the drama, making unsubstantiated claims about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating the Bidens, though there is no evidence of wrongdoing by either.
On Jordan's claims about the Bidens
"The vice president's son gets paid $50,000 a month and gets hired by a company in an industry he has no experience in and oh that's fine?" Jordan says, referring to Hunter Biden serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company. "Try taking that message to the American people ... When they see the vice president's son getting paid $50,000 a month in a field, in an industry he has no experience in ... And then when the company that's paying that money is under investigation, guess what? Daddy comes running to the rescue. The vice president of the United States comes running in and says, 'Fire that prosecutor.' "
"That's not what happened. Sir, sir, that's not what happened," Tapper responds. "The European Union, the Obama administration, the International Monetary Fund, pro-clean government activists in Ukraine, (all) thought that the prosecutor was not prosecuting corruption."
"So you're saying Joe Biden didn't tell Ukraine to fire that prosecutor? I think he did," the congressman says.
"He did, but the guy was not prosecuting anything. That was the problem," Tapper replies.
"Here are the facts," Jordan says, before Tapper interjects, saying: "You're not saying facts, you say, 'Here are the facts,' these are not."
"Did Joe Biden tell him to fire the prosecutor?" Jordan asks again.
"Because he wasn't going after corruption. He wasn't going after corruption. Do you understand what I'm saying?" Tapper replies.
According to CNN's fact check, the Obama administration, American allies, the International Monetary Fund and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, among others, had all made clear that they were displeased with the performance of Viktor Shokin, who became prosecutor general in 2015.
Shokin was widely faulted for declining to bring prosecutions of elites' corruption, and he was even accused of hindering corruption investigations. His deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, resigned in February 2016, alleging that Shokin's office was itself corrupt.
"Was that prosecutor looking into Burisma, the company that had hired Joe Biden's son for $50,000 a month?" Jordan says.
"According to the Ukrainians, that investigation was dormant at the time," Tapper said, adding later: "If you want to push a law saying that the children of presidents and vice presidents should not be doing international business deals, I'm all for it. But you're setting a standard that is not being met right now."
Trump has repeatedly claimed Shokin was investigating Hunter Biden. According to CNN's fact check, there is no public evidence that Hunter Biden was ever himself under investigation. The investigation, as far as we know, was into the business activities of Mykola Zlochevsky, who owned a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, for which Hunter Biden had sat on the board of directors since 2014. The United Kingdom had begun investigating Zlochevsky before Hunter Biden joined the board.
On Jordan's claims about the whistleblower
During his interview with Jordan, Tapper also fact-checked the congressman on his statements about the whistleblower, whose complaint about Trump's communications with Zelensky revealed this week that the White House took extraordinary steps to conceal the call.
"Two things you look at to determine the credibility of a so-called whistleblower when they're coming forward," Jordan says. "First, did they have firsthand knowledge? And second, what is their motivation? Was there some kind of bias? This individual has problems on both of those counts. He had no firsthand knowledge, he heard something from someone who may have heard something from someone."
"No, no, his sources were firsthand sources," Tapper replies.
"But he has no firsthand knowledge. And second, he has a political bias. That should tell us something about this guy who came forward with this claim," Jordan says.
"You know as well as I do, that you do not need to have firsthand knowledge to be a whistleblower," replies Tapper.
"Well, you don't now because they changed the form. You used to," Jordan contends.
"There's no evidence of that. And we looked into this," Tapper says. "It has never been true that you need to have firsthand knowledge to be a whistleblower."
"But it's something that's critical when you're assessing if they're credible. That's a major determination," Jordan replies.
CNN reported earlier this month that the whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications that partly prompted the complaint to the intelligence community's inspector general, according to an official briefed on the matter. Instead, the whistleblower's concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration's determination that the complaint didn't fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said.
The whistleblower's attorney, Andrew Bakaj, had no comment when asked about the claim that the individual did not have direct knowledge of the communication in question.
By Devan Cole
Rep. Jim Jordan, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, and CNN's Jake Tapper got into a contentious exchange Sunday after the lawmaker made false and misleading claims about the unfolding Ukraine drama that has led to an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump.
During a tense interview with Tapper on "State of The Union," the Ohio Republican attempts to give his spin on the drama, making unsubstantiated claims about former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating the Bidens, though there is no evidence of wrongdoing by either.
On Jordan's claims about the Bidens
"The vice president's son gets paid $50,000 a month and gets hired by a company in an industry he has no experience in and oh that's fine?" Jordan says, referring to Hunter Biden serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company. "Try taking that message to the American people ... When they see the vice president's son getting paid $50,000 a month in a field, in an industry he has no experience in ... And then when the company that's paying that money is under investigation, guess what? Daddy comes running to the rescue. The vice president of the United States comes running in and says, 'Fire that prosecutor.' "
"That's not what happened. Sir, sir, that's not what happened," Tapper responds. "The European Union, the Obama administration, the International Monetary Fund, pro-clean government activists in Ukraine, (all) thought that the prosecutor was not prosecuting corruption."
"So you're saying Joe Biden didn't tell Ukraine to fire that prosecutor? I think he did," the congressman says.
"He did, but the guy was not prosecuting anything. That was the problem," Tapper replies.
"Here are the facts," Jordan says, before Tapper interjects, saying: "You're not saying facts, you say, 'Here are the facts,' these are not."
"Did Joe Biden tell him to fire the prosecutor?" Jordan asks again.
"Because he wasn't going after corruption. He wasn't going after corruption. Do you understand what I'm saying?" Tapper replies.
According to CNN's fact check, the Obama administration, American allies, the International Monetary Fund and Ukrainian anti-corruption activists, among others, had all made clear that they were displeased with the performance of Viktor Shokin, who became prosecutor general in 2015.
Shokin was widely faulted for declining to bring prosecutions of elites' corruption, and he was even accused of hindering corruption investigations. His deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, resigned in February 2016, alleging that Shokin's office was itself corrupt.
"Was that prosecutor looking into Burisma, the company that had hired Joe Biden's son for $50,000 a month?" Jordan says.
"According to the Ukrainians, that investigation was dormant at the time," Tapper said, adding later: "If you want to push a law saying that the children of presidents and vice presidents should not be doing international business deals, I'm all for it. But you're setting a standard that is not being met right now."
Trump has repeatedly claimed Shokin was investigating Hunter Biden. According to CNN's fact check, there is no public evidence that Hunter Biden was ever himself under investigation. The investigation, as far as we know, was into the business activities of Mykola Zlochevsky, who owned a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, for which Hunter Biden had sat on the board of directors since 2014. The United Kingdom had begun investigating Zlochevsky before Hunter Biden joined the board.
On Jordan's claims about the whistleblower
During his interview with Jordan, Tapper also fact-checked the congressman on his statements about the whistleblower, whose complaint about Trump's communications with Zelensky revealed this week that the White House took extraordinary steps to conceal the call.
"Two things you look at to determine the credibility of a so-called whistleblower when they're coming forward," Jordan says. "First, did they have firsthand knowledge? And second, what is their motivation? Was there some kind of bias? This individual has problems on both of those counts. He had no firsthand knowledge, he heard something from someone who may have heard something from someone."
"No, no, his sources were firsthand sources," Tapper replies.
"But he has no firsthand knowledge. And second, he has a political bias. That should tell us something about this guy who came forward with this claim," Jordan says.
"You know as well as I do, that you do not need to have firsthand knowledge to be a whistleblower," replies Tapper.
"Well, you don't now because they changed the form. You used to," Jordan contends.
"There's no evidence of that. And we looked into this," Tapper says. "It has never been true that you need to have firsthand knowledge to be a whistleblower."
"But it's something that's critical when you're assessing if they're credible. That's a major determination," Jordan replies.
CNN reported earlier this month that the whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications that partly prompted the complaint to the intelligence community's inspector general, according to an official briefed on the matter. Instead, the whistleblower's concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration's determination that the complaint didn't fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said.
The whistleblower's attorney, Andrew Bakaj, had no comment when asked about the claim that the individual did not have direct knowledge of the communication in question.
Time to risk your careers.....
Jeff Flake tells GOP not to support Trump in 2020: It's 'time to risk your careers in favor of your principles'
By Devan Cole
Former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake on Monday urged Republicans in Congress not to support President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection bid, saying they have a moral obligation to put their principles first -- even if it means risking their careers.
Flake, a longtime Trump critic who has before argued that the Republican Party should not support the President in 2020, made his case in an op-ed published in The Washington Post titled "Fellow Republicans, there's still time to save your souls," writing that Senate Republicans should refuse to support a second term for the President, despite their feelings on the Democrat-controlled House's impeachment inquiry.
"My fellow Republicans, it is time to risk your careers in favor of your principles. Whether you believe the president deserves impeachment, you know he does not deserve reelection," wrote Flake, who represented Arizona before he left Congress earlier this year. "Our country will have more presidents. But principles, well, we get just one crack at those. For those who want to put America first, it is critically important at this moment in the life of our country that we all, here and now, do just that."
"Trust me when I say that you can go elsewhere for a job. But you cannot go elsewhere for a soul."
Flake, who decided to retire rather than seek reelection in 2018, had been a vocal critic of Trump during his last few years in office -- though he at times sided with the President, including last year when he provided critical support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.
In March, he said he would prefer a Democrat win the 2020 election than have Trump serve another term. Flake ruled out a primary challenge to Trump earlier this year, putting to rest widespread speculation that he may attempt to unseat the President.
Flake, in his op-ed, called not supporting the President's reelection effort an "easy decision," but noted that though "the president's actions warrant impeachment," he has "grave reservations about impeachment." Last week, House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump for his communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The White House has since released a transcript of the call, as well as a whistleblower complaint that alleges Trump abused his official powers "to solicit interference" from Ukraine in the upcoming 2020 election, and that the White House took steps to cover it up. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
The rough transcript of the call released by the White House shows Trump repeatedly pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential 2020 political rival, and his son, Hunter Biden.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden.
Flake, asked last week at the Texas Tribune Festival about what his former Republican colleagues in the Senate are saying about the impeachment news, suggested dozens of GOP senators would vote to convict Trump if their votes were kept secret.
"Somebody mentioned yesterday that if there were a private vote, that there would be 30 Republican votes. That's not true, there would be at least 35, maybe more if it were a private vote -- but that's not possible," Flake said.
But impeaching amid the scandal, he argued in the Monday op-ed, "might actually benefit" Trump.
"I fear that, given the profound division in the country, an impeachment proceeding at such a toxic moment might actually benefit a president who thrives on chaos," Flake wrote.
He added: "Disunion is the oxygen of this presidency. He is the maestro of a brand of discord that benefits only him and ravages everything else. So although impeachment now seems inevitable, I fear it all the same."
By Devan Cole
Former GOP Sen. Jeff Flake on Monday urged Republicans in Congress not to support President Donald Trump's 2020 reelection bid, saying they have a moral obligation to put their principles first -- even if it means risking their careers.
Flake, a longtime Trump critic who has before argued that the Republican Party should not support the President in 2020, made his case in an op-ed published in The Washington Post titled "Fellow Republicans, there's still time to save your souls," writing that Senate Republicans should refuse to support a second term for the President, despite their feelings on the Democrat-controlled House's impeachment inquiry.
"My fellow Republicans, it is time to risk your careers in favor of your principles. Whether you believe the president deserves impeachment, you know he does not deserve reelection," wrote Flake, who represented Arizona before he left Congress earlier this year. "Our country will have more presidents. But principles, well, we get just one crack at those. For those who want to put America first, it is critically important at this moment in the life of our country that we all, here and now, do just that."
"Trust me when I say that you can go elsewhere for a job. But you cannot go elsewhere for a soul."
Flake, who decided to retire rather than seek reelection in 2018, had been a vocal critic of Trump during his last few years in office -- though he at times sided with the President, including last year when he provided critical support for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.
In March, he said he would prefer a Democrat win the 2020 election than have Trump serve another term. Flake ruled out a primary challenge to Trump earlier this year, putting to rest widespread speculation that he may attempt to unseat the President.
Flake, in his op-ed, called not supporting the President's reelection effort an "easy decision," but noted that though "the president's actions warrant impeachment," he has "grave reservations about impeachment." Last week, House Democrats launched an impeachment inquiry into Trump for his communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The White House has since released a transcript of the call, as well as a whistleblower complaint that alleges Trump abused his official powers "to solicit interference" from Ukraine in the upcoming 2020 election, and that the White House took steps to cover it up. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.
