Weeks of White House talking points were upended today when acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, in a press conference, confirmed that the White House tied U.S. military aid to Ukraine to a demand that the nation investigate a Trump and Giuliani-led conspiracy theory intended to boost Trump's political chances by alleging Democratic "corruption."
The remarkably incoherent grab-bag theory, positing that "missing" emails from Hillary Clinton may be on a Democratic National Committee server that was "hacked" by Democrats themselves and now remains hidden somewhere in Ukraine, has been widely debunked by U.S. intelligence services, which are unanimous in concluding that 2016 election-related hacking was done by Russian government in an attempt to boost the candidacy of Donald Trump. It is related to a similar "corruption" theory that suggests wrongdoing in Ukraine by the Biden family, also debunked, but comprehension of the full Giuliani theory is likely impossible without the ingestion of an enormous quantity of cocaine.
In other impeachment inquiry news:
• The Mulvaney admission destroyed prior White House, Senate and House Republican statements insisting that the Ukrainian exchanges were non-criminal because no "quid pro quo" was on offer—pretending at a legal requirement that does not in fact exist, but one that many or most of Trump's defenders, both lawmakers and in the media, were aggressively selling to the public. Those supporters will now have to insist to the public that their prior statements are now ... inoperative?
• U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland's private testimony to House impeachment investigators was expected to be the news of the day, until Mulvaney's press conference upended the administration's prior talking points. Sondland had previously been expected to claim ignorance of a political quid pro quo tying U.S. military aid to Trump/Giuliani demands that Ukraine investigate the the family of one of Trump's most likely 2020 rivals; those claims were being met with skepticism even before Mulvaney's televised admissions.
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry offered his written resignation to Donald Trump today, although when Perry will actually be leaving his post remains unclear. While Perry has insisted that he was not planning to resign and that he was not involved in Trump's Ukrainian schemes, Perry had direct involvement in Giuliani-led efforts to manipulate the Ukrainian energy industry, efforts which have now led to the arrest of three close Giuliani associates.
• Trump Attorney General William Barr, who has not yet resigned, and his Department of Justice continue to deny involvement in the now-a-quid-pro-quo, even though Trump himself singled Barr out as a point man in the scheme three times during his call with the Ukrainian president. The Department of Justice was quick with a statement, after Mulvaney's assertion of a "quid pro quo" exchange: "That is news to us." (Note: Because the agency was previously made aware of a whistleblower complaint and legal referral on this very subject, it is not in fact news to them.)
• Fervent Trump loyalist Sen. Lindsey Graham proposed that Republican senators send a letter to House Speaker asserting that they would never vote to remove Trump from office regardless of whatever wrongdoing the House was able to document. This flamboyant declaration of Republican alliance with Trump regardless of proven crimes was not well received by his fellow senators.
• Republican Senate leadership, on the other hand, has begun to outline to their senators what a now-likely Senate impeachment trial might look like: the Senate would meet six days a week, with an anticipated timeline of "basically Thanksgiving to Christmas." This is a considerable retreat from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's previous dismissals of the possibility or musings that the trial would be dispensed with quickly and with little debate.
• House Democrats aren't committing to that or any other timeline.
• As details of the Ukrainian scheme continue to surface, public support for impeachment continues to rise.
from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/2Mqj220
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