Explosive new revelations just weakened Trump's impeachment defenses

[Gothmog]

Link to tweet

If Mitch McConnell is going to pull off his scheme to turn President Trump’s impeachment trial into a quick and painless sham with no witnesses, the Senate majority leader needs the story to be covered as a conventional Washington standoff — one that portrays both sides as maneuvering for advantage in an equivalently political manner.

But extraordinary new revelations in the New York Times about Trump’s corrupt freezing of military aid to Ukraine will — or should — make this much harder to get away with....

Among the story’s key points:

As early as June, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney worked to execute the freeze for Trump, and a top aide to Mulvaney — Robert Blair — worried it would fuel the narrative that Trump was tacitly aiding Russia.
Internal opposition was more forceful than previously known. The Pentagon pushed for the money for months. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-national security adviser John Bolton privately urged Trump to understand that freezing the aid was not in our national interest.
Trump was unmoved, citing Ukraine’s “corruption.” We now know Trump actually wanted Ukraine to announce sham investigations absolving Russia of 2016 electoral sabotage and smearing potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden. The Times report reveals that top Trump officials did not think that ostensibly combating Ukrainian “corruption” (which wasn’t even Trump’s real aim) was in our interests.
Lawyers at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) worked to develop a far-fetched legal argument that Trump could exercise commander-in-chief authority to override Congress’ appropriation of the aid, to get around the law precluding Trump from freezing it.
Michael Duffey, a political appointee at OMB, tried to get the Pentagon to assume responsibility for getting the aid released, to deflect blame away from the White House for its own role in blocking it. This led a Pentagon official to pronounce herself “speechless.”
Duffey froze the aid with highly unusual bureaucratic tactics, refused to tell Pentagon officials why Trump wanted it withheld and instructed them to keep this “closely held.” (Some of this had already been reported, but in narrative context it becomes far more damning.)

It’s impossible to square all this with the lines from Trump’s defenders — that there was no pressure on Ukraine; that the money was withheld for reasonable policy purposes; and that there was no extortion because it was ultimately released. As the Times shows, that only came after the scheme was outed.

[lame54]

1. Pelosi buying time...

It's working

[marble falls]

5. It most definately is. Speaker Pelosi and her team have GOT this.

[uponit7771]

7. +1

[spanone]

11. ⇧ ⇧ ⇧ ⇧ ⇧ ⇧ ⇧ ⇧⇧ ⇧ 👍🏼

[Hermit-The-Prog]

12. I think she forced a time-out for review. :D

[mopinko]

14. now if they would just dig into russian money in the senate....

[OKNancy]

2. What I would like to know is, Who is the person giving the NYTimes

all this information. Someone wants it out. Bolton?

[progressoid]

6. Bolton could have his name in lights if he spilled the beans.

History might even ignore is war mongering ways.

But I don't think he's honorable enough to do it.

[NewJeffCT]

21. I made that point several weeks back

if he was refusing to testify to promote his book (that was speculation a few weeks ago) - just imagine if he testified and it was devastating to Trump (he saved texts/emails and/or recorded phone calls) - he would be a hero and his book sales would go through the roof.

[Gothmog]

9. It sure looks like Mick Mulvaney is preparing to throw Trump under the bus

Link to tweet

And yet, the fat lady isn’t singing. On Sunday, the New York Times published a lengthy investigative report on the six-week period during which Trump withheld military aid from Ukraine as part of his extortion scheme. In the typical New York Times fashion, the piece carries way too much Trump water by exaggerating the possibility that he had a non-extortionate purpose for his actions. But even that doesn’t muddy the waters too much. The pattern of behavior shows not only that Trump was extorting Zelensky, but that he was directly and perhaps obsessively involved in running the scheme.

Reading between the lines of the (pretty much always) anonymously-sourced reporting from Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti, it appears that Mulvaney is trying hard to get the story out there that he had no idea what Trump was up to, even though he was “a key conduit for transmitting Mr. Trump’s demands for the freeze across the administration,” as the authors write:

Mr. Mulvaney is said by associates to have stepped out of the room whenever Mr. Trump would talk with [Rudy] Giuliani to preserve Mr. Trump’s attorney-client privilege, leaving him with limited knowledge about their efforts regarding Ukraine. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he learned of the substance of Mr. Trump’s July 25 call [with Zelensky] weeks after the fact.

Which is to say, Mulvaney’s associates are trying to claim he’s innocent by telling reporters he didn’t know why Trump was holding back aid, even as he was working around the clock to make sure that Trump’s desires regarding the aid hold were fulfilled. It sure sounds like Mulvaney is setting up the possibility of throwing the president under the bus, by suggesting that he was simply following orders, and that Trump and Giuliani were the only people who knew why those orders were being issued.

[crickets]

17. And everyone is supposed to believe

Mr. Mick "get over it!" Mulvaney when he spins this yarn? Alrighty then.

[Gothmog]

18. Someone will turn on trump

[crickets]

19. If Mulvaney wants to turn on Trump, I am all for it.

Anybody turning on Trump is fantastic news. Nothing would be more glorious than an all out circular firing squad! Mulvaney's just not doing a very good job at his own cover story is all.

[Gothmog]

20. The House could offer immunity and flip this person

[MFGsunny]

3. CPI might get the treasure trove early March 2020 if they win again in court.

Timing is everything. Razor's edge right here!

Let justice prevail.

[Rob WA]

4. Will self-preservation move the ball?

Pelosi is doing the right thing, not only for the party, but for the country. I think that people like Bolton will be effective frozen out of further government roles as questions about Ukraine will always do him. None of them (Mulvaney, Pompeo, Bolton) can have any comfort working for a volatile, incoherent, vindictive person prone to unsubstantiated blame for others. They are certainly his roads, but it's not to say they don't understand self-preservation.

[AllyCat]

15. Right, and welcome to posting on DU!

[Kid Berwyn]

8. Gee. I used to think Trump is a traitor.

The fact he wants Ukraine TO INVENT FAKE NEWS ABOUT THE BIDENS and hurt our nation’s security shows TRUMP IS A TRAITOR.

Sorry for shouting. I want to put the em-FASS-iss on the right arse.

[Mickju]

10. Don't stop shouting!

[UTUSN]

13. K&R

[BlancheSplanchnik]

16. The more ironclad this case is, the better FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD.

sorry for yelling.