The rough transcript of the call released by the White House shows Trump repeatedly pushed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential 2020 political rival, and his son, Hunter Biden.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden.
Flake, asked last week at the Texas Tribune Festival about what his former Republican colleagues in the Senate are saying about the impeachment news, suggested dozens of GOP senators would vote to convict Trump if their votes were kept secret.
"Somebody mentioned yesterday that if there were a private vote, that there would be 30 Republican votes. That's not true, there would be at least 35, maybe more if it were a private vote -- but that's not possible," Flake said.
But impeaching amid the scandal, he argued in the Monday op-ed, "might actually benefit" Trump.
"I fear that, given the profound division in the country, an impeachment proceeding at such a toxic moment might actually benefit a president who thrives on chaos," Flake wrote.
He added: "Disunion is the oxygen of this presidency. He is the maestro of a brand of discord that benefits only him and ravages everything else. So although impeachment now seems inevitable, I fear it all the same."
GOP congressman slams........
GOP congressman slams Trump for warning of 'civil war' over impeachment
Katie Shepherd
As Democrats begin an impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump spent Sunday vigorously defending himself on Twitter and sharing cable news clips of his most ardent devotees insisting that he did nothing wrong in asking the Ukrainian president to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump highlighted one quote from a longtime evangelical pastor warning of particularly dire consequences if the Democrats follow through.
"If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal," Trump tweeted, adding his own parenthetical to a quote from Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist preacher speaking on "Fox & Friends Weekend" on Sunday.
Trump's tweet invoking civil war marks a notable escalation in his rhetoric about the impeachment inquiry, and also highlights his close relationship with Jeffress, a pastor known for viciously attacking other faiths who holds sway over the president and evangelical voters alike.
The tweet left critics, including one sitting Republican congressman, accusing Trump of stoking violence and diminishing the reality of true civil war.
"I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President," tweeted Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a decorated Air Force veteran who served as a pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This is beyond repugnant."
Two Senate Democrats, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, also condemned the president's tweet in a back-and-forth in which Murphy described the message as "so frightening."
"He is going to keep talking like this," Murphy tweeted, "and some people are going to listen and do what he asks."
The idea of an American civil war did not come from Trump directly. Instead, he quoted a high-profile and contentious Texas pastor who has stood with the president since the earliest days of the 2016 campaign.
Jeffress, who fronts a megachurch in Dallas that attracts 14,000 worshipers and hosts his own religious television and radio shows, introduced then-candidate Trump at a campaign rally in January 2016. A month later, he gave an impassioned speech in Fort Worth endorsing Trump, who he said would be a "true friend" to evangelical Christians, at a time when many religious conservatives still wavered on whether to support the former Democrat with a scandalous past.
Since then, the pastor has been one of Trump's most outspoken supporters. He uses the Bible to defend the president's actions and brushes away allegations of immoral conduct, from extramarital affairs to alleged sexual assault, by emphasizing Trump's record on filling the judiciary with conservative justices and pushing for policies that limit access to abortion.
His speeches regularly appear on Fox News, and Jeffress gave a private sermon to the president-elect and his family before Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. He was one of the guests honored by name at a dinner Trump held for evangelical leaders. Trump has shared and replied to Jeffress in the past on Twitter, promoting the pastor's book releases in 2017 and last January. The pair has appeared together in public on several occasions.
Jeffress has called "Never Trump" Christians "absolutely spineless morons" and compared them to the German Christians in the 1930s who did not try to stop the Nazis. He has called the Mormon Church a "cult," and personally attacked Republican Mitt Romney over his faith in 2011. He once compared Trump's border wall to the gates to heaven, because both signify "not everybody's going to be allowed in."
Since Democrats began moving toward impeachment last week, Jeffress has repeatedly sounded grim warnings. On Friday, he told Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, "I really don't like what's going to happen to this nation" if impeachment succeeds, adding, "If he is removed, this country is finished."
The Jeffress quote that Trump tweeted Sunday evening is the first time the president has referenced civil war on Twitter. But as The Washington Post's Greg Jaffe and Jenna Johnson have reported, cable news pundits on both sides of the spectrum have already begun using the term with regularity to describe the nation's political conflict.
In one notable case in February, former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova on Fox News and Trump critic and political analyst Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC both declared that the U.S. was "in a civil war," though both pundits later walked back their rhetoric to claim they meant a war of words and ideas. Although it is "not entirely out of the question," Stanford University political scientist James Fearon told The Post in March that he dismissed the idea of America being on the verge of a war with itself as "basically absurd."
It's not clear from Trump's tweet or Jeffress's interview whether he was referencing actual violence as the outcome of an impeachment, but many critics said that the president's use of the term was troubling. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment clarifying the president's intentions.
"Lincoln created the Republican Party and gave his life in order to save the Union. Trump ruined the Republican Party and now threatens to destroy the Union in order to save his job," tweeted Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
Schatz echoed that concern.
"This is just a reprehensible way to talk and people could get hurt," Schatz tweeted. "It's clear now [Trump] will allow the Republican Party to eat itself and will tear the country apart if he thinks it gives him an advantage of any kind."
Katie Shepherd
As Democrats begin an impeachment inquiry, President Donald Trump spent Sunday vigorously defending himself on Twitter and sharing cable news clips of his most ardent devotees insisting that he did nothing wrong in asking the Ukrainian president to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump highlighted one quote from a longtime evangelical pastor warning of particularly dire consequences if the Democrats follow through.
"If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal," Trump tweeted, adding his own parenthetical to a quote from Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist preacher speaking on "Fox & Friends Weekend" on Sunday.
Trump's tweet invoking civil war marks a notable escalation in his rhetoric about the impeachment inquiry, and also highlights his close relationship with Jeffress, a pastor known for viciously attacking other faiths who holds sway over the president and evangelical voters alike.
The tweet left critics, including one sitting Republican congressman, accusing Trump of stoking violence and diminishing the reality of true civil war.
"I have visited nations ravaged by civil war. @realDonaldTrump I have never imagined such a quote to be repeated by a President," tweeted Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a decorated Air Force veteran who served as a pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan. "This is beyond repugnant."
Two Senate Democrats, Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Brian Schatz of Hawaii, also condemned the president's tweet in a back-and-forth in which Murphy described the message as "so frightening."
"He is going to keep talking like this," Murphy tweeted, "and some people are going to listen and do what he asks."
The idea of an American civil war did not come from Trump directly. Instead, he quoted a high-profile and contentious Texas pastor who has stood with the president since the earliest days of the 2016 campaign.
Jeffress, who fronts a megachurch in Dallas that attracts 14,000 worshipers and hosts his own religious television and radio shows, introduced then-candidate Trump at a campaign rally in January 2016. A month later, he gave an impassioned speech in Fort Worth endorsing Trump, who he said would be a "true friend" to evangelical Christians, at a time when many religious conservatives still wavered on whether to support the former Democrat with a scandalous past.
Since then, the pastor has been one of Trump's most outspoken supporters. He uses the Bible to defend the president's actions and brushes away allegations of immoral conduct, from extramarital affairs to alleged sexual assault, by emphasizing Trump's record on filling the judiciary with conservative justices and pushing for policies that limit access to abortion.
His speeches regularly appear on Fox News, and Jeffress gave a private sermon to the president-elect and his family before Trump was sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. He was one of the guests honored by name at a dinner Trump held for evangelical leaders. Trump has shared and replied to Jeffress in the past on Twitter, promoting the pastor's book releases in 2017 and last January. The pair has appeared together in public on several occasions.
Jeffress has called "Never Trump" Christians "absolutely spineless morons" and compared them to the German Christians in the 1930s who did not try to stop the Nazis. He has called the Mormon Church a "cult," and personally attacked Republican Mitt Romney over his faith in 2011. He once compared Trump's border wall to the gates to heaven, because both signify "not everybody's going to be allowed in."
Since Democrats began moving toward impeachment last week, Jeffress has repeatedly sounded grim warnings. On Friday, he told Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs, "I really don't like what's going to happen to this nation" if impeachment succeeds, adding, "If he is removed, this country is finished."
The Jeffress quote that Trump tweeted Sunday evening is the first time the president has referenced civil war on Twitter. But as The Washington Post's Greg Jaffe and Jenna Johnson have reported, cable news pundits on both sides of the spectrum have already begun using the term with regularity to describe the nation's political conflict.
In one notable case in February, former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova on Fox News and Trump critic and political analyst Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC both declared that the U.S. was "in a civil war," though both pundits later walked back their rhetoric to claim they meant a war of words and ideas. Although it is "not entirely out of the question," Stanford University political scientist James Fearon told The Post in March that he dismissed the idea of America being on the verge of a war with itself as "basically absurd."
It's not clear from Trump's tweet or Jeffress's interview whether he was referencing actual violence as the outcome of an impeachment, but many critics said that the president's use of the term was troubling. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment clarifying the president's intentions.
"Lincoln created the Republican Party and gave his life in order to save the Union. Trump ruined the Republican Party and now threatens to destroy the Union in order to save his job," tweeted Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
Schatz echoed that concern.
"This is just a reprehensible way to talk and people could get hurt," Schatz tweeted. "It's clear now [Trump] will allow the Republican Party to eat itself and will tear the country apart if he thinks it gives him an advantage of any kind."
It could happen.
President Pelosi? It could happen.
Robert Atkins and Adam P. Frankel
What happens when a Democratic speaker of the House - third in line to the presidency, according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 - is suddenly thrust into the Oval Office, succeeding a Republican president and vice president who resign, embroiled in scandal?
Such a scenario is attracting attention - #PresidentPelosi was trending on social media after last week's announcement of an impeachment inquiry - even though it may seem far-fetched that President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence would be forced from office over abuse of power related to the administration's dealings with Ukraine or other misdeeds.
This was a more urgent question in the fall of 1973. On Oct. 10, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, pleading nolo contendere to charges of tax evasion. Ten days later, President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in what is widely known as the Saturday Night Massacre. As hearings began in the Senate and the House on the nomination of Agnew's successor, Gerald Ford, questions swirled about the possibility that Democratic House Speaker Carl Albert, D-Okla., might assume the presidency.
So real was the possibility that Ted Sorensen, a speechwriter and close adviser to President John F. Kennedy, wrote a secret 19-page memorandum to Albert, offering recommendations for what to do and what to say in the event that Nixon resigned before Ford could be confirmed and Albert suddenly found himself sitting in the Oval Office. Although long forgotten, the memo is timely in this chaotic political moment, when a Pelosi presidency, however improbable, is not impossible. It reminds us that our faith in representative self-governance may yet be salvaged.
With the country facing uncharted territory - the only impeachment in American history had come more than a century before - Sorensen, who knew and liked Albert from White House breakfasts with congressional leaders during the Kennedy administration, wrote to the speaker nine days after the Saturday Night Massacre to alert him that "whether you wish it or not, you could become President at any time."
Nixon's "sudden resignation . . . will always be a possibility," he wrote, advising Albert to devote serious consideration (albeit silently) to a potential presidency.
Albert agreed, asking Sorensen, then a lawyer in private practice, to send him "a rough draft" of a contingency plan. Sorensen was no stranger to presidential transitions. He helped President-elect Kennedy staff the New Frontier in 1961 and endured the abrupt transition in 1963 after Kennedy's assassination. For decades after leaving the White House, Sorensen would be called upon to offer guidance to presidential hopefuls looking for a strong start should they capture the White House.
But the memo Sorensen wrote to Albert on Nov. 8, 1973, was unlike any other he had drafted - and one he could not have foreseen would resonate more than 45 years later. Sorensen was acutely aware of the potential political fallout if word of the memo got out, and he urged Albert to keep its existence a secret. "If discovered," Sorensen noted, the memo "might be misinterpreted as evidence of an improper motivation on your part for the President's ouster." Such delicate sensibilities seem long gone and unlikely to return in a world where political motives are almost assumed.
To help inoculate the speaker against such charges, Sorensen advised Albert to state unequivocally upon entering the Oval Office, "I shall not be a candidate for the presidency in 1976 or at any other time." He also advised Albert to commit to building "a nonpartisan administration of national reconciliation and unity" filled with "the best men and women in the country available for the job, regardless of party."
Sorensen preemptively raised a question he knew a President Albert would probably face: Should Albert, a Democrat, step aside in favor of a Republican vice president once he was confirmed? No, Sorensen argued. "That would only heighten the impression of political instability in our government. You are the legitimately chosen successor selected by our most representative body under a long-standing plan adopted by the Legislative Branch." This faith in the lawful and orderly transition of power is one we ought to remember as the country confronts a commander in chief who may be unwilling to step aside, even after a defeat at the polls.
