Figured we could use a new thread for the public hearings. Plus I just wanted to write "Kuruption" cause I love Kurupt and that album.

I'm not gonna be able to follow as closely as I'd like in real time so hopefully when I check in intermittently you guys will take care of me w/links and updates as usual.

Merry Impeachmas !

Implications in here and in the media and this will all be insufferable.

If Eric B was president none of this would be happening.

Don't let the Fascists turn this into a total spectacle and let the media run with the "two teams" narrative. Take control early and don't allow any room for muddying the waters.

I liked how dems led into the hearings by starting to call this "extortion and bribery" and nixing the "quid pro quo" talk.

:(

Over a warrant from like 03 or some shit

Craziest part was I didn't even know he was acting now

And if he did his bid it would’ve been a long one.

Dems are never good at keeping things simple.

Trump knows he got a boost from the FBI announcing an investigation into hillary clinton before the election. He looked to recreate that by bribing Ukraine into announcing a fabricated investigation into his likely opponent Biden.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

which they won't care what Russian does to them.

This really won't make a difference. I think only him getting a blow job in the WH would get him impeached.

These hearings are for the uninformed voters who may "support" him but are flimsy in their support and can be swayed. Believe it or not they are out there. Your typical PA/MI/etc. "conservative" voter who has a woman problem and voted for Trump based primarily on hatred for Hillary rather than any kind of actual ideological synergy w/Individual 1; the type of voter who gives more weight to their hatred for like, "cancel culture" and bullshit like that than they do to actual positions they portend to believe in.

There are more of these people than we probably think just based on how loud the Individual 1-supportin' minority is, and that's who these hearings are for. And if *those* folks hear enough of this and are as disgusted by his kuruption and mob mentality as they should be, (assuming dems do their jobs) the shift in public opinion could force the Senate fascists' hands.

I'm not even remotely convinced that any of the above will happen, but there's a sliver of hope is all I'm saying.


>which they won't care what Russian does to them.
>
>This really won't make a difference. I think only him getting
>a blow job in the WH would get him impeached.

but I’ve definitely seen a few people in forums who were rooting for him are slowly disappearing. Maybe they just moved on but I would hope they saw the light and finally had enough embarrassment.

The momentum I felt for 3 years running has slowed to a halt amongst folks who were of the "I mean I don't *love* the guy, but .... (insert some meaningless bullshit about the economy, or something)" ilk, since this whistleblower came forward.

So yea. Like I said I'm not *confident* that anything will come of this, primarily because I assume dems will find a way to fuck it up - but there's a sliver of hope there for sure.

related to him.

Those people who begrudgingly voted for him, or just voted for him because he's not Clinton might see these events as just another layer of craziness in this president. And they may be tired of it.
They don't care about corruption, Ukraine, quid pro quo, etc. They just want this madness to be over with.

The media has beat this thing into the ground already

'Polls' claim that favorable impeachment numbers are at 50%

I don't think there will be any 'aha' moment or new information offered that moves that needle in the favorable direction

Matter of fact...my guess is the Rs murky the waters enough that those numbers drop

The Rs should focus on the legitimacy of investigating Bursima

Basically turn this hearing into days long smears on the Bidens and their corruption

IMO, what everyone got wrong here...is not drilling down on the Biden's corruption

It's indefensible IMO...and the Ds just gave the Rs a platform to slam dunk their defense

THIS WILL NOT END WELL

it started well enough but the dems did leave an opening for the cons to come in and shift the focus. thats all they have, "look at this instead!" a bunch of noise about things that dont matter but for the public it may just work. confuse the general public enough and they might just give up on caring.

dems have counter punched some but not very effectively.

if facts mattered that primary defense the cons have is that these two witnesses dont have first hand knowledge on some of this stuff. dems did hit back with well trump is welcome to come in.

i dont know what the feedback has been so far but i dont think its going as well as it should be.

How's the kool-aid in hell?

this shit fascinates me. like, really, whats your life like player? inquiring minds want to know
you probly haven't read an actual newspaper article in, how long? 5 years? more?
spill the deets!! lets expose this shit.

How are they avoiding subpoenas?

Gates' testimony confirmed that Trump lied in his written answers to Mueller about never discussing WikiLeaks with Stone. They all knew before the emails came out.


https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/12/roger-stone-trial-donald-trump-wikileaks-070368

and hes either gonna have to purger himself, plead the 5th, or drop what will be the bombshell of this whole process right on trump

>RE: Sondland is gonna have to answer for that call next week
>and hes either gonna have to purger himself, plead the 5th,
>or drop what will be the bombshell of this whole process right
>on trump

Be a hero Sondland. Save the empire.

but i feel like he might
based on the fact that he was reeeaaall quick to enter that "addendum" to his testimony when it was contradicted.
And sondland is different from trump in that he seems to be a "normal rich person" and not a narcissistic sociopath. Like, hes just a hospitality billionaire who no one had ever heard of before all this, and i bet he liked it that way. He'd probly be happy to be like "yo, i got in over my head here, im not a fucking diplomat, this is what happened"
he def aint gonna lie for trump under oath. that dude has way too much money and enough sense to know that he wants to be free and enjoy it.

... have let me down the past 3+ years, I'm not counting on it.


>but i feel like he might
>based on the fact that he was reeeaaall quick to enter that
>"addendum" to his testimony when it was contradicted.
>And sondland is different from trump in that he seems to be a
>"normal rich person" and not a narcissistic sociopath. Like,
>hes just a hospitality billionaire who no one had ever heard
>of before all this, and i bet he liked it that way. He'd
>probly be happy to be like "yo, i got in over my head here, im
>not a fucking diplomat, this is what happened"
>he def aint gonna lie for trump under oath. that dude has way
>too much money and enough sense to know that he wants to be
>free and enjoy it.

He's looking to stay out of prison.

But that might be enough, now that it's abundantly clear that Mr Trump doesn't give a fuck about the people who go down to protect him. There was a time when people thought he'd pardon them, but nobody expects that anymore.

Sondland wasn't trying to be a Trumper. He was trying to get Jeb Bush elected. He's just a fucking rich dude who wanted a swanky job. And he was incompetent enough to let Trump manipulate him. Now he might want off this rollercoaster.

It's too easy to expect big dramatic moments, though. Our media has trained us for it. So we might all be overreacting.

At this point, I think it's probably more likely that he just pulls out of the agreement to testify, says some dumb shit about executive privilege, and it rolls on from there.

the timing on the revelation really boxes sondland in. he can lie or plead the 5th or claim no recollection. but then someone is coming right behind him testifying under oath about it.

this all is working out beautifully really. its amazing how puzzle pieces start falling together when you have a witness list that actually wants to cooperate.

not sure how theyre doing both the public hearing (of Yovanovitch) and having his private testimony but i think having him testify privately before sondlands public hearing is a good move.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/impeachment-hearings-david-holmes-bill-taylor-staffer-who-overheard-trump-ask-about-investigations-set-to-appear/

https://twitter.com/jpaceDC/status/1195025340386729984
——————
MORE: The second US official who overheard the Trump-Sondland call was Suriya Jayanti, a foreign service officer based in Kyiv

https://t.co/WqOtZRFGzh
——————

He connects directly to Trump so if he says it happened, the GOP's best argument dies.

HOWEVER.

He has already changed his testimony once and is now implicated again with something he didn't mention in his original testimony or amendment so now he can be painted as a liar.

Unless the courts allow Bolton to testify and he brings the real goods, I don't see this going anywhere beyond the obvious impeachment in the House/acquittal in the Senate along party lines

convinced him to fire ambassador
https://www.salon.com/2019/11/14/flipped-giuliani-associate-claims-he-discussed-ukraine-with-trump-convinced-him-to-fire-ambassador/

i wish i had faith that this would matter.

edit: swipe


Lev Parnas, who was involved in Rudy Giuliani’s campaign to dig up dirt on the president’s political rivals in Ukraine, told associates that he discussed Ukraine with Donald Trump as early as April 2018, The Washington Post reports.

Parnas, who was indicted on campaign finance charges after he allegedly funneled foreign money into U.S. campaigns, including a $325,000 contribution to a pro-Trump super PAC, told associates he spoke with Trump for about 90 minutes at an event for big donors to the Trump PAC. Parnas and business partner Igor Fruman, who was also indicted, snagged an invite to the event after their alleged illicit donation. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

After the dinner, Parnas told associates that he and Fruman told Trump they thought then-ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was unfriendly to his interests. Trump reacted so strongly to what they told him that Trump demanded that Yovanovitch “should be fired,” according to the report.

After the dinner, Parnas posted multiple photos of the intimate event on social media, including one in which he stood alongside Trump.

“Thank you President Trump !!! Incredible dinner and even better conversation,” he wrote, erroneously tagging the location as the White House.

After the exchange with Trump, Parnas and Fruman repeatedly complained that they were “shellshocked” that Yovanovitch remained in her post for months after Trump said he wanted to fire her, an associate told The Post.

Giuliani echoed a similar complaint about how long it took to remove Yovanovitch in an interview with The Post.

“The president fired her three times and thought she was gone,” he said. “The president thought she was gone long before she was actually fired.”

After Yovanovitch was removed from her post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told Trump on their infamous July 25 call that “it was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador, because I agree with you 100 percent.”

Numerous State Department officials have said that Yovanovitch was a model diplomat. Yovanovitch testified to Congress that she was ousted after what she described as a smear campaign by Giuliani, which he allegedly launched because he believed she was interfering with his efforts in Ukraine. Yovanovitch will testify publicly before the House Intelligence Committee on Friday.

Parnas’ is the first individual to claim that he discussed Ukraine directly with Trump and suggests that the Giuliani effort in Ukraine goes back much further than the administration has suggested. The account also contradicts Trump’s claim that he did not know either Parnas or Fruman.

“Now it’s possible I have a picture with them, because I have a picture with everybody,” Trump told reporters after their arrest last month. “I don’t know what they do, but I don’t know. Maybe they were clients of Rudy.”

Trump used a similar line of defense when he claimed to “hardly know” Gordon Sondland, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration before the president appointed him as his ambassador to the European Union, after Sondland testified that Trump had tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents. Trump also had numerous private discussions with Sondland about the Giuliani effort in Ukraine, according to both Sondland and other witness testimony.

Parnas, who appeared in photos with Trump at numerous events, was so upset that Trump claimed to not know him that he fired his attorney, former Trump lawyer John Dowd, and agreed to comply with the House impeachment inquiry, his new lawyer told The New York Times.

“Mr. Parnas was very upset by President Trump’s plainly false statement that he did not know him,” attorney Joseph Bondy told the outlet.

A former senior administration official told The Post that Trump received regular updates from Giuliani about Parnas’ and Fruman’s efforts in Ukraine.

“It’s just not true that he had no idea who these guys were. He knew Lev particularly,” the official said.

Giuliani also contradicted his own client’s statement to insist that he was not the one that introduced them to the president, telling The Post that the pair had already met Trump when Giuliani first met them in the summer of 2018.

Parnas and Fruman met with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in February, Edward MacMahon Jr., another attorney for Parnas, told The Post. The pair allegedly proposed a quid pro quo in which Ukraine would launch a Biden probe and an investigation into a nonexistent Democratic server in exchange for a state visit.

Parnas and Fruman later met with an aide to Zelensky, Poroshenko’s successor, in May to deliver a threat on behalf of Giuliani, Bondy told The New York Times.

According to Parnas, he told the Zelensky aide that the new president had to announce an investigation into the Bidens in exchange for the Trump administration releasing military aid allocated by Congress. Parnas also said that Vice President Mike Pence would not attend Zelensky’s inauguration if the investigations were not announced, Bondy said. Giuliani and Fruman denied Parnas’ account. Pence ultimately did not attend the event. The administration released the aid after pressure from Republican lawmakers following media reports that the aid had been mysterious frozen.

After Trump again pressed Zelensky on the investigations on their July 25 call, Trump phoned Sondland to ask about the status of “the investigations” the following day, acting Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor testified on Wednesday.

Parnas’ attorneys said he would be willing to testify about his account to House investigators.

“There isn’t anything that Parnas did in the Ukraine relative to the Bidens or the 2016 election,” MacMahon told The Post, “that he wasn’t asked to do by Giuliani, who was acting on the direction of the president.”

Article by DAHLIA LITHWICK
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/two-theories-impeachment-hearings-republicans-democrats.html?via=taps_top

Swipe:
The Devin Nunes theory of the case would be extravagantly complex: This whodunit seems to involve House Democrats colluding with a deep state whistleblower and his attorney, who had been plotting a “coup” against the president since the weeks following his election, and who was willing to conspire with Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee to sideline the inspector general and hide the whistleblower from public view. Simultaneously, Democrats have been working assiduously with Russia toward the “funding and spreading” of the Steele dossier while “cooperating in Ukrainian election meddling” all while Hunter Biden used his preelection influence to have an impact on foreign policy under Predsident Barack Obama, and as the “politicized bureaucracy” now conspires to deliberately undermine “the president who they are supposed to be serving,” in the form of corrupt ambassadors. It’s elementary, my dear Watson: This, per Nunes, is a sprawling “hoax” engineered by disparate “elements of the FBI, the Department of Justice, and now the State Department” along with the “corrupt media” to work hand and glove to something, something “nude pictures.” The theory of the case is that all of these entities conspired for years, together, to craft a hoax and sham “Star Chamber” in order to subvert the will of the American electorate. All that’s missing, truly, is Colonel Mustard with a lead pipe in the conservatory.

