WaPo:
White House review turns up emails showing extensive effort to justify Trump’s decision to block Ukraine military aid
A confidential White House review of President Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal, according to three people familiar with the records.
The research by the White House Counsel’s Office, which was triggered by a congressional impeachment inquiry announced in September, includes early August email exchanges between acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after President Trump had already ordered a hold in mid-July on the nearly $400 million in security assistance, according to the three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.
One person briefed on the records examination said White House lawyers are expressing concern that the review has turned up some unflattering exchanges and facts that could at a minimum embarrass the president. It’s unclear if the Mulvaney discussions or other records pose any legal problems for Trump in the impeachment inquiry, but some fear they could pose political problems if revealed publicly.
Other overnight news headlines:
- In Hong Kong elections, big defeat for elites pressures Beijing to rethink approach (WaPo)
- Navy secretary forced out by Pentagon chief over handling of Navy SEAL’s war crimes case (WaPo)
- Why Giuliani Singled Out 2 Ukrainian Oligarchs to Help Dig Up Dirt (NY Times)
Jonathan Bernstein/Bloomberg:
Don’t Buy the Conventional Wisdom on Impeachment
Trump should remember that Richard Nixon had the total support of Republicans in 1974 — until he didn’t.
I’m not predicting that President Donald Trump will be removed from office; that’s probably not going to happen. But there’s a big difference between probably and certainly. And after two weeks of public impeachment hearings, it seems to me that a certainty has set in: that there’s simply no way that Republicans will ever turn on Trump.
Perhaps! It’s true that congressional Republicans seem to be more solidly behind Trump than ever. In particular, Representative Will Hurd, who might’ve been the most likely member of the party to vote for impeachment and take a few others with him, seems to have decided against it. The most likely outcome may still be a close-to-party-line impeachment in the House and acquittal in the Senate.
But remember that conservative Republicans stuck with President Richard Nixon in 1974 … right up until they didn’t.
Jonathan Marks/Arc digital:
Impeachment: Searching For a Particle of Courage
In the past few years, instead of speaking truth to power, House Republicans have let power define what’s true
So when GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), or President Trump, directs us to this very memorandum for proof of his innocence, they’re not on one end of a difference of opinion among reasonable people. They are engaged in the kind of desperate lawyering I might use to slide out of the charge of conditioning my purchase of an Xbox on my child’s compliance. I never said that, after all, in so many words.
Even if the standard of proof were “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which it isn’t in the impeachment hearings, no jury would acquit me. And no jury should acquit President Trump.
Why, then, are even Republicans with some reputation for independence, like Will Hurd of Texas, who is not even running for reelection, dodging the matter? And by dodging the matter, I don’t mean that they refuse to call for impeachment and removal. Reasonable people can disagree about whether President Trump should be impeached and removed. By dodging the matter, I mean that they pretend not to know what they and anyone who has paid attention knows: The president personally conditioned U.S. assistance to Ukraine on Ukraine conducting (or at least announcing) investigations.
Nicholas Grossman/Arc digital:
“Read the Transcript” is Trump’s Big Lie
Breaking down the classic propaganda technique at the heart of Trump’s impeachment defense
InMein Kampf, Adolf Hitler coined the term “the Big Lie,” noting that people are, somewhat paradoxically, more likely to believe more blatant falsehoods, especially about consequential topics. The “masses,” he wrote:
more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.
It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.
That describes what Donald Trump is doing when he defends himself from impeachment by imploring people to “read the transcript” of his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
No, this does not mean Trump is Hitler. What it means is that Hitler, one of history’s most successful demagogues, wrote a useful description of the type of demagoguery Trump’s deploying today.
WaPo:
In Trump’s Washington, the rogue actors are the real players — and the experts are increasingly irrelevant
[Fiona] Hill’s epiphany, which she shared with lawmakers, drew a rebuke from Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who, like Trump, had come to view the country’s civil servants as unelected, insidious bureaucrats working to thwart the president’s will.
The president, Nunes suggested, had turned to Sondland because the experts in his government had dismissed, as conspiracy theory, his real concerns about Ukrainian meddling on behalf of the Democrats in the 2016 election.
“I understand that people at the NSC and people at the State Department had issues with that,” Nunes said. “But at the end of the day, isn’t it the commander in chief who makes those decisions?”
The above is not okay, and it’s also not okay to cover it as ‘business as usual’.
WaPo:
Top House Democrat says ethics probe of Nunes is likely over alleged meeting with Ukrainian about Bidens
A high-ranking House Democrat said Saturday it’s “quite likely” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) will face an ethics investigation over allegations that he met with an ex-Ukrainian official to obtain information about former vice president Joe Biden and his son.
Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, appeared on MSNBC where he was asked whether Nunes could face a House inquiry. “Quite likely, without question,” Smith said.
The allegation that Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor last year to discuss the Bidens came from the attorney for Lev Parnas, one of two Soviet-born associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani who were indicted on charges they broke campaign finance law.
Jason Sattler/USA today:
Donald Trump, corruption fighter? Plenty to investigate very close to home. His home.
Where would Trump begin if he truly cared about unethical behavior and children profiting off their famous fathers? His own sons. Not Hunter Biden.
The Trump Organization has been implicated in money laundering, tax scams and the rampant hiring of undocumented workers.
You could make the case that a president's sons should not even get near a “corrupt company,” as Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., did during impeachment hearings last week.
Of course, Stefanik was talking about Hunter Biden’s work on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma — not Don Jr. and Eric Trump’s employment at a company whose two biggest growth areas are generating conflicts of interest and using their dad’s influence to fuel a fundraising pyramid scheme. But boys in their mid 30s and early 40s will be boys.