Correction: I originally called this a FISA request. It was really a Freedom of Information Act (FIOA) request.
So far we haven’t had a thorough mainstream media analysis of the documents which American Oversight obtained from the State Department though a FOIA request. Last night when MSNBC became aware of the fact that this group had obtained the first 100 documents which the Democrats in the House had been unable to access the American Oversight website was so overwhelmed by traffic they couldn’t even begin to review them. Today they are in the Cloud and easily accessible so we are waiting to hear about the significance of what they reveal.
You can read them here. |||| RawStory did break down some of what they reveal here.
Some of us thought that the Daily Beast story about Nunes might be the weekend story. The article “Lev Parnas Says He Has Info on Devin Nunes’ Role in Trump’s Ukraine Dirt-Digging Mission” was put into the record by Eric Swalwell during Thursday’s hearing and has many of us licking our chops that this Trump minion might be put under pressure to recuse himself.
At this moment it is the lead story on Daily Kos:
Juicy as this story is, Nunes is a sideshow, hell he’s a freak show attraction. The real news is in the batch, trove, or tranche of documents looks like it will be the far more significant story of the weekend.
The story that very possibly will impact the impeachment hearing the most is what is in the documents. Documents are dense and less interesting than watching the testimony of the experts who, with the exception of Ambassador Yovanovitch, weren’t even making headlines in the news until recently.
It will be up to House Democrats to decide how to use the information in the documents just released and the many more we can expect to be released in the next few days.
So far my Google News search comes up with this from Kyiv Post:
Excerpt: The documents show that private attorney to Trump, Rudy Giuliani, spoke on the phone to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Mar. 26, 2019 during four minutes and another telephone conversation was scheduled for March 29, 2019. Pompeo’s staffers allotted 20 minutes for that talk.
Yet another document reports on the telephone interview with Ukraine’s former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, which was held by Giuliani and his associates Igor Fruman, Lev Parnas, and George Boyle on Jan. 23, 2019.
In the conversation Shokin appears to have spoken about his dismissal, claiming it was at the request of former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden. Shokin also complained about being a refused a U.S. visa, for which he put the blame on Marie Yovanovitch, then U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
Then Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko spoke twice to Giuliani and associates in person, while visiting New York on Jan. 25-26, 2019.
In the meetings Lutsenko spoke about his authority as the Prosecutor General and supported the good reputation of Shokin. Lutsenko also said he believed that Hunter Biden, the son of Joseph Biden, had been illegally lobbying the interests of the Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma in the U.S. for millions in compensation.
Just after midnight Mediaite published this: JUST IN: State Dept. FOIA Doc Release Shows Links Between Oval Office, Giuliani, and Pompeo on Ukraine
Excerpt:
In addition to call logs showing Giuliani and Pompeo speaking several times, there is a March 27 email from Giuliani’s personal assistant, Jo Ann Zafonte, to then-Director of Oval Office Operations Madeleine Westerhout, who acted as Trump’s unofficial gatekeeper in the White House. Zafonte requests a phone number for Pompeo so she can set up a call between him and Giuliani because she has “been trying and getting nowhere through regular channels.”
In addition, the State Dept. release includes a April 12, 2019 letter to Pompeo from two Democratic Congressman, House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer and House Foreign Affairs Chair Eliot Engel, in which they express their concern over the “outrageous efforts by Ukrainian officials to impugn the efforts” of then-US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
“It is disappointing that certain political actors within Ukraine have criticized Ambassador Yovanovitch, given her focus on anti-corruption efforts that touch on their interests,” Hoyer and Engel note. The pair go on to urge Pompeo to “make public statements personally defending your team and those who represent our country from these spurious disparagements.”
Pompeo never did offer a public show of support for Yovanovitch.
“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress,” American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers said in a press release about the document dump. “It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a US ambassador.”
I don’t see any stories in The NY Times or Washington Post. I’ll update if or when they cover the story.
Joy Reid comes on in 15 minutes. (see update below). We’ll see if her staff has been up all night reviewing the documents. Unfortunately, the “if it bleeds, it leads” phrase (which originated here) sometimes applies even on MSNBC because people talking often takes precedence over documents (except on Rachel Maddow who does an excellent job of combining the two).
Saturday, Nov 23, 2019 · 4:52:37 PM +00:00 · HalBrown
The story is finally filtering into the news:
Nov 23, 2019, 10:35am EST
Update: Joy Reid never discussed this story. However, following her show Weekends With Alex Witt briefly discussed with with Kimberly Atkins.