The most intriguing moments of Wednesday’s hearings happened when Taylor and Kent, lifelong sane people and career diplomats, were questioned about the Republican theory of the case and, finding themselves utterly confounded, simply blinked into the klieg lights. Questioned about CrowdStrike and Donald Trump’s moon-bat theory that the firm was involved in hiding the Democratic National Committee server in Ukraine and passing the blame to Russia, George Kent appeared baffled: “To be honest, I had not heard of CrowdStrike until I read this transcript on Sept. 25,” Kent clarified. When he was asked if there was any “factual basis” to support the claim of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, Kent replied, “To my knowledge, there is no factual basis, no.”


There is, of course, a second theory of the case. It’s that Donald Trump got an absurd idea in his head about Ukraine working to hurt him in the 2016 election, and another dumb idea in his head about how to smear his likely 2020 electoral opponent, and so he created a back channel consisting of “three amigos” to effectuate a shadow foreign policy that involved withholding appropriated aid to Ukraine until its leader did a CNN interview claiming to be investigating those things. That’s it. There’s no elaborate web of shady malefactors who hate America and engaged in a yearslong, multiagency, deep state takedown of the president. It’s just a bunch of largely incompetent international affairs novices who thought themselves fractionally more adept than they really were, and the host of enablers and bag men who tried to cover it all up after the fact.

right after she testified to being intimidated by the president.

it was a showstopper and really drove home whats going on.

even on fox news they called it a crime and an additional article of impeachment.

that will dominate the coverage of todays hearing.

retrospect?

I guess lifelong neutral bureaucrats can take vocal stand for principles

Honestly, as much as I lionized Mueller and overstated what he could accomplish, I think it will be clearer that he did far too little in bringing attention to chronic impeachable / criminal behavior

i think him being somewhat combative about testifying in front of congress was his way of trying to discourage them from bringing him out in public and showing how diminished his mental capacity was.

Who'd have imagined?

i was able to catch her opening statement and like 20 minutes of questioning from the majority. stopped watching about an hour and half ago. did the majority finish their 45 minutes?

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/impeachment-hearing-11-15-19/h_aca1f53084b8db4b3d81f5c1aac48164

Once again, he could have just...not done that. Fucking dolt.

Gym Jordan: "The president's just wrasslin' with some emotions right now. How 'bout you all hit the showers and forget any of this ever happened, OK?"

https://twitter.com/RexHuppke/status/1195379470573690881

America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

Foreign Service professionals being 'denigrated' and the State Department being 'hollowed out' being key points that are not talked about enough

Their lies
Their ignorance
Their indifference
Their deceptions
Their personal failings
Like republicans have become the true bottom feeders. Taken from the end of the bar, cleaned up and given suits and 150k jobs

America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

another prisoner

https://twitter.com/JimmyDonofrio/status/1195388046608412672

>https://twitter.com/JimmyDonofrio/status/1195388046608412672

https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/1195495863247880194
------
Early impact of impeachment inquiry:

68% of Americans watched, heard, or read about the impeachment hearings.

Of those, 41% became more supportive of impeachment. Only 25% less supportive.

Source: Reuters/Ipsos poll
------

we are approaching an almost 2:1 ratio becoming more supportive of impeachment among those who have some degree of exposure to impeachment news.

this is before the yovanovitch testimony has fully sunken in.

its only gonna get worse for trump from here. not better.

when these house hearings are all said and done...we might be looking at damn near a 60-40 pro-anti impeachment split.

What a time we live in fam.

once dems decided to fan out to the news shows and all repeat the same talking points mentioning 'bribery/extortion' instead of 'quid pro quo'...quid pro quo virtually disappeared from the discussion overnight and now most people have already moved on to affirming that 'attempted bribery' (regardless of whether anything was actually delivered) is really just bribery. it doesnt need to be successfully executed to meet the legal statute.

republicans have stopped parroting the 'no quid pro quo' defense.

the table has been re-set just like that. all it takes is some co-ordination and teamwork.

He does everything out in the open and his rhetoric is easily refuted.

America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

i thought the first day was shaky as the republicans were extra loud and wrong. that usually works well for them. pretty much all the coverage i saw of it was mostly ignoring the wild conspiracy theories or pointing out that there wild conspiracy theories.

masha knocked it out the park. before it started i was questioning why she was being interviewed in public. once i heard her start talking about it i realized it could be a good move and it was definitely a good day for truth.

i wont get too hopeful but so far so good.

https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/1196434583316828160
--------
ABC/Ipsos poll:

70% of Americans believe Trump did something wrong

57% want him impeached

51% want him impeached *and* removed from office

21% made that decision after last weeks hearings

Those are some terrible numbers for Trump after just one week of public hearings.
--------

im old enough to remember when the dc cocktail class was saying impeachment was risky for *dems*.

as the recent elections in ky/la/etc have shown...impeachment obviously isnt the boon to republicans that folks thought it would be. and that was in red states where impeachment is unpopular and trump is popular. it def aint harming dems in swing states.

things are only gonna get worse for trump from here.

i honestly wouldnt be surprised if pelosi wanted to drag impeachment hearings into next year. clearly people wouldnt be buying any shit the repubs start shoveling ('politically motivated during an election year'., etc).

its gonna be funny when barr/trump drop the findings of their fbi/russia investigation and its a complete dud that fails to move the needle like they hoped.

At what point will the public opinion be so far against Trump that they can't keep blindly backing him?

like "What happened to Lindsay Graham?" every time there's a clip of him up Trump's ass, because of all the shit he talked about Trump in the primary, but the truth is Lindsey only said this things because he was 110% certain Trump was gonna lose, and now he's over correcting. Repubs have to be all but certain it's over before they pretend to take a principled stand against Trump

it is something that does need to be considered though.

one thing that does have me concerned is what happens when it goes to the senate for trial? warren already said she will suspend her campaign to attend the trial.

i think this needs to move along as fast as necessary. no faster or slower. hopefully they do have a plan regarding the timing but im trying to not worry too much about it.

But still - I'm confident that if the scope of the poll were expanded it would return similar figures. I think the tide is finally turning, specifically among those who we all knew all along could be persuaded: the moderate conservative types who were still defending Individual 1 due to lack of information, not due to any actual devotion to the man himself.

In other words, like we've all talked about many times here - Dems' messaging has made ALL the difference. The Fascist base isn't going anywhere no matter what. But the folks who could be swayed were, I'd say, fairly easily swayed once Dems decided to hone in on a central message and beat it into our heads publicly.

jesus.

here are the full poll results.

https://preview.abcnews.go.com/Politics/70-americans-trumps-actions-tied-ukraine-wrong-poll/story?id=67088534

basically 2/3 of people who actually know whats going on think trump should be booted.

the only issue is getting the information in front of people.

https://twitter.com/williamlegate/status/1195888800955678722

i wonder if they will keep showing up to his rallies.

after he was already exposed

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/470656-yovanovitch-says-solomon-stories-were-used-to-push-false-allegations

Yovanovitch says John Solomon's columns were used to push false allegations


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/politics/john-solomon-ukraine-fox-news-the-hill.html

The Man Trump Trusts for News on Ukraine

... the whistleblower" narrative ?

What a bunch of fucking clowns the fascist party is. Shameless, reprehensible.

And he's crooked to the core.

This is what Republicans do - use any and all power at there disposal to destroy their enemies.

And around 30%-40% of Americans are as irredeemable as he is.

after the call Nunes was toeing the line of outing the whistle-blower

I already had a high level of respect for him but these hearings have only heightened that respect. He is a straight-forward, serious, intelligent academic and these hearings have been extremely well-administered by him. Thank god he hasn't allowed the Fascists to turn this into the clown show they want it to be.

i was worried he would do bad when the GOP questioned him but hes settled down.

theres been a few new revelations this morning but overall im tuning it out.

williams is interesting. she seems to be very careful to not be used to validate the Dems talking points but is giving some eye opening statements.

Republicans will try to paint Vindman as a dual-agent. This seems to be their big ace in the hole as it was never brought up in closed-door hearings. Vindman seems to have taken it well and in reality it's merely a question of appearance but of course I expect it to be spun heavily by Fox and right-wing outlets.

http://giphygifs.s3.amazonaws.com/media/1218A9KM2MKzBK/giphy.gif

Caught almost the entirety of yesterday's proceedings

Volker and Morrison are dirty.

Apparently today is the bombshell

I've got Rudy taking the fall

do we even need any more hearings after that opening statement?

somebody must have hit devin nunes with the banana in the tail pipe because he clearly thought this shit was gonna play out the entirely other way.

2019 is wild lol


im behind on listening but gordon is laying it all out there. im sure trump has already tried to distance himself and discredit him.

I would drop a freestyle TODAY to capitalize on that shit.

>I would drop a freestyle TODAY to capitalize on that shit.

"talkin bout me in congress
i was rippin bong hits"

what a country

that C-SPAN will be the source for something getting sampled because that has to be part of a hook/chorus for certain.

bring on the bombs


America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1197184057249062915

he definitely was fed something entirely different as far as what to expect

We’ll see within the next five minutes if they cut away, I’m watching CSPAN so 🤷🏾‍♂️

i just wrapped up the first 45 min questioning

but i doubt this brings folks over on the senate side
best we can hope is this becomes a narrative that sticks for 2020, because trump is still gonna have to defend himself over all this on the campaign

individual testifying that was supposed to be most loyal to Trump since he only got his position as result of being a mega-donor, correct? That is pretty wild. Trump can't claim he was a 'never-Trumper' since the dude paid a grip of money just to be in The White House.

i didnt know he meant by the GOP lol

He switched to Trump later, after Jeb dropped out. He just wanted to buy an ambassadorship.

From The Hill:

"We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani," Sondland said, referring to himself, former Perry and Kurt Volker, the then-U.S. envoy to Ukraine.

"Simply put, we played the hand we were dealt. We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose an important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So we followed the president's orders."

https://twitter.com/GettyImagesNews/status/1197202729334128642


America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

https://twitter.com/fwmj/status/1197210516134998016

My co-worker had to check on me when I started cackling after reading this one.

Of course, it is, but I'm holding out... hope, if I can even call it that.

https://mobile.twitter.com/saosasha/status/1197320791706263552

To this point I think Dems had been making significant gains in terms of making their case and swaying public opinion.

Today has been bad. Sondland's not a great witness for them, and the fascists have pounced on it.

how high are you right now

Not just the facts of his testimony. The facts speak for themselves, obviously. They always have. The facts are indisputable to reasonable, objective people. And to this point, each witness has given more context and credence to the known facts, which has IMO helped move the needle of public opinion, which as we know is the only way senate fascists are going to even *consider* bringing this to trial.

But Sondland's general disposition - i.e. not taking notes, "not remembering" a ton of different details, etc. - has given a lot of ammo to the fascists and has left the Dems scrambling in response a little bit, at points. You could see Schiff getting visibly agitated with Sondland's inability and/or refusal to directly answer a question about investigation for aid, for example. Which, for optics, isn't good in terms of moving the needle of public opinion.

I'm open to different interpretations and hope that I'm wrong, of course. That's just the way I've been perceiving the events of today's testimony. I don't think Sondland has been a terrific witness for The Cause.

But I hope that the majority of people aren't seeing it the way I am, so again I'm open to your interpretation and others'. I'm just trying to be objective and realistic. Maybe it's a defense mechanism lol.

that i've seen reporting on the testimony on twitter have talked about how damning this testimony is and how it cuts deep at the GOP's stance.

.

>on twitter

^^

i mean, i get your point, but it is what it is.

now, if you mean the problem is the NEWS MEDIA doesn't talk about it so the average american finds out, i feel you there.

>now, if you mean the problem is the NEWS MEDIA doesn't talk
>about it so the average american finds out, i feel you there.

We gotta push the narrative off Twitter. 'Cause we're cheerin' dunks that the majority of the country ain't even watchin' the game.

>We gotta push the narrative off Twitter. 'Cause we're cheerin'
>dunks that the majority of the country ain't even watchin' the
>game.

We're all following "reasonable and credible" folks ...... who are reasonable and credible *TO US*. And rightfully so, I think most of us here are on the correct side of this issue and all issues with this govt and admin, and therefore we follow objective, reasonable folks accordingly.

But that's not an accurate pulse of where the entire *nation* stands on the testimony.

is there any way to even fix it at this point? i'm honestly asking and wondering if it's even possible.

I'm sort of shifting the convo but it's all part of the same larger discussion - regulating and disallowing misinformation.


>is there any way to even fix it at this point? i'm honestly
>asking and wondering if it's even possible.

its a partisan wasteland
and this impeachment is going nowhere either

which isn't to say it shouldnt be happening - all this shit needs to get out in the open, because with Hil'16 it was "BUT DA EMAILS" - with trump'20 it needs to be "BUT UKRAINE"

>which isn't to say it shouldnt be happening - all this shit
>needs to get out in the open, because with Hil'16 it was "BUT
>DA EMAILS" - with trump'20 it needs to be "BUT UKRAINE"

> with Hil'16 it was "BUT
>DA EMAILS" - with trump'20 it needs to be "BUT UKRAINE"

...is that what works to get the Right in lockstep doesn't work on the Left.