Most of the memo, however, contained practical recommendations for what to do on Day One and those immediately following it - nuts-and-bolts concerns such as where and when Albert should take the oath of office. Perhaps ironically for a speechwriter, Sorensen cautioned against a full-scale inaugural address, arguing instead for a short speech emphasizing Albert's claim to office and themes of national unity.
Among the top priorities Sorensen recommended for an Albert administration was preserving Nixon's files for review by the appropriate authorities. That advice pertains today, perhaps more so. Watergate was confined largely to conversations in the West Wing, but the perfidy, corruption and possible criminality of the Trump administration extend across the executive branch and the globe. Finding the files, documents and transcripts this White House has withheld from Congress and reportedly "locked down" will require a full-time team of forensic experts and investigators if all the damage done is to be uncovered and remedied.
Remembering the crucial and largely successful efforts to project calm, strength and stability following Lyndon Johnson's ascension after Kennedy's death, Sorensen urged Albert to demonstrate to the government, the public and the world that he was on top of things by delivering an address to a joint session of Congress in his first week in office, as Johnson had to acclaim in 1963.
Some of Sorensen's guidance would be out of place today: His recommendations on personnel, for example, reflect the needs of a smaller White House staff than exists in 2019. His advice on managing the press - urging Albert to hold a news conference and limit other public statements - does not account for the demands of today's voracious media environment. One list of "wise men" to consult includes no women or people of color, a glaring omission for Sorensen, an early champion of civil rights, and something as unwise today as it was then.
And yet, Sorensen's memo will be an essential - if not the only - guidebook for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should she find herself getting closer to the Oval Office. The vice president appears to be a witness, at least, to the affairs under investigation, so the prospect of the House speaker's ascension is not as remote as it seemed just a week ago. If Sorensen's advice sounds somewhat quaint, it is only because we have drifted so far off the course set by previous presidents and the Founding Fathers.
No matter who succeeds this president, or when, the Sorensen memo is a road map to restoring the dignity, integrity and basic function of the nation's highest office. The chaos created by the current occupant's heedless, indulgent and volatile leadership - if it can be considered "leadership" - calls for attention to the national interest and preparation to avoid the kinds of hasty, unwise judgments and actions that can result in catastrophic mistakes. Although from another time, the Sorensen memo offers sage counsel for undertaking such preparations and a plan to steady our careening country and get it back on track.
Robert Atkins and Adam P. Frankel
What happens when a Democratic speaker of the House - third in line to the presidency, according to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 - is suddenly thrust into the Oval Office, succeeding a Republican president and vice president who resign, embroiled in scandal?
Such a scenario is attracting attention - #PresidentPelosi was trending on social media after last week's announcement of an impeachment inquiry - even though it may seem far-fetched that President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence would be forced from office over abuse of power related to the administration's dealings with Ukraine or other misdeeds.
This was a more urgent question in the fall of 1973. On Oct. 10, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned, pleading nolo contendere to charges of tax evasion. Ten days later, President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox in what is widely known as the Saturday Night Massacre. As hearings began in the Senate and the House on the nomination of Agnew's successor, Gerald Ford, questions swirled about the possibility that Democratic House Speaker Carl Albert, D-Okla., might assume the presidency.
So real was the possibility that Ted Sorensen, a speechwriter and close adviser to President John F. Kennedy, wrote a secret 19-page memorandum to Albert, offering recommendations for what to do and what to say in the event that Nixon resigned before Ford could be confirmed and Albert suddenly found himself sitting in the Oval Office. Although long forgotten, the memo is timely in this chaotic political moment, when a Pelosi presidency, however improbable, is not impossible. It reminds us that our faith in representative self-governance may yet be salvaged.
With the country facing uncharted territory - the only impeachment in American history had come more than a century before - Sorensen, who knew and liked Albert from White House breakfasts with congressional leaders during the Kennedy administration, wrote to the speaker nine days after the Saturday Night Massacre to alert him that "whether you wish it or not, you could become President at any time."
Nixon's "sudden resignation . . . will always be a possibility," he wrote, advising Albert to devote serious consideration (albeit silently) to a potential presidency.
Albert agreed, asking Sorensen, then a lawyer in private practice, to send him "a rough draft" of a contingency plan. Sorensen was no stranger to presidential transitions. He helped President-elect Kennedy staff the New Frontier in 1961 and endured the abrupt transition in 1963 after Kennedy's assassination. For decades after leaving the White House, Sorensen would be called upon to offer guidance to presidential hopefuls looking for a strong start should they capture the White House.
But the memo Sorensen wrote to Albert on Nov. 8, 1973, was unlike any other he had drafted - and one he could not have foreseen would resonate more than 45 years later. Sorensen was acutely aware of the potential political fallout if word of the memo got out, and he urged Albert to keep its existence a secret. "If discovered," Sorensen noted, the memo "might be misinterpreted as evidence of an improper motivation on your part for the President's ouster." Such delicate sensibilities seem long gone and unlikely to return in a world where political motives are almost assumed.
To help inoculate the speaker against such charges, Sorensen advised Albert to state unequivocally upon entering the Oval Office, "I shall not be a candidate for the presidency in 1976 or at any other time." He also advised Albert to commit to building "a nonpartisan administration of national reconciliation and unity" filled with "the best men and women in the country available for the job, regardless of party."
Sorensen preemptively raised a question he knew a President Albert would probably face: Should Albert, a Democrat, step aside in favor of a Republican vice president once he was confirmed? No, Sorensen argued. "That would only heighten the impression of political instability in our government. You are the legitimately chosen successor selected by our most representative body under a long-standing plan adopted by the Legislative Branch." This faith in the lawful and orderly transition of power is one we ought to remember as the country confronts a commander in chief who may be unwilling to step aside, even after a defeat at the polls.
Most of the memo, however, contained practical recommendations for what to do on Day One and those immediately following it - nuts-and-bolts concerns such as where and when Albert should take the oath of office. Perhaps ironically for a speechwriter, Sorensen cautioned against a full-scale inaugural address, arguing instead for a short speech emphasizing Albert's claim to office and themes of national unity.
Among the top priorities Sorensen recommended for an Albert administration was preserving Nixon's files for review by the appropriate authorities. That advice pertains today, perhaps more so. Watergate was confined largely to conversations in the West Wing, but the perfidy, corruption and possible criminality of the Trump administration extend across the executive branch and the globe. Finding the files, documents and transcripts this White House has withheld from Congress and reportedly "locked down" will require a full-time team of forensic experts and investigators if all the damage done is to be uncovered and remedied.
Remembering the crucial and largely successful efforts to project calm, strength and stability following Lyndon Johnson's ascension after Kennedy's death, Sorensen urged Albert to demonstrate to the government, the public and the world that he was on top of things by delivering an address to a joint session of Congress in his first week in office, as Johnson had to acclaim in 1963.
Some of Sorensen's guidance would be out of place today: His recommendations on personnel, for example, reflect the needs of a smaller White House staff than exists in 2019. His advice on managing the press - urging Albert to hold a news conference and limit other public statements - does not account for the demands of today's voracious media environment. One list of "wise men" to consult includes no women or people of color, a glaring omission for Sorensen, an early champion of civil rights, and something as unwise today as it was then.
And yet, Sorensen's memo will be an essential - if not the only - guidebook for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should she find herself getting closer to the Oval Office. The vice president appears to be a witness, at least, to the affairs under investigation, so the prospect of the House speaker's ascension is not as remote as it seemed just a week ago. If Sorensen's advice sounds somewhat quaint, it is only because we have drifted so far off the course set by previous presidents and the Founding Fathers.
No matter who succeeds this president, or when, the Sorensen memo is a road map to restoring the dignity, integrity and basic function of the nation's highest office. The chaos created by the current occupant's heedless, indulgent and volatile leadership - if it can be considered "leadership" - calls for attention to the national interest and preparation to avoid the kinds of hasty, unwise judgments and actions that can result in catastrophic mistakes. Although from another time, the Sorensen memo offers sage counsel for undertaking such preparations and a plan to steady our careening country and get it back on track.
Orion
Have you seen Orion lately? The next few months will be the best for seeing this familiar constellation as it rises continually earlier in the night. However, Orion's stars and nebulas won't look quite as colorful to the eye as they do in this fantastic camera image. In the featured image, Orion was captured by camera showing its full colors last month over a Brazilian copal tree from Brazil's Central-West Region. Here the cool red giant Betelgeuse takes on a strong orange hue as the brightest star on the far left. Otherwise, Orion's hot blue stars are numerous, with supergiant Rigel balancing Betelgeuse at the upper right, Bellatrix at the upper left, and Saiph at the lower right. Lined up in Orion's belt (bottom to top) are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka all about 1,500 light-years away, born of the constellation's well studied interstellar clouds. And if a "star" toward the upper right Orion's sword looks reddish and fuzzy to you, it should. It's the stellar nursery known as the Great Nebula of Orion.
MyCn 18.
Play Out.....
5 Ways Impeachment Could Play Out
We’re in unprecedented territory.
By JEFF GREENFIELD
If you’re looking at history to provide a guide to the impending impeachment saga … don’t. With only three past examples, involving three very different controversies, there’s thin gruel that will provide little nourishment. So let’s turn to a different tool: the concept of an infinite number of universes, where events play out in different ways, depending on everything from consequential decisions to random chance. Modesty forbids asserting that any of the outcomes listed below will happen; only that they might.
Some of these universes may seem improbable or even fanciful, I know. But before you dismiss them all, ask yourself this question: Would the universe we are living in now have seemed any less fanciful three years ago?
IN UNIVERSE ONE
The House provides a forum for a deliberate look at a narrow set of facts. The template is the Senate Watergate Committee, which began poking into Watergate and other “presidential campaign activities” in the spring of 1973. It was a select committee of seven members, with nary an ideologue in sight. (Chairman Sam Ervin was a conservative Democrat; ranking member Howard Baker was a moderate Republican.) Over 319 hours, the nation learned of John Dean’s “cancer on the presidency” and the revelation that there was a taping system inside the White House. Notably, much of the questioning was done by staff counsel, which made for less political bloviation and more targeted inquiry.
So in this scenario, instead of having six committees channel their findings to the Judiciary Committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi changes her mind and creates a similar select committee, whose staff lawyers do the lion’s share of the questioning, focused on the issue raised by the whistleblower: Did the president withhold desperately needed military aid to pressure Ukraine into damaging a potential political opponent.
In this universe, there is at least a chance of laying out the facts in a clear frame, enabling the public to grasp the essence of the case for impeachment. That in turn moves public opinion to the point where some congressional Republicans begin to recalculate the benefits and cost of a pro-impeachment vote.
IN UNIVERSE TWO
Pelosi sticks to her original plan to have six (count 'em six) committees feed their conclusions to the House Judiciary Committee. These committees are already investigating everything from Trump’s taxes to payoffs to mistresses to the origins of Trump’s wealth.
The Judiciary panel is among the most polarized of congressional bodies. Several Democrats have been pushing for impeachment, while Republicans on the panel include Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Louie Gohmert, who devote much of their time to revisiting the “deep state” theory of an anti-Trump coup, as well as raising questions about the financial and personal travails of Hunter Biden. Just Friday, Senator Tom Cotton and conservative columnist and talk show host Hugh Hewitt tweeted about a paternity suit involving Hunter Biden.
In this format, barely controlled chaos is the order of the day. Witnesses either refuse to testify or confront the Democrats with furious denunciations. See the exchange between former Immigration and Custom Enforcement Director Thomas Hohman and Representative Pramila Jayapal for a preview of what is to come. The hearings feature each of the 40 members engaging in five minute soliloquies, ending in a party-line vote on impeachment.
As the committee descends into bitter partisan warfare, Trump’s media firewall goes to Defcon 1, with nightly, even hourly assaults on the Democrats’ attempted coup. And public opinion—which had been moving toward impeachment in the wake of the whistleblower’s complaint—now begins to swing toward “it’s the same old political noise” view. Trump’s job approval ratings stabilize, and when impeachment reaches the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moves to dismiss the counts so that “we can get back to doing the people’s business”—meaning that there won’t even be a vote. I know McConnell has said there has to be a trial, but he has never in the past been bound by consistency.
