It was another hectic day as Trump and his allies mounted a vigorous attempt to block Congress from learning more about the Trump administration's apparently wide-ranging effort to extort Ukrainian officials into opening a new "investigation" of potential 2020 campaign opponent Joe Biden. A roundup of the day's events:
• The White House and State Department made a last-minute move to block Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland from testifying before Congress this morning. Sondland, a wealthy Trump donor, has emerged in text messages as a central figure in the administration's move to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on mounting a Biden probe as Trump withheld vital military aid from the country. In a key new development, CNN confirmed that Sondland called Trump personally between the time a fellow diplomat confronted him on the evident quid pro quo and Sondland gave his denial. This is sure to be a key point of testimony when Sondland inevitably is forced to appear before the House.
• House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff called the White House move "additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress." House investigators promised to quickly issue subpoenas for Sondland's records and testimony: That subpoena has now been issued.
• The White House followed up later in the day with a bizarrely argued pseudo-legalese letter to Congress claiming that the White House and, evidently, the entire executive branch will "not participate" in the congressional impeachment inquiry, which it claims to be "illegitimate," and therefore will be blocking all subpoenas and testimony. If the nation was not in a constitutional crisis before, it is now.
• The near-certain prospect of House Republicans illegally leaking the Ukraine whistleblower's identity to Donald Trump's White House or to the public has House Democrats contemplating "extraordinary steps" to hide the whistleblower's identity from Trump-allied Republicans, possibly including steps to disguise the whistleblower's image and voice while the whistleblower testifies from another location.
• The whistleblower's notes of his conversations with administration officials provide evidence that administration officials listening to Trump's Ukraine call were in a state of near panic afterward, and that at least one knew immediately that Trump may have committed a criminal act. It was these alerts that prompted White House lawyers to move records of the call to a White House server intended to store code-word classified state secrets.
• Sen. Lindsey Graham, among the most fervent "defenders" of Trump in the nation, threatened to bring Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The response from Democratic senators to the prospect of Giuliani answering Senate questions under oath: By all means, bring it on.
• A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report confirms, yet again, that Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections was "overtly and almost invariably" intended to assist Trump and damage his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Trump Attorney General William Barr has been personally leading an effort to discredit U.S. intelligence community assessments of Russian interference; one of Trump's requested "favors" of Zelensky was for an investigation into a bizarre conspiracy theory that claims Russia was "set up" by U.S. intelligence, individuals inside Ukraine, or both.
• A former U.S. ambassador lays out how "shockingly sloppy" the communications between Sondland and Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor were. "Our cell phones are locked away during the day," he said, citing tight security requirements. "They were either reckless or wanted to be caught."
• A new Washington Post poll finds strong public support for the impeachment inquiry, 58% to 38%.
• Some House Republican defenses of Trump are more unusual than others.