There was an NPR article recently about a guy who runs 25 fake news websites that pushes Republican conspiracy theories. He was saying how easy it is to make money by writing an article that "confirms" some outlandish theory, post it in a Trump group on Facebook, and the shit goes viral. The interviewer asked if they ever tried it on the Left and dude was like yeah, we tried but it's not successful because by like comment two, the article is debunked as fake.

So like, yes.... we need to dumb down the message for the masses. But we have to understand that we can't use the same strategy and expect it to work as well.

id love to read that article
but B

>we tried but it's not successful because by like comment
>two, the article is debunked as fake.

should be a non-issue since this MF'er actually did the thing

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs

THE INDUSTRY
We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned
November 23, 20163:31 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right."
Fanatic Studio/Getty Images

A lot of fake and misleading news stories were shared across social media during the election. One that got a lot of traffic had this headline: "FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide." The story is completely false, but it was shared on Facebook over half a million times.

We wondered who was behind that story and why it was written. It appeared on a site that had the look and feel of a local newspaper. Denverguardian.com even had the local weather. But it had only one news story — the fake one.


We tried to look up who owned it and hit a wall. The site was registered anonymously. So we brought in some professional help.

By day, John Jansen is head of engineering at Master-McNeil Inc., a tech company in Berkeley, Calif. In the interest of real news he helped us track down the owner of Denverguardian.com.

Jansen started by looking at the site's history. "Commonly that's called scraping or crawling websites," he says.

Jansen is kind of like an archaeologist. He says that nothing you do on the Web disappears — it just gets buried — like a fossil. But if you do some digging you'll find those fossils and learn a lot of history.

The "Denver Guardian" was built and designed using a pretty common platform — WordPress. It's used by bloggers and people who want to create their own websites. Jansen found that the first entry ever for the site was done by someone with the handle LetTexasSecede.

The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.

Jestin Coler, publisher of fake news sites

"That was sort of the thread that started to unravel everything," Jansen says. "I was able to track that through to a bunch of other sites which are where that handle is also present."

The sites include NationalReport.net, USAToday.com.co, WashingtonPost.com.co. All the addresses linked to a single rented server inside Amazon Web Services. That meant they were all very likely owned by the same company. Jansen found an email address on one of those sites and was able to link that address to a name: Jestin Coler.

Online, Coler was listed as the founder and CEO of a company called Disinfomedia. Coler's LinkedIn profile said he once sold magazine subscriptions, worked as a database administrator and as a freelance writer for among others, International Yachtsman magazine. And, using his name, we found a home address.

On a warm, sunny afternoon I set out with a producer for a suburb of Los Angeles. Coler lived in a middle-class neighborhood of pastel-colored one-story beach bungalows. His home had an unwatered lawn — probably the result of California's ongoing drought. There was a black minivan in the driveway and a large prominent American flag.

We rang the front doorbell and a man answered, his face obscured by a heavy mesh steel screen. I asked for Jestin Coler. The man indicated that's who he was. But when I asked about Disinfomedia, he said, "I don't know what to tell you guys. Have a good day."

We left Coler our contact information thinking he wasn't likely to talk. But a couple of hours later he had a change of heart. He sent us an email and we set up an interview.

Coler is a soft-spoken 40-year-old with a wife and two kids. He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right.

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says.

He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.

"What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened," Coler says.

Postelection, Overwhelmed Facebook Users Unfriend, Cut Back
ALL TECH CONSIDERED
Post-Election, Overwhelmed Facebook Users Unfriend, Cut Back
During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says. "It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election."

Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.

Coler's company, Disinfomedia, owns many faux news sites — he won't say how many. But he says his is one of the biggest fake-news businesses out there, which makes him a sort of godfather of the industry.

At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the "Denver Guardian" that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views. He says stories like this work because they fit into existing right-wing conspiracy theories.

"The people wanted to hear this," he says. "So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then ... our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire."


And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn't give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him. Coler fits into a pattern of other faux news sites that make good money, especially by targeting Trump supporters.

However, Coler insists this is not about money. It's about showing how easily fake news spreads. And fake news spread wide and far before the election. When I pointed out to Coler that the money gave him a lot of incentive to keep doing it regardless of the impact, he admitted that was "correct."

Coler says he has tried to shine a light on the problem of fake news. He has spoken to the media about it. But those organizations didn't know who he actually was. He gave them a fake name: Allen Montgomery.

Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn't think fake news swayed the election.

"There are many factors as to why Trump won that don't involve fake news," he says. "As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage."

Coler doesn't think fake news is going away. One of his sites — NationalReport.net — was flagged as fake news under a new Google policy, and Google stopped running ads on it. But Coler had other options.

"There are literally hundreds of ad networks," he says. "Early last week, my inbox was just filled every day with people because they knew that Google was cracking down — hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites."

Coler says he has been talking it over with his wife and may be getting out of the fake-news racket. But, he says, dozens, maybe hundreds of entrepreneurs will be ready to take his place. And he thinks it will only get harder to tell their websites from real news sites. They know now that fake news sells and they will only be in it for the money.

Below are highlights of NPR's interview with Coler.

Interview Highlights:
Tell me a little about why you started Disinfomedia?

Late 2012, early 2013 I was spending a lot of time researching what is now being referred to as the alt-right. I identified a problem with the news that they were spreading and created Disinfomedia as a response to that. The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly false or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.

What got you engaged in this?

My educational background is in political science. I've always enjoyed the ideas of propaganda and misinformation. Then I coupled that with an interest in what makes things go viral. So that led me to finding those groups and ultimately to finding contributors. But it was just something I had an interest in that I wanted to pursue.

When did you notice that fake news does best with Trump supporters?

Well, this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin's famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn't something that started with Trump. This is something that's been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it's always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

How many domains do you own and run?

Well, I would say there's somewhere around 25 domains that I am currently managing. National Report has been my bread and butter, where I've spent most of my time. I have people who work with me and for me in developing and maintaining the other sites and social media kind of stuff. So I, for the most part, focus on National Report, and a lot of the other stuff is run by other folks on the team.

So, you're the publisher of an empire.

Well I wouldn't go so far as to call it an empire but, yes, it's several sites .

How many people do you have writing for you?

It comes and goes, and as for actual employed writers, again these guys sort of make their own money through ad code. So I don't say, 'Hey, you have to write 10 stories this week' and this and that. Really, we have a more free-form idea where people, when their creativity strikes them then they can write something. And if they're in a slump then they just go dormant for a while. With that said, at any given time there's probably 20, 25 contributors all over the country. ...

Talk about the "Denver Guardian."

Well, it's kind of a side project. We have some people working on next steps in the fake-news industry, and that came from that whole discussion. We had purchased several domain names that sounded legitimate. ... More local news sort of stories. The idea was to make the sites look as legit as possible so the home page is going to be local news and local forecast, local sports, some obituaries and things of that nature, and then the actual fake news stories were going to be buried off the home page.

We've tried lots of things in the past. The dot-com-dot-co domains were something I toyed in for a while. Those I quickly got away from because you don't get away long with borrowing someone's copyright or trademark. That was something that worked very well from a fake-news perspective. People were fooled into the domain name, but that wasn't so much what we were after. So again, the next step was to go after more city-type sites. And the "Denver Guardian" was one of those sites.

You're talking about the future of this (fake-news business) which looks more insidious because it's more real?

That's the way that it's going to be. Not just from where I am. I mean, this is probably going to be my last run in the fake-news biz, but I can promise you that it's not going to go away. It's even going to grow bigger and it's going to be harder to identify as it kind of evolves through these steps. ...

Do you know who wrote the actual FBI Clinton story?

I do know who wrote the story, but only through an anonymous pen name. Privacy is something that we take very seriously in our writers group. The actual reasonings behind that story ... it's one of hundreds that have been written about mysterious deaths of Clinton associates or political foes. This one kind of took off more than others, I believe, just because of the nature of the story. The people wanted to hear this. So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional. The town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. Then, we had our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire.

Why hide your identity?

This isn't the safest business to be in, to be honest. Just the number of death threats I've received. I have a beautiful family, a beautiful life.

Some of these people that we ... bait is probably the right word — are often — let's call them the deplorables, right? They're not the safest crowd. Some of them I would consider domestic terrorists. So they're just not people that I want to be knocking on my door.

It seems like National Report is getting spoofier.

If you went to National Report today, it's specifically satire. "Chris Christie nominated to Supreme Food Court." "Sarah Palin Banning Muslims from Entering Bristol Palin." They're a little bit more offensive than some people care for their satire. I mean fat-shaming and slut-shaming isn't something that is normally met with applause. But again, it's a lot more fun in nature.

Do you make serious money?

It depends on what you would call serious money. I think I do pretty well.

Can you say how well?

I would rather not. There have been some people who have been reported on recently. The folks in Long Beach that were doing just all right stuff. They were reporting $10,000 to $30,000 a month; I think that's probably a relative ballpark.

So you're doing as well as those?

Yes.

You're making money through the ads?

Yes.

Who do you work with?

We have several advertisers. Google was one, although they shut down my account last week. We've replaced them with other advertisers.

Can I ask who?

There are literally hundreds of ad networks. Literally hundreds. Last week my inbox was just filled everyday with people, because they knew that Google was cracking down — hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites. I kind of applaud Google for their steps, although I think what they're doing is kind of random. They don't really have a process in place for identifying these things. I happen to know a very successful site that, as of today, of this morning is still serving Google ads. So it seems to be a kind of arbitrary step that they're taking either based on, I don't know if it was my reputation within the industry or specifically the "Denver Guardian" site that angered them, or I don't know what it is, but back to your question, there's hundreds of people that will work with me.

What can be done about fake news?

Some of this has to fall on the readers themselves. The consumers of content have to be better at identifying this stuff. We have a whole nation of media-illiterate people. Really, there needs to be something done.

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?

Sure.

Are you one of the biggest in the fake-news biz?

If you look at someone who has specifically sometimes peddled in fictional news then I think that I would probably be considered one of the larger sites.

As a liberal, do you have any regrets?

I don't. Again, this is something that I've been crying about for a while. But outside of that, there are many factors as to why Trump won that don't involve fake news, right? As much as I like Hillary, she was a poor candidate. She brought in a lot of baggage.

You don't feel responsible.

I do not.

Do you think you would have kept doing it if it wasn't so lucrative?

Really, the financial part of it isn't the only motivator for me. I do enjoy making a mess of the people that share the content that comes out of our site. It's not just the financial incentive for me. I still enjoy the game I guess.

Would you do this all over again?

Well, I guess it came to a head here and we're talking about it. It'll be interesting to see what happens moving forward. If I had to, if I knew specifically the "Denver Guardian" situation, that would have been handled differently. But everything else, as far as the work I've done with National Report, I'm very proud of, and I'm going to continue doing it.

i dont know how you can argue that theres no real world impact of devaluing the truth and facts
hes just as bad as the idiots hes feeding

I may actually despise more than the people who buy the bullshit he peddles.

Intelligence is a gift and a curse.

Much easier to just be stupid, and corrupt and criminal. Ha.

... referring to.

Everyone on my Twitter timeline is talking about how damning this is too. But they do that everytime something comes up about this administration. And nothing has moved the needle in terms of impeaching this asshole yet.

So yes - they're all reasonable and credible ....... yet most of the American public is neither of those things, hence why we're in the situation we are currently in, with a blatantly criminal and corrupt administration with a shithole prez who lies multiple times daily. And hence why the Russia investigation came and went with a whimper (along with Mueller's refusal to actually do the right thing, but I digress).

Every reasonable and credible person on Twitter said that the Mueller Report was "damning," too. And look who's still in the White House.

So yea - it's damning. But is it *impactful* enough to move the needle with the general public, and therefore subsequently the unreasonable, non-credible fascists in the Senate.

No. The answer is no.

And I'm not even going to disagree. But this is the thing that has been driving me nuts. These things are not going to sell themselves. The Dems need to take his testimony and frame it repeatedly in the media. Dumb it down and just say, here's what he said, here's how it confirms what we've been saying, and here is why that shit is illegal.

I had three different people at work today (who are not Trump supports) while I was listening to CSPAN out loud completely show me that this isn't going to go well. One said straight up said "Why are they even impeaching him?" and then after I cliffs noted it said "Do you think he did it?" Another told me how he doesn't like Trump, but how much he hates Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi (but of courser couldn't give me a legit reason why). And the third asked me what we're even doing in the Ukraine.

The public needs a Dr. Seuss version of this shit. It's frustrating and depressing, but the message isn't getting out there.

And like I said, IMO to this point, the prior witnesses and days of hearings, the message *was* getting out there.

But IMO today ain't one of those days. And it has completely stalled the momentum I feel that they had.