IN UNIVERSE THREE
As the Judiciary Committee’s hearings provide a steady dose of ever-more damaging evidence—aided by an intelligence community and former White House aides turned whistleblowers, cracks begin to widen in the Republican-conservative firewall that has been protecting Trump from the 2016 campaign on. Mitt Romney’s “deeply troubling” view of Trump’s behavior, and similar comments by Senators Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey, persuade a handful of House Republicans—many of whom like Will Hurd have already announced their retirements—to vote for impeachment.
Similar cracks widen in the media; the Drudge Report continues to feature damaging stories about Trump on its front page. At Fox News, the war between the journalists and the advocates intensifies; an attempted “debate” between Andrew Napolitano and Joseph diGenova turns into chaos, as the principals almost come to blows.
When impeachment comes to the Senate, after a contentious House process in which there are divides among the Republicans, half a dozen GOP senators vote to convict, leaving Trump in office, but seriously damaged. In February, Trump barely wins a majority of votes in the New Hampshire primary, with New Hampshire native Bill Weld coming in second.
IN UNIVERSE FOUR
As the Judiciary Committee meets, the fortunes of Joe Biden begin to worsen as committee Republicans and the media—both right wing and mainstream—put the former vice president into the spotlight. The lengthy, deeply reported New Yorker story from July about Hunter Biden’s troubled life gains new visibility, as do accounts of Joe Biden’s six-figure speaking fees and post-vice presidential wealth.
By Thanksgiving Day, Biden withdraws from the race, and a muddled Democratic primary field heads toward a lengthy, divisive primary, with faint signs that Sherrod Brown, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Bloomberg are “reassessing” their prospects.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval ratings—as they have after every past controversy—stabilize in the low 40s, and the prediction markets peg his reelection chances at 50 percent.
IN UNIVERSE FIVE
As the evidence mounts against Trump, and the Judiciary Committee becomes the setting for a steady drip of damaging evidence against the president, he becomes more and more unmoored, launching into lengthy monologues about the spies and traitors inside his own administration. In response, onetime members of Trump’s administration—Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster—begin to express their concern about the president’s stability. As the president’s mental health becomes increasingly worrisome, a delegation including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and Rudy Giuliani goes to the White House and urges Trump to resign. Trump orders them thrown out of the White House and tweets a stream of accusations about backstabbers; he also urges all Fox viewers to boycott the network, and speculates that Rupert Murdoch may never have become a U.S citizen.
Those with long memories note that, during the last days of Nixon’s presidency, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger told the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to execute any presidential order involving military force without first checking with him. Unfortunately, with no one in any semblance of authority at the White House or anywhere in the administration, there is no one to check Trump. The president’s effort to divert attention from his troubles results in armed military conflict in Iran, North Korea, the South China Sea and Venezuela. The year ends with the very real prospect of one or more of these conflicts “going nuclear.”
We’re in unprecedented territory.
By JEFF GREENFIELD
If you’re looking at history to provide a guide to the impending impeachment saga … don’t. With only three past examples, involving three very different controversies, there’s thin gruel that will provide little nourishment. So let’s turn to a different tool: the concept of an infinite number of universes, where events play out in different ways, depending on everything from consequential decisions to random chance. Modesty forbids asserting that any of the outcomes listed below will happen; only that they might.
Some of these universes may seem improbable or even fanciful, I know. But before you dismiss them all, ask yourself this question: Would the universe we are living in now have seemed any less fanciful three years ago?
IN UNIVERSE ONE
The House provides a forum for a deliberate look at a narrow set of facts. The template is the Senate Watergate Committee, which began poking into Watergate and other “presidential campaign activities” in the spring of 1973. It was a select committee of seven members, with nary an ideologue in sight. (Chairman Sam Ervin was a conservative Democrat; ranking member Howard Baker was a moderate Republican.) Over 319 hours, the nation learned of John Dean’s “cancer on the presidency” and the revelation that there was a taping system inside the White House. Notably, much of the questioning was done by staff counsel, which made for less political bloviation and more targeted inquiry.
So in this scenario, instead of having six committees channel their findings to the Judiciary Committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi changes her mind and creates a similar select committee, whose staff lawyers do the lion’s share of the questioning, focused on the issue raised by the whistleblower: Did the president withhold desperately needed military aid to pressure Ukraine into damaging a potential political opponent.
In this universe, there is at least a chance of laying out the facts in a clear frame, enabling the public to grasp the essence of the case for impeachment. That in turn moves public opinion to the point where some congressional Republicans begin to recalculate the benefits and cost of a pro-impeachment vote.
IN UNIVERSE TWO
Pelosi sticks to her original plan to have six (count 'em six) committees feed their conclusions to the House Judiciary Committee. These committees are already investigating everything from Trump’s taxes to payoffs to mistresses to the origins of Trump’s wealth.
The Judiciary panel is among the most polarized of congressional bodies. Several Democrats have been pushing for impeachment, while Republicans on the panel include Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and Louie Gohmert, who devote much of their time to revisiting the “deep state” theory of an anti-Trump coup, as well as raising questions about the financial and personal travails of Hunter Biden. Just Friday, Senator Tom Cotton and conservative columnist and talk show host Hugh Hewitt tweeted about a paternity suit involving Hunter Biden.
In this format, barely controlled chaos is the order of the day. Witnesses either refuse to testify or confront the Democrats with furious denunciations. See the exchange between former Immigration and Custom Enforcement Director Thomas Hohman and Representative Pramila Jayapal for a preview of what is to come. The hearings feature each of the 40 members engaging in five minute soliloquies, ending in a party-line vote on impeachment.
As the committee descends into bitter partisan warfare, Trump’s media firewall goes to Defcon 1, with nightly, even hourly assaults on the Democrats’ attempted coup. And public opinion—which had been moving toward impeachment in the wake of the whistleblower’s complaint—now begins to swing toward “it’s the same old political noise” view. Trump’s job approval ratings stabilize, and when impeachment reaches the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell moves to dismiss the counts so that “we can get back to doing the people’s business”—meaning that there won’t even be a vote. I know McConnell has said there has to be a trial, but he has never in the past been bound by consistency.
IN UNIVERSE THREE
As the Judiciary Committee’s hearings provide a steady dose of ever-more damaging evidence—aided by an intelligence community and former White House aides turned whistleblowers, cracks begin to widen in the Republican-conservative firewall that has been protecting Trump from the 2016 campaign on. Mitt Romney’s “deeply troubling” view of Trump’s behavior, and similar comments by Senators Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey, persuade a handful of House Republicans—many of whom like Will Hurd have already announced their retirements—to vote for impeachment.
Similar cracks widen in the media; the Drudge Report continues to feature damaging stories about Trump on its front page. At Fox News, the war between the journalists and the advocates intensifies; an attempted “debate” between Andrew Napolitano and Joseph diGenova turns into chaos, as the principals almost come to blows.
When impeachment comes to the Senate, after a contentious House process in which there are divides among the Republicans, half a dozen GOP senators vote to convict, leaving Trump in office, but seriously damaged. In February, Trump barely wins a majority of votes in the New Hampshire primary, with New Hampshire native Bill Weld coming in second.
IN UNIVERSE FOUR
As the Judiciary Committee meets, the fortunes of Joe Biden begin to worsen as committee Republicans and the media—both right wing and mainstream—put the former vice president into the spotlight. The lengthy, deeply reported New Yorker story from July about Hunter Biden’s troubled life gains new visibility, as do accounts of Joe Biden’s six-figure speaking fees and post-vice presidential wealth.
By Thanksgiving Day, Biden withdraws from the race, and a muddled Democratic primary field heads toward a lengthy, divisive primary, with faint signs that Sherrod Brown, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Bloomberg are “reassessing” their prospects.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval ratings—as they have after every past controversy—stabilize in the low 40s, and the prediction markets peg his reelection chances at 50 percent.
IN UNIVERSE FIVE
As the evidence mounts against Trump, and the Judiciary Committee becomes the setting for a steady drip of damaging evidence against the president, he becomes more and more unmoored, launching into lengthy monologues about the spies and traitors inside his own administration. In response, onetime members of Trump’s administration—Jim Mattis, Rex Tillerson, H.R. McMaster—begin to express their concern about the president’s stability. As the president’s mental health becomes increasingly worrisome, a delegation including Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs and Rudy Giuliani goes to the White House and urges Trump to resign. Trump orders them thrown out of the White House and tweets a stream of accusations about backstabbers; he also urges all Fox viewers to boycott the network, and speculates that Rupert Murdoch may never have become a U.S citizen.
Those with long memories note that, during the last days of Nixon’s presidency, Defense Secretary James Schlesinger told the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to execute any presidential order involving military force without first checking with him. Unfortunately, with no one in any semblance of authority at the White House or anywhere in the administration, there is no one to check Trump. The president’s effort to divert attention from his troubles results in armed military conflict in Iran, North Korea, the South China Sea and Venezuela. The year ends with the very real prospect of one or more of these conflicts “going nuclear.”
Abusing the Record-Keeping System
How the Trump White House is Abusing the Record-Keeping System
By SAMANTHA VINOGRAD
Heavy public attention—as well as congressional scrutiny—is focused on President Donald Trump’s engagements with foreign leaders. It’s now public that, after 2½ years of having controversial conversations with his counterparts, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate one of his political rivals: former Vice President Joe Biden. The now-declassified call readout and the complaint filed by a whistleblower who had concerns about the call have unlocked a Pandora’s box of potential abuses of power, including extraordinary steps by the president’s team to restrict access to readouts of his conversations or not to document them at all.
According to new reporting, Trump’s team—we don’t know whether it was at his direction or not—misused and abused the process for documenting and distributing readouts of several of his conversations, including his July 25 call with Zelensky and other calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is on top of earlier reports that Trump concealed the contents of meetings with Putin, including in 2017 when he reportedly took an interpreter’s notes and instructed the interpreter not to share a readout with other administration officials. That same reporting indicated there is no detailed record of five of Trump’s encounters with Putin over the past two years.
Presidents don’t get to pick and choose whether they accurately document their conversations for the record. The Presidential Records Act requires that they do so. Tampering with readouts or failing to file them at all breaks that law.
The process of reading out and documenting presidential conversations isn’t just a matter of upholding the Presidential Records Act, though. It’s critical to ensuring that relevant officials on the U.S. national security team have the information they need to effectively perform their responsibilities. When presidents don’t keep their team in the loop, national security suffers.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work: During presidential calls and video conferences, staff from the White House Situation Room take notes in real time. Those note-takers compare their notes with those taken by other officials authorized to listen to the call— often a director or senior director from the National Security Council who has responsibility for the country the president is speaking with—and together they work to compile an official readout. These memorandums, which should be drafted and reviewed soon after the call while its contents are fresh in everyone’s minds, are intended to be as close to verbatim as possible. That’s why there is more than one note-taker assigned to the call—so that note-takers can compare notes for accuracy.
The draft readout should then be sent to the national security adviser’s office for review. The national security adiviser historically has been either physically present or on the line for presidential calls so he or she may also have some edits to the draft readout. If former national security adviser John Bolton was not included in Trump’s calls, that would be a major break with past practice. According to the whistleblower complaint, several White House staff were on the president’s call with Zelensky, but we don’t yet know if Bolton was one of them.
Once the national security adviser approves the final readout for the record—often called a “MEMCON” or memorandum of conversation—he or she also approves a distribution list. This step is important: It ensures U.S. officials have the information they need to perform their responsibilities, while also making sure those without a need to know what happened don’t.
The distribution list should typically include certain key officials, including the director of national intelligence, CIA director and secretary of State. The list should also include other officials named on the call or who have follow ups from it. For example, Trump and Zelensky discussed military sales on their July 25 call, which means Secretary of Defense Mark Esper should have seen the readout so he could follow up with the Ukrainians regarding those sales.
Attorney General William Barr was specifically named to follow up during Trump’s call with Zelensky. Trump told the Ukrainian president that Barr and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani would call Zelensky. Yet the Department of Justice claims Barr didn’t hear about the call’s contents until weeks after, and that when he did get a readout he was surprised and angry that Trump grouped him with Giuliani. The reported failure to get Barr a readout is a major process foul. For one, he was named as a point of contact for Zelensky’s team. But also, White House officials should have had legal concerns after Trump asked Zelensky to do him a “favor” by looking into Biden. The national security adviser should have flagged these legal concerns to Barr, even if Barr hadn’t been assigned to call Zelensky.