>And I'm not even going to disagree. But this is the thing
>that has been driving me nuts. These things are not going to
>sell themselves. The Dems need to take his testimony and
>frame it repeatedly in the media. Dumb it down and just say,
>here's what he said, here's how it confirms what we've been
>saying, and here is why that shit is illegal.
>
>I had three different people at work today (who are not Trump
>supports) while I was listening to CSPAN out loud completely
>show me that this isn't going to go well. One said straight
>up said "Why are they even impeaching him?" and then after I
>cliffs noted it said "Do you think he did it?" Another told
>me how he doesn't like Trump, but how much he hates Adam
>Schiff and Nancy Pelosi (but of courser couldn't give me a
>legit reason why). And the third asked me what we're even
>doing in the Ukraine.
>
>The public needs a Dr. Seuss version of this shit. It's
>frustrating and depressing, but the message isn't getting out
>there.

>Today has been bad. Sondland's not a great witness for them,
>and the fascists have pounced on it.

There's a big different between "Republicans anything in the Senate" and the above setiments. Nunes looked like he shit his pants. Drumf immediately ran out with his ridiculous flash cards. The GOP is scrambling right now. That does not translate into "This isn't going well for impeachment."

https://twitter.com/woodruffbets/status/1197323818945175552?s=21

It was my interpretation watching in real time in the context of what it does to public perception and the chances for actual removal from office.

Republicans have been scrambling the entire time. That's what you do when the entirety of your defense relies on constantly moving the goalposts. But they're been doing this for 3 years and the needle hasn't moved. What does today mean in the context of actually removing this fool from office, anything ? Isn't that the ultimate goal ?

Obviously it's been unlikely from the beginning that he'd actually be removed but like I said I was feeling momentum in the hearings up to this point. Today I didn't feel that. Hopefully my perception isn't what middle America's was.

Not a hot take. And again, I hope that you all are right and my post was wrong. I'll be here celebrating with the rest of you.

are both pretty freezing cold takes.

Again, there's a difference between "The Senate isn't going to do anything" and claiming that today went badly for those in favor of impeachment.

>Again, there's a difference between "The Senate isn't going to
>do anything" and claiming that today went badly for those in
>favor of impeachment.

There's not much of a difference. What is the goal of "those in favor of impeachment" (aka dems) ? Ultimately it's removal from office, right ?

Andddd what would be required in order to achieve that goal ?

That's right ! Senate action.

..."Today has been bad."

The news of yesterday is still that Sondland implicated everybody, not "Sondland weakened the case for impeachment."

I know it's cool and all to be fatalistic after the past three years, but you don't need to invent scenarios where things have gone bad. There's enough **other** bad news.

>The news of yesterday is still that Sondland implicated
>everybody, not "Sondland weakened the case for impeachment."

I never said "Sondland weakened the case for impeachment," clown.

Try again.

... clown.

Saying “Today was bad” and “Sondlands a bad witness” after yesterday isn’t the dumbest, but it’s in like the 95% percentile.

>“Sondlands a bad witness”

Didn't say that either.

Try again - but this type stop acting like a republican.

gop was counting on sondland. i think the dems have been suspicious about him from the get go. they know they have leverage on him.

it would be foolish for dems to put it all on him.

what i have been seeing is that the dems are shutting down the gop talking points one by one.

every time emphasizing how the white house and state department are still obstructing even more evidence.

sondland implicating so many people was huge.

then like you mentioned later the confirmation that ukraine was worried about aid as early as july 25th is huge as well.

>gop was counting on sondland. i think the dems have been
>suspicious about him from the get go. they know they have
>leverage on him.
>
>it would be foolish for dems to put it all on him.
>
>what i have been seeing is that the dems are shutting down the
>gop talking points one by one.

^^^ this is exactly what they're doing, and it's brilliant and very strategic.

But again my only point was that I don't think it will ultimately move the needle to rid the country of this cancer, which is the ultimate goal.


>every time emphasizing how the white house and state
>department are still obstructing even more evidence.
>
>sondland implicating so many people was huge.
>
>then like you mentioned later the confirmation that ukraine
>was worried about aid as early as july 25th is huge as well.

https://twitter.com/erinscafe/status/1197256164574056448

semi serious.

you know someone desperate to get some pop in the polls is gonna say/do something that inadvertently snatches the limelight off sondland. and the press will falsely equivocate and obsess over it like they just sold off our foreign policy in exchange for a political favor.

or tulsi gabbard is gonna parrot gop talking points about the hearings and completely step on dem messaging while giving right wing media their chyrons for the next 48 hours.

Better to keep the focus on the hearings.

right now you have people testifying that the order to hold up aid definitely came from the white house and most people wont see it plus it gets footnoted by the earlier sondland testimony.

one of the witnesses also just testified that ukraine was aware of a hold on the aid at least on july 25th (trump/zelensky call day). thats a pretty big revelation and kills a constant republican talking point that ukraine didnt even know aid was held up before it was released.

>right now you have people testifying that the order to hold
>up aid definitely came from the white house and most people
>wont see it plus it gets footnoted by the earlier sondland
>testimony.

There was a moment when rep Turner said "no one on this planet" then named all the big players "told you that aid was tied to political investigations, is that correct" to which Sondland responded "that's correct."

Now *I* understand the context surrounding everything he said in his testimony today. Most of us on this board obviously do - we understand that intent can - and was, in this case - be implied without an express statement of that intent. That's obvious.

But your average American hears that soundbite, and is like "sooo why are we doing this ?" I literally had this conversation with a guy who works in my office building (but not my company) today.

*That's* what I was referring to (this isn't aimed at you by the way) in my post above when I said that this "wasn't going very well." IMO this was the first hearing where the dems *didn't* gain momentum with that demographic of people. Sondland outlined in his opening statement that there *was* qui pro quo, but the fascists recovered well from that and got that and other soundbites that will be what sticks with the average American, from today. Despite the inherent and "damning" context that the rest of us understand.

I don't think that's that hot of a take.


>one of the witnesses also just testified that ukraine was
>aware of a hold on the aid at least on july 25th
>(trump/zelensky call day). thats a pretty big revelation and
>kills a constant republican talking point that ukraine didnt
>even know aid was held up before it was released.

I just read about this before opening this post and yea - that may be huge as it not only counters one of the fascists' main talking points like you said, but it simultaneously closes a loophole leftover from Sondland's testimony today.

But you didn't stay awake all night to see it

Did it snow?

The defense that someone literally didn't say...this is a bribe...this is extortion...do x if you want y...

Is not actually a legal defense

Circumstantial evidence can be weighed the same as physical evidence

That's literally the point for the hearings...to confirm from multiple parties that that was the understanding

Sondland did testify...I believe after 9.5...that he and Ukraine were fully aware that the release of aid was tied to announcing the investigations

Cooper also shot a hole in the defense...which, ironically, also isn't a legal defense...that Ukraine didn't know there was a hold on the aid

The defense that no one explicitly said those words...is not a legal defense.

The defense that Ukraine didn't know about the hold...is not a legal defense.

...and of course, we know the defense that the investigations were legitimately about Ukraine corruption...is also not true.

The Rs sound more and more idiotic as the days pass, as does anyone still buying the BS

You're never going to get 'the base' to turn

should be painfully evident, from the insurmountable facts presented, that that 'base' will hold on to any thread which could save their hero

The BIGGER takeaway from Sondland's testimony is the...everyone was in on it

Which leads to the question, does the impeachment testimony grow tentacles, and pull in everyone involved

Top to bottom, they were all complicit

Trumpster
Pence
Pompeo
Mulvaney
Perry
Sondland
Volker
Morrison
Ghouliani
= all knew, all complicit, all were helping facilitate.

Leavenworth is going to need a Trumpster wing.

At least not based on yesterday. That's all I've been referring to. Thx.

But today's testimony is already getting things back on track IMO.

https://gfycat.com/tenderbriskarcticseal-kenan-thompson

I had been watching people on Twitter and immediately after Sondland's statements there were all sorts of declarations Trump was over.

By end of the day, it seemed like more of the same.

This won't do Trump end. I think the damage is trump generally seems corrupt and his administration has too much scandal which should turn off a portion of voters but the ideal that he will be impeached seems like a stretch to me.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

I disagree

I did miss the first week's testimony in real time

But I did get to watch this week's testimony in real time

I find it fascinating TBH

The strategy is bottom up

The top/inner circle jerks want to disregard subponeas

So the Ds are calling for testimony from persons that have the information, whether firsthand or secondary

in an effort to smoke these guys out of their holes

Feels like Sondland was compelled to testify because he was caught in a lie during his initial testimony

i.e. they don't want to testify, we'll call people who will testify to what you knew

From my above reply, the implication is that they were all complicit

If they don't come forward to clarify

I expect legal charges against them.

i.e. it ain't over

>I had been watching people on Twitter and immediately after
>Sondland's statements there were all sorts of declarations
>Trump was over.
>
>By end of the day, it seemed like more of the same.
>
>This won't do Trump end. I think the damage is trump
>generally seems corrupt and his administration has too much
>scandal which should turn off a portion of voters but the
>ideal that he will be impeached seems like a stretch to me.

Twitter is filled with goobers, very smart people who are cynical liars, and bots.

watching twitter is the absolutely wrong way to watch the hearings

America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

Vindman's response on being offered the position in Ukraine was easily spun by conservative Twitter.

By end of day, if you are playing catch-up you've lost the power of the the ah-ha moments, or you're getting the same information with an underlying, constructed narrative behind it.

because i didn't read the transcripts. I imagine there are many more answers to questions that I have, like why didn't sondland participate in the July 25th call if he was going to be meeting with Zelensky on the 26th? Shit just seems off.

Twitter is the home of information warfare and spin right now. Nothing on it is to be trusted without verification. That goes for mass shootings, flight times, obituaries, hearing testimony, rap song lyrics, etc. Nothing on there is trustworthy which is why it's such a shame that our news media has become so enraptured by it.

America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

it almost seems like someone was competent enough to purposely separate what everyone knew. only some people have knowledge on some aspects while others have direct knowledge of other aspects.

like brew and others have mentioned the facts are there, have been there.

right now its about convincing enough republicans and the public about it and why it should result in impeachment.

until the day is over, folks can digest, and read the longform journalist you trust write about it.

That is, if you aren't going to watch yourself.

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

got nunes interrupting his own handpicked counsel.

repubs just giving up on asking questions.

cuz damn near any question they *did* ask backfired and just elicited more damning testimony about trump/sondland.

her shit is masterful.

I still don't think it will be enough to get the job done ultimately (never did, but had hope after last week) but yea - she came off expertly. Well-prepared, well-spoken, and like you said she roasted every fascist pillar of defense and talking point in real time.

Really well done.

Plus when she said "fact" it sounded like "fucked" so that was a nice added layer of entertainment.

like the Republicans wanted to claim last week

They were just taking turns grandstanding instead of inviting her responses, until they shifted to Holmes

To be expected, but wild to witness. They just took their 5 minutes to present their own cases ... I loved when Schiff was like "wait did you have a question or ... ?"

he has been asking the most dull questions in all the hearings. today he basically joined the rest of the GOP in saying he has not seen proof for impeachment. i think he didnt vote no on the inquiry.

for a little bit i thought he was about to flip and say he now did see there was proof but instead he joined the rest of the herd. i know his vote isnt needed in the house but some members of the GOP do need to break from the herd so the momentum can build.

no quid pro quo no quid pro quo

its like being pulled over for speeding and immediately saying "i didnt rob the bank!"

funny and true.

moons ago, Bernie said if we’re (dems) still talking about trump. trump wins again.
here we are...

Don't talk about Trump ?

Bernie is wrong.

They will drag Biden and his son through the mud.

Biden loses the worst in this situation and trump will be re elected. Why? Because trump don’t like abortion or homosexuality
... "A Beautiful Struggle"
https://m.facebook.com/jamelabullock
Www.reverbnation.com/jamela

MELa
Musically.Entertaining.Lyrically.Alluring.

Nah can't do nothing, that's giving up.

Trump can’t be beaten.

And I don’t like trump I just know a winner when I see one. When he falls it will be his own doing.
... "A Beautiful Struggle"
https://m.facebook.com/jamelabullock
Www.reverbnation.com/jamela

MELa
Musically.Entertaining.Lyrically.Alluring.

You've given up.

Sometimes you have to just take the L and admit defeat
... "A Beautiful Struggle"
https://m.facebook.com/jamelabullock
Www.reverbnation.com/jamela

MELa
Musically.Entertaining.Lyrically.Alluring.

The Redskins was wrong from the jump but this, damnnnnnnnnnnn

Parnas ready to snitch

he sounds EXACTLY like E.B. Farnum on Deadwood he also acts exactly like E.B. Farnum on Deadwood

yikes! (though we should've seen this coming if we're being honest).

-----

The impeachment inquiry into US President Donald Trump has done little to change the American public's views about him and may even have alienated some swing voters, according to new polling.

Early support for impeaching Mr Trump has faded despite days of sobering testimony from non-partisan veteran public servants on an alleged campaign to pressure Ukraine to open an investigation damaging to his political rival Joe Biden, suggesting that America has made up its mind on the President.

A Nov 17-20 Emerson National poll - after four days of public hearings - found that 43 per cent back impeachment, down from 48 per cent in October.

The biggest swing came from independent voters with 49 per cent now opposing impeachment, up from 34 per cent in October.

It also noted that 69 per cent of those polled have been watching or following the hearing.

The Emerson poll suggests the impeachment inquiry may have bolstered Mr Trump's position, with his approval rating up from 43 per cent last month to 48 per cent.

"The impeachment at this point isn't having any effect because it's not moving independents or Republicans against Trump," said Fordham University political scientist Monika McDermott at a briefing about the polling results.

"If something this major can't shake the core of support that he has, then I don't see anything really able to do that. So I don't see impeachment as really having any kind of lasting impact on the elections."

The findings supported another national tracking poll released by Morning Consult and Politico last Tuesday, after the hearings had started. It found that 46 per cent of independents opposed impeaching Mr Trump and removing him from office compared with 39 per cent who supported it.

A third poll - by Marquette Law School and released a day later - found that 53 per cent of voters in the swing state of Wisconsin felt the President should not be impeached compared with 40 per cent who thought he should.

With the public hearings having wrapped up on Thursday, Democrats are now deciding whether and how to draw up articles of impeachment, which the House would then have to vote on.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her party would not wait for the courts to decide whether to grant subpoenas of other key witnesses, calling the strategy vulnerable to stonewalling from Republicans.

If the House votes to impeach, the next step will be a Senate trial to convict or acquit the President.

Mr Trump told Fox News on Friday that he would welcome a trial.

Professor McDermott noted: "His supporters... just believe this is a witch hunt, and the Democrats are just out to get Trump and not actually prosecuting what is a valid case.

"As long as they continue to believe that, there's no reason for them to change their views or their support of Trump.

"They feel as though he's being unfairly prosecuted."
-->

Fuck these polls - do the right thing.

and then the Senate is not going to do anything about it and he'll serve out the rest of the term. Then, we deal with the aftermath of this process and how it will affect the 2020 elections, if at all.

Impeachment should've been launched three years ago. There have been dozens of impeachable offenses by this President - many of which have been far more egregious than this Ukraine call. I just question the wisdom of launching impeachment right now prior to the elections instead of building the energy and momentum to soundly defeat Trump in the ballot box.
-->

... of the impeachment probe to just the Ukraine call/situation. I've said that from the beginning. Articles could be 20,000 pages long.

>... of the impeachment probe to just the Ukraine
>call/situation. I've said that from the beginning. Articles
>could be 20,000 pages long.

To have it so narrowly focused is bizarre. If you're going to launch impeachment - go all in for it. I think it really undermines the strength of the case against Trump to have this selective outrage over the Ukraine call (and to have the Biden clouding the proceedings). There have been dozens of instances where they can go after Trump and impeach him - and most of them are uncluttered with political rival (Biden) baggage.

These unforced errors are costly and unnecessary.


-->

... "A Beautiful Struggle"
https://m.facebook.com/jamelabullock
Www.reverbnation.com/jamela

MELa
Musically.Entertaining.Lyrically.Alluring.

"independents or Republicans"

>"The impeachment at this point isn't having any effect because
>it's not moving independents or Republicans against Trump,"
>said Fordham University political scientist Monika McDermott
>at a briefing about the polling results.

I would be embarrassed at attaching my name, field, and institution to analysis like this. And I'm a nobody, in an even less rigorous field, who is an adjunct mercenary and doesn't even have an institution so much as a bare desk in one of the three places that pay me.

But for real, the above isn't thoughtful. Nor is implicitly accepting notion that there is *any* way of criticizing Trump that would be seen as legitimate by Republicans.

I still wish the Dems had focused more firmly on the obvious crime of enriching himself with public funds though. The Ukraine thing is clearer than the Russia thing, but double dipping by charging taxpayers so the secret service can do their job at his real estate holdings is the sort of person that anybody who's ever checked to see if the coast is clear before they pocketed some non-dairy creamer can get behind.

>"independents or Republicans"
>
>>"The impeachment at this point isn't having any effect
>because
>>it's not moving independents or Republicans against Trump,"
>>said Fordham University political scientist Monika McDermott
>>at a briefing about the polling results.
>
>I would be embarrassed at attaching my name, field, and
>institution to analysis like this. And I'm a nobody, in an
>even less rigorous field, who is an adjunct mercenary and
>doesn't even have an institution so much as a bare desk in one
>of the three places that pay me.
>
>But for real, the above isn't thoughtful. Nor is implicitly
>accepting notion that there is *any* way of criticizing Trump
>that would be seen as legitimate by Republicans.
>
>I still wish the Dems had focused more firmly on the obvious
>crime of enriching himself with public funds though. The
>Ukraine thing is clearer than the Russia thing, but double
>dipping by charging taxpayers so the secret service can do
>their job at his real estate holdings is the sort of person
>that anybody who's ever checked to see if the coast is clear
>before they pocketed some non-dairy creamer can get behind.
>

Democrats being typically timid, they tied their hands.

Ukraine. Enriching himself. Obstructing justice in
Mueller investigation. All of it.

This desire to rush through it and make it “easier to
understand” is a fucking huge mistake.

They should have piled on. Make senators like
Collins pick a side on all of it- not just Ukraine.

“Inappropriate but not impeachable” will be everywhere
for months now.

Why the fuck did they limit themselves?

I read a tweet that said it kind of makes it look like
Dems didn’t care about anything until Biden’s name
came up.

I wouldn’t go that far, but they sure left the door
open for that argument.

You'll probably see this referenced in AP news wires - I think The Times (London) ran this as well.

Are you disputing the veracity of the polling data?
-->

If these are the links why leave them out ?


https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/poll-shows-impeachment-probe-strengthening-trumps-position

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/

And the 48% approval numbers. Has Trump ever
been at 48%?

Maybe he just forgot to include the links.

That’s the poll that he’s always trumpeting and skews right.

Polls that Drumf is referencing today saying impeachment approval is “falling like a stone” or in the mid 20s don’t actually exist.

That’s the poll that he’s always trumpeting and skews right.

Polls that Drumf is referencing today saying impeachment approval is “falling like a stone” or in the mid 20s don’t actually exist.

Multiple sources have cited the data.

This is from The Hill as of this morning:

----

An impeachment vote in the House seems inevitable, but it does not appear that any GOP lawmakers will back an article of impeachment. And it remains to be seen whether voters will support the Democratic action or punish the party for going forward with impeachment.

“There’s always a disconnect between Washington and what people are thinking out in the states,” said Dick Harpootlian, the former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a surrogate for former Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

And Democrats have some worries about impeachment fatigue.

“After three years, the country was sick of hearing about Russia, and now the average American either doesn’t understand or doesn’t care about the case we’re making on Ukraine,” said one Democratic fundraiser.

According to the FiveThirtyEight average of national polls, support for impeachment has shrunk from 50.3 percent in mid-October to 46.3 percent presently, while opposition has risen from 43.8 percent to 45.6 percent.

Among independents in the FiveThirtyEight average, support for impeachment topped out at 47.7 percent in late October but has sunk to 41 percent over the past three weeks.

YouGov is among the polls registering that decline, with independent support for impeachment dropping from 39 percent earlier this month to 35 percent now and opposition increasing from 35 percent to 40 percent.

An Emerson University survey found an even more extreme flip among independents.

In October, independents supported impeachment 48 percent to 35 percent in Emerson’s polling. In the new poll released this week, independents opposed it by a 49 percent to 34 percent margin. In that time, overall support for impeaching Trump swung from 48 percent in favor and 44 percent against to 45 percent in opposition to impeachment and 43 percent in favor.

The latest Morning Consult survey was the third poll released this week to register a flip among independents. That survey also registered a new low among all voters in favor of impeachment at 48 percent.

But perhaps most alarming for Democrats is a new survey of Wisconsin from Marquette University. In Wisconsin, a key swing state in next year’s election, Marquette found that 40 percent supported impeaching Trump and removing him from office, while 53 percent opposed it. In October, before the hearings began, support was at 44 percent and opposition was at 51 percent.

The Marquette survey found Trump leading in Wisconsin against three top Democratic challengers after trailing all of them in the previous poll.

Support for impeachment among Republicans and independents in the survey was mostly steady, but support among Democrats dropped by 7 points.

Marquette pollster Charles Franklin described the shift as modest and said it could be driven by voters viewing impeachment as an extreme measure. Franklin said that when former Gov. Scott Walker (R) was being recalled in Wisconsin, even some Democrats who despised Walker were conflicted about the recall effort and viewed it as an overreach.

“It was surprising to find that Democrats are a little less supportive of impeachment now. They appear a little less unified in their opposition,” Franklin said. “It moves the race from being a small Democratic lead that was mostly inside the margin of error to a small Trump lead that is mostly inside the margin of error and basically reaffirms Wisconsin’s status as a battleground state.”

The Marquette survey follows a New York Times–Siena College poll that found majorities in the key swing states of Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and Florida oppose removing the president from office through impeachment. Majorities or pluralities do support an investigation of Trump, however.

-->

forgive me for being skeptical. Also, I'm not really familiar about the Straights Times of Singapore. Do you read them often?

Bet.

-->

That doesn’t sound like a huge pile of bullshit at all.

https://twitter.com/alx/status/1198643746696572928?s=21

1. Vex cites a news article regarding a poll from Emerson, a group that at the very least is generally regarded as pretty mainstream.

2. Though the article he quoted came from a kind of obscure source, the Emerson poll on impeachment been reported in number of spots, including Emerson's own site: http://emersonpolling.com/2019/11/21/november-national-poll-support-for-impeachment-declines-biden-and-sanders-lead-democratic-primary/

3. However, because this seems like good news for the President, it's also been picked up by a number of conservative leaning spots like NYPost and The Hill

4. In an effort to demonstrate that our man Vex has linked something from a ritually impure spot, you appear to have put up a twitter post from a private citizen who works for Turning Point USA who is purporting to use the same poll to demonstrate that Trump is scoring very positive numbers among black voters

5. This person, challenged on his post, linked to the same piece on Emerson's own site, which does in fact affirm their numbers for impeachment polling but which does not feature anywhere, at any time, approval numbers for Trump among black voters

It's possible I've omitted a step here or misunderstood a component of somebody's argument, but this was getting incredibly weird and it seemed worth reviewing.

i don't trust these polls, they seem like clickbait to me. you may believe that Trump has 34.5% of the black vote, I do not. I don't know anything about the Singapore news source, but to me The Hill is Fox dressed up as real news. Usually when people post an article, they link it, or at least say where the article is from, so I was really just curious to know where the article was from, which is something I like to know when reading an article.

The guy made it up.

>i don't trust these polls, they seem like clickbait to me.
>you may believe that Trump has 34.5% of the black vote, I do
>not.

Not trusting polls is... whatever. But you didn't link to an untrustworthy poll - you linked to an untrustworthy human who was literally making up a poll to support his view. When pressed for support, he linked an article that had no mention of the poll he was citing. All that demonstrated was that he was a liar.

>I don't know anything about the Singapore news source,
>but to me The Hill is Fox dressed up as real news. Usually
>when people post an article, they link it, or at least say
>where the article is from, so I was really just curious to
>know where the article was from, which is something I like to
>know when reading an article.

Again, those aren't the folks who did the poll. Emerson did the poll. I linked to their press release on it. If you don't like the poll, then take it up with them.

The folks who did the poll said

"The pollster warns that results for subsets of voters have a higher margin of error than the 2.9 percentage points the poll has as a whole. For black voters, the margin is 8.3 percent, according to Spencer Kimball, assistant professor at Emerson College who oversees the polling."

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trump-approval-among-blacks-above-34-percent-emerson-polls-shows_3155737.html


>The guy made it up.
>
>>i don't trust these polls, they seem like clickbait to me.
>>you may believe that Trump has 34.5% of the black vote, I do
>>not.
>
>Not trusting polls is... whatever. But you didn't link to an
>untrustworthy poll - you linked to an untrustworthy human who
>was literally making up a poll to support his view. When
>pressed for support, he linked an article that had no mention
>of the poll he was citing. All that demonstrated was that he
>was a liar.
>
>>I don't know anything about the Singapore news source,
>>but to me The Hill is Fox dressed up as real news. Usually
>>when people post an article, they link it, or at least say
>>where the article is from, so I was really just curious to
>>know where the article was from, which is something I like
>to
>>know when reading an article.
>
>Again, those aren't the folks who did the poll. Emerson did
>the poll. I linked to their press release on it. If you don't
>like the poll, then take it up with them.

I feel like I'm losing my mind, but that article cites Emerson polls and discusses them at length with somebody who conducts those polls. When the citations link to Emerson's cite, they go to the following two articles:

https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/october-national-poll-biden-sanders-warren-maintain-front-runner-status-in-democratic-primary

https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/november-national-poll-support-for-impeachment-declines-biden-and-sanders-lead-democratic-primary

I'm ready to make all kind of concessions that I read too fast or skipped over something important, but I haven't yet found anything in those articles about Trump's support among black voters. Like, I'm not saying that somebody is spinning poll data. I'm saying those two articles are about different polls entirely.

Not even arguing at this point. Just want somebody to show me the actual poll that keeps getting cited because it's getting weird.