According to the whistleblower complaint, while Barr did not get a readout, multiple White House officials had direct knowledge of the call and were deeply disturbed by it. Hearing about the call, White House lawyers—probably concerned with the president’s potential abuse of power—worked to “lock down” the official written readout of the call so that fewer people could see it.
How did White House officials work to “lock down” the call? They reportedly moved the readout to the “codeword” system—a system with highly restricted access only available to people with very specific and top level access to intelligence. The codeword system is supposed to be used only for readouts, memos and communications that are classified at a codeword level. It is separate from the “top secret” level system in which readouts are usually drafted and distributed, informally called the “high side” by White House staff.
The MEMCON of the Zelensky call, which didn’t deal with sensitive intelligence information, was classified as “secret,” according to the header at the top of the now declassified document. That level is well below codeword. And yet the readout was inappropriately sent to the codeword system. The White House is claiming its actions were motivated by a desire to limit leaks, but it’s also possible it wanted to hide information that could be damaging to the president.
The Trump White House has also reportedly abused the process for documenting in-person meetings with foreign leaders. In Trump’s infamous 2017 Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov—in which he shared sensitive intelligence about an ongoing intelligence operation—someone should have been assigned to take notes and send a draft readout to the national security adviser—H.R. McMaster in this case—for review and distribution.
Then, the national security adviser should have approved and distributed a MEMCON to relevant officials, and the MEMCON should have been filed for the presidential record. This time, because Trump reportedly shared codeword-level intelligence with the Russians, the MEMCON should likely have been written and distributed on the codeword-level system. Recent reporting indicates that Trump also said during that meeting he “was unconcerned” about Russian election interference. Comments like that make distributing a MEMCON to appropriate personnel particularly important.
But, a readout of the meeting—we don’t know if it was a formal written readout or a verbal one—was reportedly limited to an "unusually" small group of people, which could indicate a failure to get the readout to those who needed it to do their jobs. The departments of Justice, Homeland Security and State and members of the intelligence community needed to know that the president had undercut their efforts to secure our elections so that they could regroup and figure out next steps, not to mention to try to convince him of how dangerous his comments were from a national security standpoint. Furthermore, if anyone failed to brief relevant officials on what transpired, that would mean that our own team didn’t know something that the Russians did. The Russians could use that to manipulate or bribe the president.
While much attention is being paid to written readouts of presidential calls and meetings, they are not the only way readouts are delivered. Because these formal readouts take time to finalize, the national security adviser or an authorized member of his or her team often gives verbal readouts to key officials. This way there isn’t a lag in passing on information about the president’s conversations that require immediate follow up and key officials are as up to speed as their foreign counterparts. Some State Department officials reportedly got a verbal readout of the president’s July 25 call with Zelensky. According to the whistleblower, State officials met with the Ukrainians the day after the call to “navigate the President’s demands,” eventually connecting Giuliani with the Ukrainians.
By restricting access to call readouts, not writing them at all, and apparently not even giving relevant Cabinet officials verbal readouts when they were discussed on a presidential call, the president’s team made some major process fouls. But, if this looks like a comedy of errors, it is likely a well-orchestrated one. Only senior White House officials—like the national security adviser, chief of staff or the president himself—have the authority to disturb the process in these damaging ways.
By SAMANTHA VINOGRAD
Heavy public attention—as well as congressional scrutiny—is focused on President Donald Trump’s engagements with foreign leaders. It’s now public that, after 2½ years of having controversial conversations with his counterparts, Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate one of his political rivals: former Vice President Joe Biden. The now-declassified call readout and the complaint filed by a whistleblower who had concerns about the call have unlocked a Pandora’s box of potential abuses of power, including extraordinary steps by the president’s team to restrict access to readouts of his conversations or not to document them at all.
According to new reporting, Trump’s team—we don’t know whether it was at his direction or not—misused and abused the process for documenting and distributing readouts of several of his conversations, including his July 25 call with Zelensky and other calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian President Vladimir Putin. This is on top of earlier reports that Trump concealed the contents of meetings with Putin, including in 2017 when he reportedly took an interpreter’s notes and instructed the interpreter not to share a readout with other administration officials. That same reporting indicated there is no detailed record of five of Trump’s encounters with Putin over the past two years.
Presidents don’t get to pick and choose whether they accurately document their conversations for the record. The Presidential Records Act requires that they do so. Tampering with readouts or failing to file them at all breaks that law.
The process of reading out and documenting presidential conversations isn’t just a matter of upholding the Presidential Records Act, though. It’s critical to ensuring that relevant officials on the U.S. national security team have the information they need to effectively perform their responsibilities. When presidents don’t keep their team in the loop, national security suffers.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work: During presidential calls and video conferences, staff from the White House Situation Room take notes in real time. Those note-takers compare their notes with those taken by other officials authorized to listen to the call— often a director or senior director from the National Security Council who has responsibility for the country the president is speaking with—and together they work to compile an official readout. These memorandums, which should be drafted and reviewed soon after the call while its contents are fresh in everyone’s minds, are intended to be as close to verbatim as possible. That’s why there is more than one note-taker assigned to the call—so that note-takers can compare notes for accuracy.
The draft readout should then be sent to the national security adviser’s office for review. The national security adiviser historically has been either physically present or on the line for presidential calls so he or she may also have some edits to the draft readout. If former national security adviser John Bolton was not included in Trump’s calls, that would be a major break with past practice. According to the whistleblower complaint, several White House staff were on the president’s call with Zelensky, but we don’t yet know if Bolton was one of them.
Once the national security adviser approves the final readout for the record—often called a “MEMCON” or memorandum of conversation—he or she also approves a distribution list. This step is important: It ensures U.S. officials have the information they need to perform their responsibilities, while also making sure those without a need to know what happened don’t.
The distribution list should typically include certain key officials, including the director of national intelligence, CIA director and secretary of State. The list should also include other officials named on the call or who have follow ups from it. For example, Trump and Zelensky discussed military sales on their July 25 call, which means Secretary of Defense Mark Esper should have seen the readout so he could follow up with the Ukrainians regarding those sales.
Attorney General William Barr was specifically named to follow up during Trump’s call with Zelensky. Trump told the Ukrainian president that Barr and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani would call Zelensky. Yet the Department of Justice claims Barr didn’t hear about the call’s contents until weeks after, and that when he did get a readout he was surprised and angry that Trump grouped him with Giuliani. The reported failure to get Barr a readout is a major process foul. For one, he was named as a point of contact for Zelensky’s team. But also, White House officials should have had legal concerns after Trump asked Zelensky to do him a “favor” by looking into Biden. The national security adviser should have flagged these legal concerns to Barr, even if Barr hadn’t been assigned to call Zelensky.
According to the whistleblower complaint, while Barr did not get a readout, multiple White House officials had direct knowledge of the call and were deeply disturbed by it. Hearing about the call, White House lawyers—probably concerned with the president’s potential abuse of power—worked to “lock down” the official written readout of the call so that fewer people could see it.
How did White House officials work to “lock down” the call? They reportedly moved the readout to the “codeword” system—a system with highly restricted access only available to people with very specific and top level access to intelligence. The codeword system is supposed to be used only for readouts, memos and communications that are classified at a codeword level. It is separate from the “top secret” level system in which readouts are usually drafted and distributed, informally called the “high side” by White House staff.
The MEMCON of the Zelensky call, which didn’t deal with sensitive intelligence information, was classified as “secret,” according to the header at the top of the now declassified document. That level is well below codeword. And yet the readout was inappropriately sent to the codeword system. The White House is claiming its actions were motivated by a desire to limit leaks, but it’s also possible it wanted to hide information that could be damaging to the president.
The Trump White House has also reportedly abused the process for documenting in-person meetings with foreign leaders. In Trump’s infamous 2017 Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov—in which he shared sensitive intelligence about an ongoing intelligence operation—someone should have been assigned to take notes and send a draft readout to the national security adviser—H.R. McMaster in this case—for review and distribution.
Then, the national security adviser should have approved and distributed a MEMCON to relevant officials, and the MEMCON should have been filed for the presidential record. This time, because Trump reportedly shared codeword-level intelligence with the Russians, the MEMCON should likely have been written and distributed on the codeword-level system. Recent reporting indicates that Trump also said during that meeting he “was unconcerned” about Russian election interference. Comments like that make distributing a MEMCON to appropriate personnel particularly important.
But, a readout of the meeting—we don’t know if it was a formal written readout or a verbal one—was reportedly limited to an "unusually" small group of people, which could indicate a failure to get the readout to those who needed it to do their jobs. The departments of Justice, Homeland Security and State and members of the intelligence community needed to know that the president had undercut their efforts to secure our elections so that they could regroup and figure out next steps, not to mention to try to convince him of how dangerous his comments were from a national security standpoint. Furthermore, if anyone failed to brief relevant officials on what transpired, that would mean that our own team didn’t know something that the Russians did. The Russians could use that to manipulate or bribe the president.
While much attention is being paid to written readouts of presidential calls and meetings, they are not the only way readouts are delivered. Because these formal readouts take time to finalize, the national security adviser or an authorized member of his or her team often gives verbal readouts to key officials. This way there isn’t a lag in passing on information about the president’s conversations that require immediate follow up and key officials are as up to speed as their foreign counterparts. Some State Department officials reportedly got a verbal readout of the president’s July 25 call with Zelensky. According to the whistleblower, State officials met with the Ukrainians the day after the call to “navigate the President’s demands,” eventually connecting Giuliani with the Ukrainians.
By restricting access to call readouts, not writing them at all, and apparently not even giving relevant Cabinet officials verbal readouts when they were discussed on a presidential call, the president’s team made some major process fouls. But, if this looks like a comedy of errors, it is likely a well-orchestrated one. Only senior White House officials—like the national security adviser, chief of staff or the president himself—have the authority to disturb the process in these damaging ways.
Pussy decries whistleblower....
Lindsey Graham decries whistleblower complaint as 'all hearsay'
By SARAH CAMMARATA
Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday repeatedly dismissed the whistleblower’s complaint against President Donald Trump as “all hearsay.”
“This seems to me like a political setup. It's all hearsay. You can't get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay. The whistleblower didn't hear the phone call,” the South Carolina Republican said on CBS' “Face the Nation,” adding he has “zero problems” with the president's phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Graham pushed back against host Margaret Brennan’s assertion t hat the whistleblower complaint largely matches the White House summary of the call. The evidence laid out in the complaint, she added, is based on information gathered from numerous White House officials.
“This whole thing is a sham . … Who is this whistleblower? What bias do they have? Why did they pick this whistleblower to tell a hearsay story? The transcript does not match the complaint,” Graham said. “This thing stinks.”
Wrapping up the interview, Brennan asked what advice Graham gave the president when they golfed Saturday.
“Keep fighting back. We have your back on this," Graham replied. "I am openly telling everybody in the country, I have the president's back because I think this is a setup.”
By SARAH CAMMARATA
Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday repeatedly dismissed the whistleblower’s complaint against President Donald Trump as “all hearsay.”
“This seems to me like a political setup. It's all hearsay. You can't get a parking ticket conviction based on hearsay. The whistleblower didn't hear the phone call,” the South Carolina Republican said on CBS' “Face the Nation,” adding he has “zero problems” with the president's phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Graham pushed back against host Margaret Brennan’s assertion t hat the whistleblower complaint largely matches the White House summary of the call. The evidence laid out in the complaint, she added, is based on information gathered from numerous White House officials.
“This whole thing is a sham . … Who is this whistleblower? What bias do they have? Why did they pick this whistleblower to tell a hearsay story? The transcript does not match the complaint,” Graham said. “This thing stinks.”
Wrapping up the interview, Brennan asked what advice Graham gave the president when they golfed Saturday.
“Keep fighting back. We have your back on this," Graham replied. "I am openly telling everybody in the country, I have the president's back because I think this is a setup.”
Wants to be a Little Hitler, but is too stupid...
Stephen Miller dismisses whistleblower as a partisan 'saboteur'
By SARAH CAMMARATA
White House senior adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday dismissed the anonymous whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s telephone conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “partisan hit job.”
“A partisan hit job does not make you a whistleblower just because you go through the Whistleblower Protection Act,” Miller said in an often contentious interview with host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, though, has defended his handling of the whistleblower complaint, telling the House Intelligence Committee last week he had no reason to doubt the sincerity of the whistleblower or the inspector general who investigated the complaint.
“I believe that the whistleblower and the inspector general have acted in good faith throughout. I have every reason to believe that they have done everything by the book and follow the law,” Maguire said.