>I feel like I'm losing my mind, but that article cites
>Emerson polls and discusses them at length with somebody who
>conducts those polls. When the citations link to Emerson's
>cite, they go to the following two articles:
>

Nothing here that should make you lose your mind.

>https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/october-national-poll-biden-sanders-warren-maintain-front-runner-status-in-democratic-primary
>
>https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/november-national-poll-support-for-impeachment-declines-biden-and-sanders-lead-democratic-primary
>
>I'm ready to make all kind of concessions that I read too fast
>or skipped over something important, but I haven't yet found
>anything in those articles about Trump's support among black
>voters. Like, I'm not saying that somebody is spinning poll
>data. I'm saying those two articles are about different polls
>entirely.
>

Starting with the second link in your reply.

If you you scroll down the page and look on the right side you will come to the word "Files" underlined. Beneath that word is Full Results and download. which means you can look at the questions and percentages of those who answered and how they answered. It's the poll.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you will see Caller ID with "The National Emerson College poll was conducted November 17-20, 2019 under the Supervision of Assistant Professor Spencer Kimball. The sample consisted of registered voters, n=1,092, with a Credibility Interval (CI) similar to a poll’s margin of error (MOE) of +/- 2.9 percentage points...It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, party breakdown, ethnicity and region carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced."


>Not even arguing at this point. Just want somebody to show me
>the actual poll that keeps getting cited because it's getting
>weird.

Here is guy on twitter talking about it.

https://twitter.com/v_theclash/status/1199449880072261632

Dude doesn't want to deal with the substantive merits of the discussion so he throws out some obtuse point that nobody is making (the purported 34.5% black support for Trump) to try and deflect.

He also would have you think that Krystal Ball, Aaron Mate & Glenn Greenwald are "conservative-leaning" lol. Again, a deflective attempt to not deal w/ the actual point/data being discussed.

-->

but i do think he is trash, you can keep reading him if you like.

>but i do think he is trash, you can keep reading him if you
>like.

I tend to read Pulitzer Prize winning journalists over establishment-slobbering corporate pundits --- but hey - do you.

-->

and aaron mate regularly runs hit pieces on democrats for the partisan 'investigative' side of realclearpolitics.

thats all you need to know.

B-b-but how can the right love people on the left??!

is incredibly dangerous. It makes us stronger to have whistle-blowers, pulitzer prize journalists, and politicians within the progressive/democratic sphere have the guts to call out their own when necessary - and unfortunately it's been necessary far too often over the past 4 years.

-->

If you had "we suck so badly at crimes that it's not possible that we were trying to do crimes" as the GOP's eventual default defense, things are looking promising for you.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-intelligence-committee-possession-video-audio-recordings-giuliani/story?id=67276448

House Intelligence Committee in possession of video, audio recordings from Giuliani associate Lev Parnas
ByKATHERINE FAULDERS, JOHN SANTUCCIandALLISON PECORINNov 24, 2019, 5:31 PM ET

The House Intelligence Committee is in possession of audio and video recordings and photographs provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly played a key role in assisting him in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

The material submitted to the committee includes audio, video and photos that include Giuliani and Trump. It was unclear what the content depicts and the committees only began accessing the material last week.

"We have subpoenaed Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman for their records. We would like them to fully comply with those subpoenas," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN Sunday, with a committee spokesperson adding they would not elaborate beyond the chairman's comments.

An attorney for Parnas, Joseph A. Bondy, also declined to comment, directing ABC News to a statement released earlier in the day Sunday reading in part, "Mr. Parnas has vociferously and publicly asserted his wish to comply with his previously issued subpoena and to provide the House Intelligence Committee with truthful and important information that is in furtherance of justice, not to obstruct it."

The statement goes on to say, "His evidence and potential testimony is non-partisan, and not intended to be part of a battle between the left and the right, but rather an aid in the determination by our government of what is in the best interests of our nation."

Sources tell ABC News the tapes were provided as part of that congressional subpoena issued to Parnas, and the former Giuliani ally also provided a number of documents both in English and Ukrainian to the committee in two separate productions, sources told ABC News.

However, some of the material sought by congressional investigators is already in possession of federal investigators within the Southern District of New York and thus held up from being turned over, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Parnas' associate, Fruman, has not cooperated with the committee.

Parnas, a Ukraine-born, American businessman, was subpoenaed last month by House committees at the same time as Fruman. The two men had previously announced through their attorney at the time that they would not be complying with the subpoena.

Separate from the House impeachment probe, Parnas and Fruman were arrested earlier this fall at the Dulles International Airport just outside of Washington, with one-way international tickets, and charged in a criminal campaign finance case in the Southern District of New York. Accused of allegedly circumventing campaign finance laws against straw donations and foreign contributions, Parnas and Fruman pleaded not guilty.

According to the indictment, Parnas sought then-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s ouster earlier this year along with his efforts to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the president’s political rival, matters that have repeatedly emerged in the House impeachment inquiry.

Giuliani’s relationship with Parnas and Fruman is the subject of a criminal investigation in the Southern District of New York, that case will have its next court date early next month.

https://media2.giphy.com/media/CDe7QkuZbykWA/giphy.gif

really? right there in the table of contents?

lol.

"where ashton at" ~ guilty simpson

my understanding was that the white house meeting was enough. reading the below it looks like it says a meeting is not considered an official act.

https://www.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/microsites/public-integrity/a_guide_to_commonly_used_federal_statutes_in_public_corruption_cases.pdf

is the argument that the white house meeting is considered something of value and announcing the investigation is considered an official act?

seems the conversation is being focused on the aid being withheld. its logical that the aid was withheld to add pressure on ukraine. so far there is no direct evidence of that in the public but is it even required?

been going through it. any thoughts?
https://context-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/documents/ac8c9c61-bf69-4714-a683-0a6e0a86f80b/note/05e7033d-329b-445a-bf6e-093a0d4c7c7c.pdf#page=1

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/impeachment-hearings-live-updates/2019/12/03/50fec098-15ba-11ea-8406-df3c54b3253e_story.html

https://gfycat.com/tenderbriskarcticseal-kenan-thompson

i cant say im fully on that side anymore but it would be what you should put your money on.

i wouldnt be surprised if they gave in to this censure bs that keeps being propped up every week.

in my glass half full outlook i wonder if the GOP resistance will break once it gets past the house. maybe they are just playing this hard of defense as a last ditch attempt to prevent a vote on impeachment. once that fails then some (many?) GOP will do the right thing.

im curious to what tomorrows hearings will be like.

n/m

Sign me up for a possible order of crow as well, but it seems very hard to believe that even all this could get through Trump's armor of "conservative" cravenness.

It's official.

He could be impeached by the house, or they might not get all the Dem votes needed. We'll see

What I'm saying is nothing will actually happen. He won't get removed from office. His electoral prospects won't be hurt. Nothing of consequence will come out of this.

>He could be impeached by the house, or they might not get all
>the Dem votes needed. We'll see
>

You have doubts but you do not want to go on record and say the Dems will not impeach him.

>What I'm saying is nothing will actually happen. He won't get
>removed from office. His electoral prospects won't be hurt.
>Nothing of consequence will come out of this.

He could get hurt, Dems had to roll the dice. Something could come out of this, plus he will have that big I on his chest.

my plant is mad
my apple is mad
the cloud is mad

dudes are literally handpicking the refs and still failing. remember when mccabe was supposed to be getting indicted?

https://twitter.com/gregpmiller/status/1202367530251239424
--------
The prosecutor Barr picked to lead probe of origin of Trump-Russia investigation has said he sees no evidence to back right-wing conspiracy theories that it was a trap or set-up. scoop from @mattzap @DevlinBarrett

https://t.co/X8gK0yRcqh
--------

what ever that means

ruining mythbusters for me

https://atariage.com/forums/uploads/monthly_03_2017/post-1820-0-33550100-1490469678.jpg

I can't say enough how wild it is that there are still people who cheerlead this mob. It's literally central intelligence, federal law enforcement, scientists, constitutional scholars, etc. Basically everyone with a brain vs. The Cult. And people among us are eating it up, still. After all of this.

It's insane. Still don't believe it's real.

https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1202594066942353409

@neal_katyal
Impt note on future: If the Senate doesn’t vote to convict Trump, or tries to monkey w his trial, he could of course be retried in the new Senate should he win re-election. Double jeopardy protections do not apply. And Senators voting on impeachment in the next months know this.

@KennethBaer Replying to @neal_katyal
If impeached and removed, could he run again?

@neal_katyal
The senate has the option of disqualifying him from future office holding. That’s a separate vote. In the constitution itself. My book goes into detail on it.


^^^Sorry if somebody already posted somewhere, but wow. I had no idea the law was set up this way.

Kind of sheds a whole new light on the power in even a weak Dem electoral outcome (eg. winning Sen but not WH).

Props to the Framers lol

so the current senate could decided not to impeach, then they can decide to vote on retiring him? if approved then hes not eligible to run in 2020 or in the future?

the new senate wouldnt really factor in right? if he doesnt get impeached and wins the election there is no point to retire him as that would come into play after the second term?

>^^^Sorry if somebody already posted somewhere, but wow. I had
>no idea the law was set up this way.
>
>Kind of sheds a whole new light on the power in even a weak
>Dem electoral outcome (eg. winning Sen but not WH).
>
>Props to the Framers lol

Cause even if they win majority in the senate, they still need a 2/3rd supermajority to vote him out which we know won't happen with the complicit repugs.

So nothing really changes in that regard even if dems win the Senate.

And I give it about a 0.5% chance that we even win the majority, nevermind gain that many seats.

yesterday

But their sheep keep falling for it.

he's just a boy

https://media.giphy.com/media/GAgm5358qp55u/giphy.gif
https://media.giphy.com/media/f1tdtyDd6qnJe/giphy.gif

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/16/politics/carly-fiorina-vital-trump-impeach/index.html

these people are so neutered.

>https://media.giphy.com/media/GAgm5358qp55u/giphy.gif
>https://media.giphy.com/media/f1tdtyDd6qnJe/giphy.gif
>

^^^^^Exactly

>https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/12/16/politics/carly-fiorina-vital-trump-impeach/index.html

Called her ugly and she still voted for him and will do it again.

https://www.trumpisnotabovethelaw.org/event/impeach-and-remove-attend/search/?logo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYKvo26XoWI

but let Brew and Reeq tell it, the Dems are doing a GREAT job

FOH man

im dying.

never trump republicans got their ass handed to them twice by barack obama then lost their *entire* party to a reality tv buffoon who never won an election at any level before.

if there are any poster children for failure to take the temperature of modern politics...its them.

they sound good to lululemon shoppers, organic kombucha sippers, and peloton riders tho.

because it would give him something to for re-election on and energize his base.

meanwhile....

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1207277859519238154

Of course he is going to make his case on Twitter.

Will it rally his base? We shall see

Joe Scarborough ? smh

They believe gives the POTUS absolute, unquestionable power

i.e.they would defend him by saying he can't commit a crime or be tried, etc...

before they finally vote?

i was going to watch but i dont have interest in hearing the republicans rant all day.

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/471371-trump-fans-deem-nixon-watergate-actions-not-impeachable-when


A group of President Trump’s supporters said in interviews with TV producers that Trump shouldn’t be impeached over a number of incidents — despite the fact that those incidents were actually facts surrounding the Watergate scandal and former President Nixon.

A "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" segment titled "Lie Witness News" that aired Tuesday showed a television crew walking around Hollywood and interviewing random people about whether Trump should be impeached for committing certain acts.

But instead of listing the allegations Trump is actually facing in House Democrats' impeachment inquiry, the crew asked people about facts related to Nixon and Watergate.

“You heard the news that Trump was accused of breaking into the office and stealing sensitive documents,” a producer asks a woman at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “Do you think that should be an impeachable offense?”

ADVERTISEMENT
In another clip, the crew member asks, “Woodward and Bernstein wrote an article in The Washington Post that’s pretty damning to the president and all his men,” referring to the journalists’ role in uncovering the Watergate scandal and “All the President’s Men,” the book and movie based on their reporting. “Is that just The Washington Post being haters again?”

Later, the producer asks another person why they think "people are calling the whistleblower by the name Deep Throat" and whether they think Vice President Gerald Ford will pardon Trump if he resigns.

At the end of the segment, Kimmel says, “We’re all in trouble.” He adds, in reference to Nixon’s first name, “It’s a Rich hunt!”

Trump is not accused of any of the incidents mentioned in the segment.

In 1972, five burglars tied to Nixon’s reelection campaign broke into the Democratic National Committee’s offices, and the former president worked to cover up the scandal before resigning in 1974 ahead of a House vote on articles of impeachment.

Trump is facing an impeachment inquiry over his dealings with Ukraine and whether he pressured the country’s president to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, his political rival.

news.

just incessant lying. not subjecting myself to that bullshit. i'm not one of those cats that watch fox to see 'what the enemy is thinking'. fuck that. self-care. that's not good for my blood pressure.

and this cavalcade of asshats... parroting a script that is patently, obviously false, and easily contradictable. brazenly. it would be more bearable if i didn't know that there were 45% of the electorate who thinks and processes like this.



peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

it just gets to the point where you hear their programming and it becomes repulsive.

America has imported more warlord theocracy from Afghanistan than it has exported democracy.

You know when in part 1 they'll find a woman horribly mutated on a tv show, find the villian, get the evidence and have him NOT confess but you KNOW he did it becuase he's smiling and taunting them - and then in part 2 they show the trail.

And the lawyer for the guy who murdered the women tries to accuse the police - or the entire legal system - of being the REAL criminals.

Republicans = those lawyers.

I appreciate and support knowing the ledge and putting self-care first and foremost.

Pretty much...just gotta decide where to put the
goal post this time.

I predict something about “going her own way”
something something bipartisan something
something moving the country forward something
real issues real Americans something space for
Trump voters in the tent

he'll be in good company as the alt-right is quite happy w/ the Mommy Candidate at the moment

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-impeachment-inquiry/live-blog/live-updates-house-votes-impeachment-president-trump-n1103576/ncrd1104631#liveBlogHeader


After doing my due diligence in reviewing the 658-page impeachment report, I came to the conclusion that I could not in good conscience vote either yes or no," she said in a lengthy statement issued immediately after her vote was cast.

"I could not in good conscience vote against impeachment because I believe President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing," she added.

"I also could not in good conscience vote for impeachment because removal of a sitting president must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country."

https://twitter.com/EmmaVigeland/status/1207483467505819649

i had no idea she has the least female support of any candidate.

like the person I imagine when that term is used:

a person who appears to embrace centrist liberal policies on one hand, and HARD RIGHT bullshit on the other

as opposed to the usual centrist who is basically a liberal '80s Republican

"what if Ron Paul was a Democrat... and female".

I think she hooks certain "progressives" for talking shit about imperialism... but then she gets reacharounds from the BJP in India

who doesnt have the spine to vote yes or no and chooses to just vote present on this??

once it was announced it was tulsi it made sense.

her reasoning is stupid too.

https://youtu.be/he_XA7pNQHA?t=47

Gabbard lays low after voting ‘present’ on impeachment

The Hawaii Democrat’s campaign canceled a media availability in New Hampshire.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/20/tulsi-gabbard-lays-low-after-present-impeachment-vote-088266

a few weeks back....weird wonder why?

She's probably just waiting to go back or maybe Breitbart again (#alloutletsmatter). They'll understand. They always do. They're her biggest fans.


I actually find it incredibly fucking insulting that he runs up in here, of all places, to whitesplain to us how WE just don't get it.

Fuck him and that awful bitch he capes for.

We've got incels in Pass the Popcorn and regressive 'left-wing' white dudes in GD.

This place, man.

No, not a stooge at all.

https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/774741598311776256

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3a8z5w/nancy-pelosi-just-made-a-major-impeachment-power-play

If she is able to put off Senate trial and pull this off, it could drive trump and Senate Republicans insane.

one of trumps most powerful allies...and the most influential member of the house freedom caucus...has abandoned his re-election campaign not even 24 hours after it.

(morning joe clip for seasoned vet lol)
https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1207628070640914432

im sure the media will continue to pump out stories about the risks of impeachment on democrats in 2020 tho.

Say what you will about the overall support for impeachment. But Meadows is definitely not hurt by this or any other Trumpy positions, is he?

Or does this have something to do with redistricting?

My first thought was just that he's planning to be Trump's next chief of staff (and next-to-next "former chief of staff"), and he doesn't want Roy Cooper to appoint his successor.

Are the club fed perks worth it?

I can't help but wonder who in their right mind would work on this guy's staff...when they all end up Locked Up (c)

>Or does this have something to do with redistricting?

NC is getting completely redrawn before the next election
we'll finally have a legislature that reflects the population of the state
we had some of the most tortured district lines in the country

seroiusly look at this shit
http://web.csulb.edu/~astevens/posc100/files/notes/nc12.jpg

it resulted in a R supermajority in state legislature for a long while. but that shit is finally over. huge victory for NC

and watched these fools destroy the state with their backward ass logic.

Hopefully this will move NC in the right direction

pence is next in line. are you okay with that?

already is really, gotta pick a side. i choose to stand in the middle and try to get
the fuck out. meanwhile, countries in the background conspiring against you.

What was the alternative to impeachment ?

>What was the alternative to impeachment ?

I'm not trying to relitigate this. By now I agree that they needed to impeach.

But if the goal was to remove Trump from office, the only way to do that was to win the 2020 election.

And I'm still convinced the impeachment hurts us in 2020. People are self-assured because a near-majority supports removal. But that number is less than the number that voted against Trump in the first place. Because our voters are concentrated, we need a lot more than majority support for a position to favor us in a presidential election.

because where are these new votes going to come from? not seeing repubs voters
turning now. maybe they can get them on that SNAP and SSDI stuff.

i guess it depends how youre defining republican voters.

i still think the best way for the democrats to win is to excite the electorate and increase turn out. not flip votes. they have to put extra focus on the key states for sure.

there are some voters in the middle that can be swayed. i dont know that this impeachment moves them either way. gotta focus on solutions, which the candidates have been trying to do.

even in ruby red states like ky and la. and repubs made it central to their campaigns.

if anything...trumps impeachable conduct has mostly motivated people like suburbanites against him and any candidate he campaigns for.

i think its fairly clear that the supposed backlash to impeachment for democrats is an overblown narrative at this point.

just more of the same dem disarray/overreach trope.

for one...he wont be removed. so im not sure how much of a motivating factor it will be that he was charged but not convicted. nothing changes structurally.

for two...especially with our rapid binge/purge news cycle...the intensity of outrage most likely wont be there 1 year from now. especially when you factor in all of the drama trump is gonna drum up between now and then.

for three...stepping away from the actual impeachment numbers...75% of americans think trump did something wrong with ukraine...including *45%* of republicans.

https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1207648343960084480

i just cant see anyones vote calculus/motivation changing according the notion ‘i know he did something absolutely wrong but impeachment was a bridge too far and im pissed off now’.

in fact...i think more people would find impeachment to be an acceptable remedy if the media wasnt going on and on about it tearing the country apart. not to mention...all the people that think impeachment means immediate removal.

>for one...he wont be removed. so im not sure how much of a
>motivating factor it will be that he was charged but not
>convicted. nothing changes structurally.
>
>for two...especially with our rapid binge/purge news
>cycle...the intensity of outrage most likely wont be there 1
>year from now. especially when you factor in all of the drama
>trump is gonna drum up between now and then.

This is my biggest hope. And I agree that three months from now the whole ordeal might seem like the distant past.

>for three...stepping away from the actual impeachment
>numbers...75% of americans think trump did something wrong
>with ukraine...including *45%* of republicans.
>
>https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/status/1207648343960084480

Yes, but weren't the analogous numbers even worse for Bill Clinton in '97? There was near unanimous agreement even among Democrats that Clinton had done "something wrong," even widespread (though still not universal) agreement that he lied under oath.

As you've noted, the fact that people thought Clinton "did something wrong" probably contributed to the Bush win in 2000. But when the subject was impeachment specifically --- that is, in the '98 Congressional race --- Republicans expected a red wave and instead they lost seats.

If we're running against how terrible a person Trump is, that's an argument we can win (hopefully). If people see us as running against the terrible decision that the voters made in 2016, that hurts us.

>i just cant see anyones vote calculus/motivation changing
>according the notion ‘i know he did something absolutely
>wrong but impeachment was a bridge too far and im pissed off
>now’.

There are a lot of rural voters in rust belt states who turned out unexpectedly and broke the blue wall. A lot of them are now disillusioned about being used as pawns in Trump's trade war, and they might not show up this time around. But Trump's movement is built on grievance, and if Trump (yeah, with the help of the media) can turn the grievances back against "the left" trying to nullify those people's votes, then he gets them back.

>in fact...i think more people would find impeachment to be an
>acceptable remedy if the media wasnt going on and on about it
>tearing the country apart.

As Donald Rumsfeld would have said if he'd worked for Trump: You go to war with the media you have, not the media you want to have.

I get it ...but I don't get it. Plenty of reasons to not discount Trump.

But...plenty of reasons to see that fighting back has benefited the Dem party immensely.

The past few years has shown that when Dems fight, they get support. Be it impeachment, the gov shut down, etc.


2018 and now 2019 elections in our favor.


If Nancy follows through on NOT sending the articles? Shiiittt


I'm sure impeachment will hurt a few Dems and they will lose a handful of seats...but I really believe the net gain will be in Dems favor...

Not to mention, you can't run a Pres election as a "referendum on Trump" and not impeach him for abuse of power.

Gotta act like you believe what you say.

so your ‘more than majority’ is in the bag already

being worried about it is so politically dramatic, Trump has no chance of getting reelected

the same ppl that voted for Trump the first time to no surprise, will vote for him again. he’ll either get the same 63 mil or less, but no more

whoever gets the Democratic nod will do Obama numbers or higher

>being worried about it is so politically dramatic, Trump has
>no chance of getting reelected

And the more people who think this way, the less likely it is that the people who didn't turn out in '16 will turn out in 2020.

If we think voters couldn't get excited about the first-ever major-party female nominee, imagine how it'll go for bumbling old Joe Biden.

but then, once she got the Democratic nom., she got into a mud slinging contest with Trump. going back and forth in the media.

after she was specifically told NOT to do that shit. they told her dumb ass, everyone that has gone against him in a war of words has lost because his base doesnt care about truth or facts. just let him talk.

what her dumb ass do?
she did it anyway.

and she gave the public voter fatigue.

after 3 years of Trump, it isnt the excitement of any candidate thats going to get rid of him. its the excitement of getting him out of office.

I honestly hope it's accurate.

But I can imagine a lot of other scenarios.

>I'm not trying to relitigate this. By now I agree that they
>needed to impeach.
>
>But if the goal was to remove Trump from office, the only way
>to do that was to win the 2020 election.

... him for.

aka it's a horrible remedy/not at all a remedy.

And that's setting aside the fact that I think you're wrong that this is hurting dems in any tangible way.


>And I'm still convinced the impeachment hurts us in 2020.
>People are self-assured because a near-majority supports
>removal. But that number is less than the number that voted
>against Trump in the first place. Because our voters are
>concentrated, we need a lot more than majority support for a
>position to favor us in a presidential election.

But either way --- if the election is fair or if it's not --- I still think Democrats would have done better if they could have avoided impeachment and just let people focus on their overwhelmingly popular positions, like they did for the blue wave.

... response.

But yea so my point was that waiting for the election really *isn't* a viable alternative. Looks like we agree on that, even if technically the alternative did exist. Ha.

Nowadays it seems my overriding political philosophy is "everything is fucked, no matter what anybody does."

>Nowadays it seems my overriding political philosophy is
>"everything is fucked, no matter what anybody does."

What ?

Pence meh

people say stuff on twitter but most people in the real world don't want that.

It's been a talking point among Trumpy militia types for years now that they will "go to war" if Trump is impeached. We know by now that some of those people take that kind of talk seriously.

most of these people don't want that smoke.

but as we have seen there is a small subsection of people who very much want that smoke and are looking for any reason to go.

we will continue to see lone wolf attacks here and around the world. but for now, there will be no civil war.

this is all an elaborate scheme to have President Pence because that's what we really want.

How is that not clear?

...

at best, one of the GOP Senators defects (Romney? Collins? Murkowski?)


but that could be undone by Manchin (or one of those other bitch ass niggas) voting with the GOP like they did on another vote.

the press is going to keep up the illusion that someone in the GOP will flip.

with Pence, you basically get a mayo version of Trump. same harmful policies, in a good ol' Midwestern sensibility package.

I know that town Pence is from very well. he would be considered one of those "local landed gentry" types. those types of people generally run up the ladder, and in Mike's case did so to Indiana gov.

(side note: I REALLY wish Poppa Claw were alive so I could ask him his firsthand impressions of this shit.)

an unfortunate side effect of this is that it will bolster Trump's image as having been persecuted by "The Left" (lol) and galvanize voters to support him.

but I am not mad that he was impeached. Get it on the record. And that it was resoundingly on party lines (one GOP defection, even -- fuck that one dude from NJ BTW) is even better.

The Democrats CAN do something of note in unity.

If they keep investigating and hold off on sendings the articles to the senate, trump wont get his big exoneration he has been wanting.

The failure to remove from office is a talking point at this moment, That's for deep red states to rev up their base with. We all know it wont happen.

It's these interim steps that can absolutely put the screws to Mcconnell and Trump during a critical election year for the white house and senate that can absolutely do a great deal of damage.

is that he runs everything into the ground and quickly exhausts his attack angles.

>an unfortunate side effect of this is that it will bolster
>Trump's image as having been persecuted by "The Left" (lol)
>and galvanize voters to support him.

dude and his media presennce have been saturating the political discourse with this victimhood ploy for so long that people have pretty much become acclimated to it. i cant see it being a significant stimulus because its already so pervasive and baked into the cake at this point.

look how fast he wore out the 'socialism' and 'open borders' attacks.

he cant even bring most of this shit back up anymore without sounding like a rerun.

>dude and his media presennce have been saturating the
>political discourse with this victimhood ploy for so long that
>people have pretty much become acclimated to it. i cant see
>it being a significant stimulus because its already so
>pervasive and baked into the cake at this point.
>
>look how fast he wore out the 'socialism' and 'open borders'
>attacks.
>
>he cant even bring most of this shit back up anymore without
>sounding like a rerun.