On Sunday, Miller doubled down on his attack against the whistleblower, describing the complaint as a “seven-page Nancy Drew novel” that “drips with condescension, righteous indignation and contempt for the president.”
“This is a deep state operative, pure and simple,” Miller charged.
“A group of unelected bureaucrats who think that they need to take down this president ... publish hit pieces, they publish fake stories” the White House adviser added.
Wallace also pressed Miller on reports that Trump went against recommendations from the Pentagon and State Department and temporarily froze hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
And Miller continued his assault against the whistleblower, dismissing the person as a “saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government.”
When Wallace asked if the individual was a spy, Miller said, “I don’t know who the individual is.”
By SARAH CAMMARATA
White House senior adviser Stephen Miller on Sunday dismissed the anonymous whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s telephone conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “partisan hit job.”
“A partisan hit job does not make you a whistleblower just because you go through the Whistleblower Protection Act,” Miller said in an often contentious interview with host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, though, has defended his handling of the whistleblower complaint, telling the House Intelligence Committee last week he had no reason to doubt the sincerity of the whistleblower or the inspector general who investigated the complaint.
“I believe that the whistleblower and the inspector general have acted in good faith throughout. I have every reason to believe that they have done everything by the book and follow the law,” Maguire said.
On Sunday, Miller doubled down on his attack against the whistleblower, describing the complaint as a “seven-page Nancy Drew novel” that “drips with condescension, righteous indignation and contempt for the president.”
“This is a deep state operative, pure and simple,” Miller charged.
“A group of unelected bureaucrats who think that they need to take down this president ... publish hit pieces, they publish fake stories” the White House adviser added.
Wallace also pressed Miller on reports that Trump went against recommendations from the Pentagon and State Department and temporarily froze hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine.
And Miller continued his assault against the whistleblower, dismissing the person as a “saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government.”
When Wallace asked if the individual was a spy, Miller said, “I don’t know who the individual is.”
Why isn't it dis-barred???
Giuliani says Trump ‘framed by the Democrats’
Armed with document after document, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney doubled down on his charges.
By RISHIKA DUGYALA
Rudy Giuliani is standing firm.
On Sunday — armed with document after document that he held up to the camera — President Donald Trump’s personal attorney doubled down on his corruption charges against former Vice President Joe Biden and the connection between the Democratic Party and Ukraine. He also cast doubt on whether he would testify before a House panel.
During a contentious interview on ABC’s “This Week,“ Giuliani said, “I am defending my client the best way I know how. This is not about getting Joe Biden in trouble, this is about proving that Donald Trump was framed by the Democrats.”
Giuliani started his attacks on the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. He denied ever courting the theory that Ukrainians hacked the Democratic National Committee and then framed the Russian government. Pivoting, he said there was still “a load of evidence that Ukrainians created false information” for the Obama White House. He also alleged “the collusion that they claim happened in Russia happened in the Ukraine with Hillary Clinton."
“The Ukrainians came to me,” Giuliani said. “I didn't go to them.”
Giuliani has previously called for Ukraine to investigate to determine if Biden — while he was vice president — threatened to withhold monetary aid for Ukraine and pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to help his son, Hunter Biden, who held a board position on a Ukrainian energy company. Giuliani has been at the center of the controversy over Trump’s July 25th phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in which Trump discussed a possible investigation of the Bidens.
If Trump hadn't asked Ukraine to investigate Biden in his July 25 phone call, Giuliani said Sunday, “He would have violated the Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution.”
The Bidens have long denied wrongdoing, and the vice president’s backers have argued that Biden was pressuring Ukraine’s government as part of an international campaign against corruption. But Giuliani brought allegations of corruption against the Biden to the forefront again Sunday, adding that they received at least $1 billion from China and their work there should be further looked into.
Appearing on CBS later Sunday to push the claims, Giuliani also addressed Kurt Volker's Friday resignation — he was the U.S. envoy to Ukraine — and reiterated he contacted Ukraine officials at the request of the State Department: "I have all of the text messages to prove it."
Giuliani said Volker "did his job honorably and decently," debriefing him on what to ask a top Zelensky aide and setting up meetings for him. Asked if Secretary of State Mike Pomepo knew about those meetings with Ukrainians, however, Giuliani initially said "he did not." He later amended, saying that he talked to Pompeo last week and the secretary said he was "aware of it."
Throughout his ABC interview, Giuliani and host Goerge Stephanopoulos had fiery back-and-forths, disagreeing about media partisanship and the factual accuracy of some of Giuliani's claims.
Heard from Giuliani: “Let’s get on to the point.” “Let me finish.” “George, is it possible for you to ever treat a charge against a Democrat in the same way you treat a charge against a Republican?”
Heard from Stephanopoulos: “Do you accept that’s not true?” “Are you telling me if there was evidence that Barack Obama was calling up the Russians saying, 'I want you to look into Donald Trump,' that you wouldn’t be blowing that up?”
In a testy end to the interview, Giuliani said he might not cooperate with the House Intelligence Committee, at least until Democrats removed chairman Adam Schiff and put in someone “neutral.”
“I have to be guided by my client. If he wants me to testify, I'll testify,” he said, referring to the president. “Adam, where's the evidence? Ask him to produce the evidence.”
Stephanopoulos said, “He's coming up —”
Giuliani cut him off: “Are you going to interrupt him as often as you did me?”
Armed with document after document, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney doubled down on his charges.
By RISHIKA DUGYALA
Rudy Giuliani is standing firm.
On Sunday — armed with document after document that he held up to the camera — President Donald Trump’s personal attorney doubled down on his corruption charges against former Vice President Joe Biden and the connection between the Democratic Party and Ukraine. He also cast doubt on whether he would testify before a House panel.
During a contentious interview on ABC’s “This Week,“ Giuliani said, “I am defending my client the best way I know how. This is not about getting Joe Biden in trouble, this is about proving that Donald Trump was framed by the Democrats.”
Giuliani started his attacks on the Obama White House and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. He denied ever courting the theory that Ukrainians hacked the Democratic National Committee and then framed the Russian government. Pivoting, he said there was still “a load of evidence that Ukrainians created false information” for the Obama White House. He also alleged “the collusion that they claim happened in Russia happened in the Ukraine with Hillary Clinton."
“The Ukrainians came to me,” Giuliani said. “I didn't go to them.”
Giuliani has previously called for Ukraine to investigate to determine if Biden — while he was vice president — threatened to withhold monetary aid for Ukraine and pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor in order to help his son, Hunter Biden, who held a board position on a Ukrainian energy company. Giuliani has been at the center of the controversy over Trump’s July 25th phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in which Trump discussed a possible investigation of the Bidens.
If Trump hadn't asked Ukraine to investigate Biden in his July 25 phone call, Giuliani said Sunday, “He would have violated the Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution.”
The Bidens have long denied wrongdoing, and the vice president’s backers have argued that Biden was pressuring Ukraine’s government as part of an international campaign against corruption. But Giuliani brought allegations of corruption against the Biden to the forefront again Sunday, adding that they received at least $1 billion from China and their work there should be further looked into.
Appearing on CBS later Sunday to push the claims, Giuliani also addressed Kurt Volker's Friday resignation — he was the U.S. envoy to Ukraine — and reiterated he contacted Ukraine officials at the request of the State Department: "I have all of the text messages to prove it."
Giuliani said Volker "did his job honorably and decently," debriefing him on what to ask a top Zelensky aide and setting up meetings for him. Asked if Secretary of State Mike Pomepo knew about those meetings with Ukrainians, however, Giuliani initially said "he did not." He later amended, saying that he talked to Pompeo last week and the secretary said he was "aware of it."
Throughout his ABC interview, Giuliani and host Goerge Stephanopoulos had fiery back-and-forths, disagreeing about media partisanship and the factual accuracy of some of Giuliani's claims.
Heard from Giuliani: “Let’s get on to the point.” “Let me finish.” “George, is it possible for you to ever treat a charge against a Democrat in the same way you treat a charge against a Republican?”
Heard from Stephanopoulos: “Do you accept that’s not true?” “Are you telling me if there was evidence that Barack Obama was calling up the Russians saying, 'I want you to look into Donald Trump,' that you wouldn’t be blowing that up?”
In a testy end to the interview, Giuliani said he might not cooperate with the House Intelligence Committee, at least until Democrats removed chairman Adam Schiff and put in someone “neutral.”
“I have to be guided by my client. If he wants me to testify, I'll testify,” he said, referring to the president. “Adam, where's the evidence? Ask him to produce the evidence.”
Stephanopoulos said, “He's coming up —”
Giuliani cut him off: “Are you going to interrupt him as often as you did me?”
Half-joking fear
President Mike Pence? Trump's half-joking fear bursts into view
The unusual alliance between Trump and Pence gained a new layer of intrigue with the House's impeachment inquiry — and with an offhand remark from the president.
By GABBY ORR
As Donald Trump stares down impeachment, allies of Vice President Mike Pence claim he is as calm and poised as can be.
The vice president’s allies say he has proved his fealty over and over again, reciting the countless moments when Pence has locked arms with his unruly boss instead of joining other Republicans who turned away. Often in the darkest moments of Trump’s presidency — amid controversies stemming from his brazen actions or divisive rhetoric — Pence has declined to show daylight between them. Sometimes, Trump’s smooth-talking sidekick has even doubled down with him.
Trump thrust his relationship with the vice president back into the spotlight last week, when the embattled president nudged reporters during a United Nations news conference to “ask for VP Pence’s conversation, because he had a couple conversations also” with Ukrainian officials.
The out-of-the-blue reference triggered questions about the vice president’s role in the latest mess and the unusual relationship between the pair of leaders. If Trump falls alone, Pence becomes the 46th president of the United States — a development many mainstream Republicans would prefer. If Trump and Pence go down together or in quick succession, it’s President Nancy Pelosi — a prospect that would not be lost on Senate Republicans voting on whether to oust their party’s leaders.
Trump’s offhand remark was a stark reminder of the eternal risks to the people in his orbit, particularly as the notoriously unpredictable president navigates the delicate politics of impeachment.
Responding to a question about the president’s U.N. news conference, Tom LoBianco, author of the new Pence book “Piety and Power,” asked, “You mean when he gutted Pence on live TV?”
“He tends to flash this paranoia every now and then that Pence is after the job," Lobianco said. "It’s like joking not-joking. But I was shocked that he was so out in the open this time .”
Pence allies say there’s no reason to think the president will toss his No. 2 under the bus — something Trump has done to past advisers, Cabinet secretaries and White House aides.
“Trump is very loyal to people who have been loyal to him,” former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said. “You look back where there’s been separations, and it’s often where someone has gone off in a different policy direction and been public about it.”
Some people close to Pence, who spoke with POLITICO on the condition of anonymity, saw the president’s recent comment as nothing more than Trump’s typical stream of consciousness — an innocent statement meant to convey that neither he nor the vice president are guilty of wrongdoing.
“He’s largely above reproach. No one ever accuses the vice president of doing anything like that,” said one person close to Pence, referring to the allegations at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“The president was trying to put himself on the same ground as that,” this person said.
A senior administration official dismissed the notion that Trump would throw Pence under the bus if he ever sensed disloyalty. “That is silly. It’s the opposite, meaning that [Pence's] calls are fine, too,” the official said of Trump's latest remark. “Think this through: POTUS and VP are gone and Pelosi becomes president? Please.”
The past several weeks have been a minefield of loyalty tests for Pence, culminating with the whistleblower complaint that prompted Pelosi to embrace impeachment after months of cautioning her progressive colleagues not to rush toward it.
Pence met with Zelensky on Sept. 1 during a last-minute trip to Poland. He told reporters afterward he did not mention Biden during their conversation but did communicate his “great concerns about issues of corruption” in Ukraine. The vice president was not a participant on the July 25 call between the president and Zelensky, according to a senior administration official, who pushed back against a report saying he urged Trump not to release a transcript of the conversation earlier this week.
Before the Ukraine scandal burst into public view, Pence was recovering from a series of other controversies that put his allegiance to Trump on full display.
On Sept. 9, the president claimed he had nothing to do with Pence’s stay at a Trump-owned property in Doonbeg, Ireland, far away from meetings the vice president had planned in Dublin. Trump’s denial of involvement in the arrangement contradicted a prior explanation provided by Pence chief of staff Marc Short, who said the president had suggested his resort as an overnight accommodation. When Short and Pence later said the vice president made the decision on his own — because of his family ties to Doonbeg — it was widely seen as an attempt to rescue Trump from accusations of emoluments clause violations.
That same afternoon, Pence and his team found themselves in cleanup mode again. This time, the vice president pushed back on reports that he had disagreed with Trump’s decision to invite Taliban leaders and the president of Afghanistan to Camp David for a secret round of peace negotiations.
“More Fake News!” Pence tweeted in distinctly Trumpian prose.
Pence’s reaction was consistent with how those in his inner circle expect him to behave as the impeachment inquiry unfolds on Capitol Hill: with a mix of caution and chameleonic performances that endear him to the president.
Indeed, Pence’s first public defense of the president amid reports of the whistleblower complaint came in a fiery interview Monday night on Fox News’ “Hannity” — a prime-time program Trump watches religiously.
“Here we go again. The assume-the-worst media takes one report, runs with it. Democrats on Capitol Hill immediately start to denounce the president before anybody has the facts,” the vice president said .
Pence also came to Trump’s defense on Wednesday in a series of statements from his official Twitter account that landed right as the president was calling attention to his conversations with Ukrainian officials. Quoting from an interview he did with Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs, the vice president — who wasn't at Trump’s news conference in New York — denounced Democrats’ “reckless accusations.” He also repeated the president’s erroneous claim that Biden threatened to withhold U.S. aid from Ukraine if a prosecutor — whom Trump has falsely claimed was investigating Hunter Biden — weren't removed from his position.
“The vice president is just as solid and loyal as he can get,” DeMint said. “He is just very thoughtful and strategic and over the next few weeks, he will be the president’s top adviser.”
The co-dependency between Trump and Pence has long been demonstrated by their policy portfolios, their synchronized talking points and the role both men play in energizing their MAGA base. Trump, a political neophyte with major character flaws in the eyes of his most ardent evangelical supporters, has allowed his vice president, a devout Christian, to assume powerful roles on foreign policy, health care and religious freedom. As long as Pence remains his dutiful deputy and greatest defender, he gains an automatic head start for his own presidential ambitions in the post-Trump era.
“He would never take out Trump because if you are ever seen trying to kill the king, you lose the base,” LoBianco said.
But even after three years of Pence’s obedience and non stop flattery, there have been signs that Trump is unwilling to reciprocate the same degree of loyalty.
Earlier this summer, the president began soliciting advice from close friends on whether Pence should remain his running mate in 2020 amid reports that he was facing pressure from his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, to swap out the vice president for a female running mate.
And when Trump was pressed in a June “Fox & Friends” interview to endorse Pence as his natural successor, he attempted to dodge the question.
“Well, it’s — I love Mike; we are running again. You’re talking about a long time, so you can’t put in that position,” Trump said, adding he was merely willing to give it “very strong consideration.”
The unusual alliance between Trump and Pence gained a new layer of intrigue with the House's impeachment inquiry — and with an offhand remark from the president.
By GABBY ORR
As Donald Trump stares down impeachment, allies of Vice President Mike Pence claim he is as calm and poised as can be.
The vice president’s allies say he has proved his fealty over and over again, reciting the countless moments when Pence has locked arms with his unruly boss instead of joining other Republicans who turned away. Often in the darkest moments of Trump’s presidency — amid controversies stemming from his brazen actions or divisive rhetoric — Pence has declined to show daylight between them. Sometimes, Trump’s smooth-talking sidekick has even doubled down with him.
Trump thrust his relationship with the vice president back into the spotlight last week, when the embattled president nudged reporters during a United Nations news conference to “ask for VP Pence’s conversation, because he had a couple conversations also” with Ukrainian officials.
The out-of-the-blue reference triggered questions about the vice president’s role in the latest mess and the unusual relationship between the pair of leaders. If Trump falls alone, Pence becomes the 46th president of the United States — a development many mainstream Republicans would prefer. If Trump and Pence go down together or in quick succession, it’s President Nancy Pelosi — a prospect that would not be lost on Senate Republicans voting on whether to oust their party’s leaders.
Trump’s offhand remark was a stark reminder of the eternal risks to the people in his orbit, particularly as the notoriously unpredictable president navigates the delicate politics of impeachment.
Responding to a question about the president’s U.N. news conference, Tom LoBianco, author of the new Pence book “Piety and Power,” asked, “You mean when he gutted Pence on live TV?”
“He tends to flash this paranoia every now and then that Pence is after the job," Lobianco said. "It’s like joking not-joking. But I was shocked that he was so out in the open this time .”
Pence allies say there’s no reason to think the president will toss his No. 2 under the bus — something Trump has done to past advisers, Cabinet secretaries and White House aides.
“Trump is very loyal to people who have been loyal to him,” former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said. “You look back where there’s been separations, and it’s often where someone has gone off in a different policy direction and been public about it.”
Some people close to Pence, who spoke with POLITICO on the condition of anonymity, saw the president’s recent comment as nothing more than Trump’s typical stream of consciousness — an innocent statement meant to convey that neither he nor the vice president are guilty of wrongdoing.
“He’s largely above reproach. No one ever accuses the vice president of doing anything like that,” said one person close to Pence, referring to the allegations at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry that Trump pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“The president was trying to put himself on the same ground as that,” this person said.
A senior administration official dismissed the notion that Trump would throw Pence under the bus if he ever sensed disloyalty. “That is silly. It’s the opposite, meaning that [Pence's] calls are fine, too,” the official said of Trump's latest remark. “Think this through: POTUS and VP are gone and Pelosi becomes president? Please.”
The past several weeks have been a minefield of loyalty tests for Pence, culminating with the whistleblower complaint that prompted Pelosi to embrace impeachment after months of cautioning her progressive colleagues not to rush toward it.
Pence met with Zelensky on Sept. 1 during a last-minute trip to Poland. He told reporters afterward he did not mention Biden during their conversation but did communicate his “great concerns about issues of corruption” in Ukraine. The vice president was not a participant on the July 25 call between the president and Zelensky, according to a senior administration official, who pushed back against a report saying he urged Trump not to release a transcript of the conversation earlier this week.
Before the Ukraine scandal burst into public view, Pence was recovering from a series of other controversies that put his allegiance to Trump on full display.
On Sept. 9, the president claimed he had nothing to do with Pence’s stay at a Trump-owned property in Doonbeg, Ireland, far away from meetings the vice president had planned in Dublin. Trump’s denial of involvement in the arrangement contradicted a prior explanation provided by Pence chief of staff Marc Short, who said the president had suggested his resort as an overnight accommodation. When Short and Pence later said the vice president made the decision on his own — because of his family ties to Doonbeg — it was widely seen as an attempt to rescue Trump from accusations of emoluments clause violations.
That same afternoon, Pence and his team found themselves in cleanup mode again. This time, the vice president pushed back on reports that he had disagreed with Trump’s decision to invite Taliban leaders and the president of Afghanistan to Camp David for a secret round of peace negotiations.
“More Fake News!” Pence tweeted in distinctly Trumpian prose.
Pence’s reaction was consistent with how those in his inner circle expect him to behave as the impeachment inquiry unfolds on Capitol Hill: with a mix of caution and chameleonic performances that endear him to the president.
Indeed, Pence’s first public defense of the president amid reports of the whistleblower complaint came in a fiery interview Monday night on Fox News’ “Hannity” — a prime-time program Trump watches religiously.
“Here we go again. The assume-the-worst media takes one report, runs with it. Democrats on Capitol Hill immediately start to denounce the president before anybody has the facts,” the vice president said .
Pence also came to Trump’s defense on Wednesday in a series of statements from his official Twitter account that landed right as the president was calling attention to his conversations with Ukrainian officials. Quoting from an interview he did with Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs, the vice president — who wasn't at Trump’s news conference in New York — denounced Democrats’ “reckless accusations.” He also repeated the president’s erroneous claim that Biden threatened to withhold U.S. aid from Ukraine if a prosecutor — whom Trump has falsely claimed was investigating Hunter Biden — weren't removed from his position.
“The vice president is just as solid and loyal as he can get,” DeMint said. “He is just very thoughtful and strategic and over the next few weeks, he will be the president’s top adviser.”
The co-dependency between Trump and Pence has long been demonstrated by their policy portfolios, their synchronized talking points and the role both men play in energizing their MAGA base. Trump, a political neophyte with major character flaws in the eyes of his most ardent evangelical supporters, has allowed his vice president, a devout Christian, to assume powerful roles on foreign policy, health care and religious freedom. As long as Pence remains his dutiful deputy and greatest defender, he gains an automatic head start for his own presidential ambitions in the post-Trump era.
“He would never take out Trump because if you are ever seen trying to kill the king, you lose the base,” LoBianco said.
But even after three years of Pence’s obedience and non stop flattery, there have been signs that Trump is unwilling to reciprocate the same degree of loyalty.
Earlier this summer, the president began soliciting advice from close friends on whether Pence should remain his running mate in 2020 amid reports that he was facing pressure from his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, to swap out the vice president for a female running mate.
And when Trump was pressed in a June “Fox & Friends” interview to endorse Pence as his natural successor, he attempted to dodge the question.
“Well, it’s — I love Mike; we are running again. You’re talking about a long time, so you can’t put in that position,” Trump said, adding he was merely willing to give it “very strong consideration.”
Show stupidity over and over...
Trump demands to meet whistleblower and leakers of his Ukraine call
By RISHIKA DUGYALA
President Donald Trump asserted on Sunday that he’s entitled to meet the whistleblower whose complaint has entangled his administration and led to the opening of an official impeachment inquiry.
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” the president wrote on Twitter.
The tweet followed a morning of network appearances by Trump allies aimed at discrediting the complaint and the impeachment process, after reports that the president asked Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Trump claimed that the whistleblower incorrectly “represented” the July 25 call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, even though the White House released a memo of the call on Wednesday. In it, Trump passed along unverified allegations about Biden and Democrats before asking Zelensky to do him a “favor” by looking into his political rival.
Trump also tweeted on Sunday that he wanted to meet not only his accuser, “who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION,” but also the person who gave the whistleblower this information.
“Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!” Trump wrote.
The president also elevated his attack on Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, saying he should be questioned for “treason” after labeling his actions as “fraud.”
“His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber,” Trump said. “He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States.”
The president’s demand about Schiff comes after a Thursday hearing in which the chairman’s dramatic reading of the call with Zelensky rankled Trump and his allies.
Schiff prefaced the reading by saying, “In not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.”
He then paraphrased the conversation: “I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though, and I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it.”
After drawing sharp criticism, Schiff noted that his summary of the call was part parody. “The fact that that’s not clear is a separate problem in and of itself,” he said.
By RISHIKA DUGYALA
President Donald Trump asserted on Sunday that he’s entitled to meet the whistleblower whose complaint has entangled his administration and led to the opening of an official impeachment inquiry.
“Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called ‘Whistleblower,’ represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way,” the president wrote on Twitter.
The tweet followed a morning of network appearances by Trump allies aimed at discrediting the complaint and the impeachment process, after reports that the president asked Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Trump claimed that the whistleblower incorrectly “represented” the July 25 call between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, even though the White House released a memo of the call on Wednesday. In it, Trump passed along unverified allegations about Biden and Democrats before asking Zelensky to do him a “favor” by looking into his political rival.
Trump also tweeted on Sunday that he wanted to meet not only his accuser, “who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION,” but also the person who gave the whistleblower this information.
“Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!” Trump wrote.
The president also elevated his attack on Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, saying he should be questioned for “treason” after labeling his actions as “fraud.”
“His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber,” Trump said. “He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States.”
The president’s demand about Schiff comes after a Thursday hearing in which the chairman’s dramatic reading of the call with Zelensky rankled Trump and his allies.
Schiff prefaced the reading by saying, “In not so many words, this is the essence of what the president communicates.”
He then paraphrased the conversation: “I hear what you want. I have a favor I want from you, though, and I’m going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good. I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand? Lots of it.”
After drawing sharp criticism, Schiff noted that his summary of the call was part parody. “The fact that that’s not clear is a separate problem in and of itself,” he said.
No desire
Bolton undercuts Trump and says North Korea has no desire to give up its nukes
By CAITLIN OPRYSKO
President Donald Trump’s ousted national security adviser on Monday threw cold water on the president’s assertion that North Korea is ready to make a deal on denuclearization, giving his “unvarnished” view that Kim Jong Un would not voluntarily give up his nuclear weapons under current conditions.
At one of his first public appearances since his abrupt and rocky departure from the White House, John Bolton told attendees at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event that Kim "has not made a strategic decision to give up its nuclear weapons.”
In fact, he argued, “the strategic decision Kim Jong Un is operating through is that he will do whatever he can to keep a deliverable nuclear weapons capability and to develop and enhance it further.”
Bolton, who was ousted earlier this month after a year and a half as Trump’s top security aide in part because of his hawkishness, began his remarks by joking that North Korea’s leadership was likely “delighted” by the fact he was there in a private capacity.
“Perhaps they’ll be a little less delighted now that I can speak in unvarnished terms about the grave and growing threat that the North Korean nuclear weapons program poses to international peace and security," he added.
Bolton alluded to several of the policy disagreements he had with his former boss, most notably that Kim was not ready to give up his nuclear weapons program, as Trump has frequently insisted after a handful of meetings with the reclusive leader.
He doubled down on calls to implement a “Libya model” when dealing with North Korea, comments that Trump derisively cited as detrimental to U.S.-North Korea relations after Bolton’s exit. Bolton also countered Trump’s repeated assertions that the U.S. is in “no rush” to push Kim to wind down his nuclear programs and took an indirect shot at his former boss for his forgiving attitude toward recent short-range missile tests in North Korea.
While Trump has said those tests were not a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, Bolton on Monday sided with anxious U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea in declaring that they were. Moreover, he added, Trump’s apparent disregard for the resolutions undermines U.S. policy by giving off the message that its leadership doesn’t care about the sanctions in those or other U.N. resolutions.
“When you ask for consistent behavior from others, you have to demonstrate it yourself,” Bolton warned.
By CAITLIN OPRYSKO
President Donald Trump’s ousted national security adviser on Monday threw cold water on the president’s assertion that North Korea is ready to make a deal on denuclearization, giving his “unvarnished” view that Kim Jong Un would not voluntarily give up his nuclear weapons under current conditions.
At one of his first public appearances since his abrupt and rocky departure from the White House, John Bolton told attendees at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event that Kim "has not made a strategic decision to give up its nuclear weapons.”
In fact, he argued, “the strategic decision Kim Jong Un is operating through is that he will do whatever he can to keep a deliverable nuclear weapons capability and to develop and enhance it further.”
Bolton, who was ousted earlier this month after a year and a half as Trump’s top security aide in part because of his hawkishness, began his remarks by joking that North Korea’s leadership was likely “delighted” by the fact he was there in a private capacity.
“Perhaps they’ll be a little less delighted now that I can speak in unvarnished terms about the grave and growing threat that the North Korean nuclear weapons program poses to international peace and security," he added.
Bolton alluded to several of the policy disagreements he had with his former boss, most notably that Kim was not ready to give up his nuclear weapons program, as Trump has frequently insisted after a handful of meetings with the reclusive leader.
He doubled down on calls to implement a “Libya model” when dealing with North Korea, comments that Trump derisively cited as detrimental to U.S.-North Korea relations after Bolton’s exit. Bolton also countered Trump’s repeated assertions that the U.S. is in “no rush” to push Kim to wind down his nuclear programs and took an indirect shot at his former boss for his forgiving attitude toward recent short-range missile tests in North Korea.
While Trump has said those tests were not a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, Bolton on Monday sided with anxious U.S. allies like Japan and South Korea in declaring that they were. Moreover, he added, Trump’s apparent disregard for the resolutions undermines U.S. policy by giving off the message that its leadership doesn’t care about the sanctions in those or other U.N. resolutions.
“When you ask for consistent behavior from others, you have to demonstrate it yourself,” Bolton warned.
Scolds president
Ex-Trump official scolds president and allies for Ukraine mess
Tom Bossert dismissed claims about stolen Democratic emails, while Trump's allies went after the whistleblower and impeachment.
By RISHIKA DUGYALA and SARAH CAMMARATA
President Donald Trump’s former homeland security adviser said on Sunday that he was “deeply disturbed” by his former boss’s attempts to solicit damaging information from Ukraine about Joe Biden, becoming one of the most vocal critics among ex-Trump officials.
“Yes, I’m deeply disturbed by it, as well, and this entire mess has me frustrated, George,” Tom Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” responding to the host’s citing a whistleblower complaint that said White House officials were disturbed by a call between Trump and Ukraine’s president in July.
Bossert also said some of Trump’s backers weren’t helping matters.
“The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go,” he said, referring to unfounded claims that Ukraine stole Democratic National Committee emails in 2016 and then somehow framed Russia.
“It’s not only a conspiracy theory. It is completely debunked,” said Bossert, who served as homeland security adviser from January 2017 to April 2018. He added that if Trump continues with that focus, “it’s going to bring him down.”
Bossert’s comments stood in stark contrast to attempts by Trump’s allies to downplay a scandal that has sparked a formal impeachment inquiry, with the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his senior adviser Stephen Miller both fiercely defending Trump on the Sunday news shows.
Bossert singled out Giuliani for pushing the Ukraine conspiracy theory and disparaged the former New York City mayor for repeating it to the president.
Giuliani, who appeared on ABC after Bossert, denied ever supporting the theory, but he doubled down on a connection between Ukraine and Democrats, among other things.
“With all due respect to Tom Bossert, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Giuliani said.
The competing narratives are playing out as information has leaked about Trump’s alleged attempts to undercut political rivals through his State Department, and his reported comments to Russian officials in 2017 that he wasn’t concerned about interference in the previous year’s election.
Three House committee chairmen on Friday subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to interactions between Trump, Giuliani and Ukrainian officials. They also issued a schedule of depositions for State Department officials named as playing a role in the Ukraine affair, which came to light because of a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower in the intelligence community.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said on Sunday that the impeachment inquiry would focus on “abuse of power,” adding that it could include possible White House failures to comply with congressional subpoenas.
With the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees moving ahead with their inquiry, Democrats have discussed the possibility of pursuing “obstruction of Congress” as part of potential articles of impeachment against Trump.
The Intelligence chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), has confirmed that the intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, will testify in a closed session before his panel at the end of this week. And on Sunday, Schiff said on ABC that he had reached a tentative agreement with the whistleblower and his attorneys to appear before the committee “very soon.”
“It is illegal, improper, a violation of oath, a violation of his duty to defend our elections and our Constitution for the president to merely ask for foreign interference in our election,” Schiff told Stephanopoulos.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top deputies, during a private conference call on Sunday afternoon, laid out a strategy for their offensive against Trump, including plans to streamline their messaging operation and help vulnerable lawmakers who face potential repercussions in their districts.
Bossert said he was cautious about the impeachment proceedings after seeing “a lot of rush to judgment.” It’s far from proven, he said on Sunday, that Trump did anything to abuse his power and withhold aid to Ukraine in order to solicit its cooperation in an investigation of Biden, the former vice president and a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
The president issued several tweets and retweets over the weekend attacking Democrats and the impeachment process, and also going after the whistleblower’s credibility.
“The Whistleblower’s complaint is completely different and at odds from my actual conversation with the new President of Ukraine,” Trump wrote on Saturday. “The so-called ‘Whistleblower’ knew practically NOTHING in that those ridiculous charges were far more dramatic & wrong, just like Liddle’ Adam Schiff..”
Some of the president’s allies amplified the criticism on Sunday, with Miller, the senior White House adviser, calling the complaint a “partisan hit job.”
“This is a deep state operative, pure and simple,” he told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Even though the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has said he has no reason to doubt the sincerity of the whistleblower or the inspector general who investigated the complaint, Miller branded the anonymous complainant a “saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of Trump’s strongest defenders in Congress, also cast doubt on the whistleblower and the entire Ukraine affair.
“This whole thing is a sham. … Who is this whistleblower?” Graham told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “What bias do they have? Why did they pick this whistleblower to tell a hearsay story? The transcript does not match the complaint. This thing stinks.”
He also said he had “zero problems” with Trump’s July 25 phone conversation with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Brennan asked what advice Graham gave the president when they golfed together on Saturday.
“Keep fighting back. We have your back on this,” Graham replied. “I am openly telling everybody in the country, I have the president’s back because I think this is a setup.”
Tom Bossert dismissed claims about stolen Democratic emails, while Trump's allies went after the whistleblower and impeachment.
By RISHIKA DUGYALA and SARAH CAMMARATA
President Donald Trump’s former homeland security adviser said on Sunday that he was “deeply disturbed” by his former boss’s attempts to solicit damaging information from Ukraine about Joe Biden, becoming one of the most vocal critics among ex-Trump officials.
“Yes, I’m deeply disturbed by it, as well, and this entire mess has me frustrated, George,” Tom Bossert said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” responding to the host’s citing a whistleblower complaint that said White House officials were disturbed by a call between Trump and Ukraine’s president in July.
Bossert also said some of Trump’s backers weren’t helping matters.
“The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go,” he said, referring to unfounded claims that Ukraine stole Democratic National Committee emails in 2016 and then somehow framed Russia.
“It’s not only a conspiracy theory. It is completely debunked,” said Bossert, who served as homeland security adviser from January 2017 to April 2018. He added that if Trump continues with that focus, “it’s going to bring him down.”
Bossert’s comments stood in stark contrast to attempts by Trump’s allies to downplay a scandal that has sparked a formal impeachment inquiry, with the president’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and his senior adviser Stephen Miller both fiercely defending Trump on the Sunday news shows.
Bossert singled out Giuliani for pushing the Ukraine conspiracy theory and disparaged the former New York City mayor for repeating it to the president.
Giuliani, who appeared on ABC after Bossert, denied ever supporting the theory, but he doubled down on a connection between Ukraine and Democrats, among other things.
“With all due respect to Tom Bossert, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Giuliani said.
The competing narratives are playing out as information has leaked about Trump’s alleged attempts to undercut political rivals through his State Department, and his reported comments to Russian officials in 2017 that he wasn’t concerned about interference in the previous year’s election.
Three House committee chairmen on Friday subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for documents related to interactions between Trump, Giuliani and Ukrainian officials. They also issued a schedule of depositions for State Department officials named as playing a role in the Ukraine affair, which came to light because of a complaint from an anonymous whistleblower in the intelligence community.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said on Sunday that the impeachment inquiry would focus on “abuse of power,” adding that it could include possible White House failures to comply with congressional subpoenas.
With the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees moving ahead with their inquiry, Democrats have discussed the possibility of pursuing “obstruction of Congress” as part of potential articles of impeachment against Trump.
The Intelligence chairman, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), has confirmed that the intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, will testify in a closed session before his panel at the end of this week. And on Sunday, Schiff said on ABC that he had reached a tentative agreement with the whistleblower and his attorneys to appear before the committee “very soon.”
“It is illegal, improper, a violation of oath, a violation of his duty to defend our elections and our Constitution for the president to merely ask for foreign interference in our election,” Schiff told Stephanopoulos.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top deputies, during a private conference call on Sunday afternoon, laid out a strategy for their offensive against Trump, including plans to streamline their messaging operation and help vulnerable lawmakers who face potential repercussions in their districts.
Bossert said he was cautious about the impeachment proceedings after seeing “a lot of rush to judgment.” It’s far from proven, he said on Sunday, that Trump did anything to abuse his power and withhold aid to Ukraine in order to solicit its cooperation in an investigation of Biden, the former vice president and a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
The president issued several tweets and retweets over the weekend attacking Democrats and the impeachment process, and also going after the whistleblower’s credibility.
“The Whistleblower’s complaint is completely different and at odds from my actual conversation with the new President of Ukraine,” Trump wrote on Saturday. “The so-called ‘Whistleblower’ knew practically NOTHING in that those ridiculous charges were far more dramatic & wrong, just like Liddle’ Adam Schiff..”
Some of the president’s allies amplified the criticism on Sunday, with Miller, the senior White House adviser, calling the complaint a “partisan hit job.”
“This is a deep state operative, pure and simple,” he told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”
Even though the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has said he has no reason to doubt the sincerity of the whistleblower or the inspector general who investigated the complaint, Miller branded the anonymous complainant a “saboteur trying to undermine a democratically elected government.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and one of Trump’s strongest defenders in Congress, also cast doubt on the whistleblower and the entire Ukraine affair.
“This whole thing is a sham. … Who is this whistleblower?” Graham told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “What bias do they have? Why did they pick this whistleblower to tell a hearsay story? The transcript does not match the complaint. This thing stinks.”
He also said he had “zero problems” with Trump’s July 25 phone conversation with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Brennan asked what advice Graham gave the president when they golfed together on Saturday.
“Keep fighting back. We have your back on this,” Graham replied. “I am openly telling everybody in the country, I have the president’s back because I think this is a setup.”
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