His base has never *not* been amped/motivated/racist. That's never going to change.

It's the incremental gains in the middle that matter. Which this is making.

the open borders stuff seems like it could be a factor. look at the real id thing and
immigrants flooding the dmv in new york recently. and cuccinelli has quietly moved
up the ranks. it's imperative that the dems win the upcoming election.

>

idk whos been worse lately between Trump, Pelosi, and Moscow Mitch

Anti-gentrification, cheap alcohol & trying to look pretty in our twilight posting years (c) Big Reg

¨Your mother is Colin Powell¨ - Lurkmode

www.Tupreme.com

It’s like when your girls got all the info that your man is cheating but in order to break up with him they have to convince a jury of his frat brothers (who were there when he was cheating).

pretty good analogy.

he should've added that his frat bros know he's a cheat, seen him cheat and help cover it up, but wont expose him cuz they cheaters too aka the Ques or Kappas.

there is no honor amongst thieves, but there is loyalty amongst cheaters.

Tr*mp is stacking the courts with conservative judges."

on every election, all down the ticket.

even if the candidate doesnt line up with one major issue for you they will support the majority of the platform while republicans are just stacking power.

>on every election, all down the ticket.
>
>even if the candidate doesnt line up with one major issue for
>you they will support the majority of the platform while
>republicans are just stacking power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyHuG1ks04A

just say, 'i don't understand anything that is going on, will you help me?'

affecting shit long after 45 is out of office.

Do something not possible instead of doing something possible.

Great point.

SC and federal judges.

Half of you were probably on the Jill Stein bandwagon.

but I get what you're trying to infer

But the game's keep up, not catch up.

Try again

jesus christ we live in a sitcom.

https://twitter.com/lotsofuss/status/1207807851864813568

It was a horrible thing, a hoax, this break up

Your friends all forced you to break up with me, there were some that didn't think you should

...such spineless pussies. By all accounts, all Drumf does is call up guys like McConnell and threaten him and repeatedly demand that he swear his undying loyalty to him. I'm still a little surprised they just don't vote to have him removed and let Pence, a true believer that they actually like, be the president. They'd still get to push through their federal judges.

If the mid-terms showed anything, it's the Drumf's name doesn't carry that much weight down-ticket. They guys can't really believe that he can successfully turn all the rank and file against him?

to boot him and get Pence in if he got out of line. But Pence can't win an election. Especially if Trump takes hie cult and goes in full revolt. he just splits the party.

>If the mid-terms showed anything, it's the Drumf's name
>doesn't carry that much weight down-ticket. They guys can't
>really believe that he can successfully turn all the rank and
>file against him?

There's still no one else in the party that carries more weight though

I mean shit, Mark Meadows and Kevin McCarthy both got Parnas money. Nunes was getting his phone blown up by wild Ukranian niggas. Gaetz is too stupid not have done something illegal, you know he's dirty.

Lindsey Graham prolly on tape doing gay shit, some of them niggas doing molester shit (Remember Epstein? Look at what tricks Dersh has been turning for years over that shit)

Plus, they are in for a penny and in for a pound. They know they are proper fucked if they lose this presidency politically and legally. Trump goes to jail, Giuliani goes to jail both those motherfuckers will tell everything about everyone not to die in jail. Plus, that fucks it up for Ivanka to rise up (Oh remember Khassogi? Jared's ass goes to jail).

Plus, their party is in shambles because they went all in on Trump. They lose they are out of power for a long time and the way the demographics of the country are, they won't be able to win unless they cheat via voter supression, gerrymandering, using third-party disinfo tactics.


Sarah Kenzdior nailed it when she said this is a Trasnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government. That's why they are operating like the mob. They are all dirty to one degree or another and if they don't keep things together it ALL falls apart. It'll be like the Irishman except they'll throwing up time served on the screen when they introduce the characters in the movie.

That's why they'll literally burn this country to the ground by using the Constitution as a starter. That's why they started throwing out that third term shit. If he makes it to two you better BELIEVE they will go for three.

they don't want to be made obsolete so they wait this out as if they supported him and then go back to status quo mode

them trying to combat him splinters the GOP in the way moderates and progressives are heavily split amongst the Dems

that would destroy them bc then it just puts fuel back in the Tea party gas tank

they know they are nothing without maintaining what they have bc the dems dominate the densely populated areas

https://twitter.com/mollyjongfast/status/1211340286355365888?s=21

oh, wait.

who's to say, really?

I hate myself for even typing that shit out

-->

Only Sanders & Gabbard voted against this atrocious bill, and the previous three Trump defense authorization bills. All of the other 2020 candidates either supported it or abstained from voting altogether - but I noticed you had nothing to say about that - an actual vote that has teeth and real-world consequences.

But we've got All The Smoke for a benign impeachment vote that arrives to the Senate DOA only to acquit Trump.

Makes sense.

Incidentally, Gabbard introduced a motion to censure Trump for war crimes in the most substantive rebuke of his presidency from Congress to date. Crickets on that as well.

-->

good luck with that.

-->

>Only Sanders & Gabbard voted against this atrocious bill, and
>the previous three Trump defense authorization bills. All of
>the other 2020 candidates either supported it or abstained
>from voting altogether - but I noticed you had nothing to say
>about that - an actual vote that has teeth and real-world
>consequences.

Please provide sources

>
>But we've got All The Smoke for a benign impeachment vote that
>arrives to the Senate DOA only to acquit Trump.
>
>Makes sense.
>
>Incidentally, Gabbard introduced a motion to censure Trump for
>war crimes in the most substantive rebuke of his presidency
>from Congress to date. Crickets on that as well.
>
>-->

Crickets is all it deserves. She introduced a measure to censure him on the eve of the impeachment vote as an alternative to impeachment and then showed up and voted 'present'. What bravery.

You don't censure people when they commit high crimes and misdemeanors. You impeach them. Then you talk about 'no room for moral victories' and 'putting asterisks up by people's' names talking about 'the most substantive rebuke'

Stop it.

oh, your whole crew knew this shit was wrong and fucking tried to get you to stop?

the most disappointing thing is how long it took for the whistle to get blown. but criminals gonna criminal

than they are about trump administration officials currently ignoring actual subpoenas.

and those officials are the only ones with testimony/evidence relevant to the actual events in question.

one of the things i love about bernie supporters are how confrontational they are with the media when its time to call out the bullshit.

thats the disposition the entire democratic party apparatus needs to adopt because the double standard under the guise of 'neutrality' is horrendous.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/06/us/politics/bolton-testify-impeachment-trial.html

The talking heads are gonna get really excited about this, but I am NOT gonna put any hopes on John Bolton being the guy who takes down Trump. Yeah Bolton was not a fan of the Ukraine shenanigans, but this fucker has even more visceral hatred for progressives than Trump does. He's not gonna help anyone but himself. And his self-interest isn't served by bringing down a Republican administration, whether he liked this particular scheme or not. His dangling of vague information has seemed like an obvious setup from the start.

It does make me wonder if part of Trump's thinking in starting a war with Iran was to make sure Bolton stays on his side. Bolton wanted a declaration of war on day 1.

why not just come out and say what he knows instead of wait for a subpoena?

can the house have him testify still?

The Trump criminal enterprise was actually outright stalking and threatening physical harm to a fucking US AMBASSADOR.

This is astonishing even if you set aside the context of the bogus defenses that the Orange Mob has come up with over the last several months.

I am legitimately floored by this material. I don't even really know what to say. I didn't think these freaks could ever shock me again but here we are.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51117650

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/see-the-new-impeachment-evidence-in-trump-impeachment-trial

that was wild so I can only imagine the other stuff.

Except instead of "I resign as HC of the NYJ," on his napkin was a half baked plan to stalk and murder a fucking US ambassador.

If we ever escape this nightmare this movie is gonna be incredible.

.

hotel window style.

If the Trump cabinet felt that ambassador wasn't going to serve Trump's half-witted pursuit of the Biden/Ukraine conspiracy, why not just fire her and get someone else that would play along? Why go through all that trouble?

And just to be clear, I'm not saying I doubt the evidence; I don't understand the motives to be so underhanded when I would be easier and cheaper to simply fire her.

the messages said they fired her...again yet she wasnt fired. seems like they were trying to get her removed but there was someone preventing it from happening.

is going to stream roll this and any other presented evidence because I'd love to see that investigated further. Why go through all that trouble, time, and money spent since I'm assuming tax payer dollars funded all that spying when you could simply fire her?

whats up bud

be safe brother

Rudy's lettrt, the Hyde texts, the notes. Plenty of smoke coming from the gun, and the yeah it does seem like they were talking about killing Yovanovitch. Trump said she's "going to go through some things." Oh and the Senate GOP is trying to block the press from the trial. This is crazy stuff.

can't believe they're impeaching him over a just a phone call, right guys?!

It was all about Giulliani wanting to meet with the Ukraine Prime Minister, not threatening to harm an ambassador.

Republicans are insane.

Media is stupid.

I still don’t understand how it works so feel free to break it down :-)

and evidence.

like, nothing legally...constitutionally...

And when repugs have control of it there's usually unchecked lawlessness. Only compounded by the fact that they spend their years in power taking every opportunity to consolidate that power and make it easier for them to cheat to win elections, stack the courts, and ensure that their lawlessness will only be easier to pull off for years to come.

It's really depressing.

Really the only recourse in the current climate is to hope the media does its job and all this new evidence catches on, and enrages the people enough that folks in "safe seats" in the senate start to feel the heat that their re-elections may be in question, at which point they will hopefully suddenly find their non-existent consciences.

very few I know are interested in talking about it...

can you start a new post now that the trial is starting?

I should probably start it today so that we can continue discussing the new evidence, likelihood repugs are forced to do the right thing, etc. I'll try and create one a little later today.


>very few I know are interested in talking about it...
>
>can you start a new post now that the trial is starting?

The calling of any witness would require 51 votes in the Senate, which means all Democrats (Doug Jones can only go so far), plus four Republicans. There's a tenuous group of four Republicans who might vote for SOMETHING, but it won't be much.

My guess: the more valuable any given witness is, the less likely that they'll be called. I'm guessing if we hear from any witness, it'll be John Bolton (okey-doke), and either Hunter Biden or Adam Schiff (both totally irrelevant).

In fact, they'd need the same 51 votes to even consider this new evidence at all. So I don't think they will.

... :-(

its just making the rounds

i wonder,

is this going to make Rudy try to cash in his receipts only to have Trump throw everyone under the bus?? i cant wait.

We may see even worse stuff come out.

... so long as Individual 1 keeps denying he knows him or ever met him lol.

For the...there was no crime committed contingent

These plea cops are faLLing one by one

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/16/trump-administration-broke-law-in-withholding-ukraine-aid.html

The Trump administration broke the law by witholding congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine last summer “for a policy reason,” a top government watchdog said Thursday.

The report by the Government Accountability Office came a day after the House of Representatives sent articles of impeachment of President Donald Trump to the Senate for conduct related to the withholding of that aid to Ukraine.

The Republican Trump held back the funds at the same time he was pressuring Ukraine’s new president to announce investigations by that country of former Vice President Joe Biden, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination this year, and of Biden’s son Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukraine gas company.

The funds were only released to Ukraine after the block on the aid came to light, sparking the congressional probe that led to the Trump’s impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House last month,

The GAO report said that the Office of Management and Budget’s withholding of about $214 million in funds appropriated by Congress to the Defense Department for security assistance to Ukraine was done “for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.”

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO said in its report.

“The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA.”

Tweet

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rep. Nita Lowey, D-New York, said in a statement, “The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has confirmed what Congressional Democrats have understood all along: President Trump abused his power and broke the law by withholding security assistance to Ukraine.”

“Congress makes funding decisions, and the Trump Administration’s illegal impoundment of these vital national security funds was a brazen assault on the checks and balances inherent to our democracy,” Lowey said. “Given that this illegal conduct threatened our security and undermined our elections, I feel even more strongly that the House has chosen the right course by impeaching President Trump. No one is above the law.


WATCH NOW
VIDEO17:27
The House delivers Pres. Trump impeachment papers to the Senate
Thomas Armstrong, general counsel for the GAO, in a prepared statement said, “Today, GAO issued a legal decision concluding that the Office of Management and Budget violated the law when it withheld approximately $214 million appropriated to DOD for security assistance to Ukraine.”

“The President has narrow, limited authority to withhold appropriations under the Impoundment Control Act of 1974,” Armstrong said. “OMB told GAO that it withheld the funds to ensure that they were not spent ‘in a manner that could conflict with the President’s foreign policy.’ The law does not permit OMB to withhold funds for policy reasons.”

Trump Legal Team to Add Starr and Dershowitz for Senate Trial
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/us/politics/trump-impeachment-lawyers-starr-dershowitz.html

both starr and dersh were on his defense team and negotiated that corrupt ass plea deal.

Personally, I thought Starr's public career was over after he was removed as president of Baylor University over ignoring rape allegations.

But nowadays, that's pretty quaint compared to what Trump and Dershowitz have been accused of.

Picks 'em up, dusts them off and casts them in his latest project and gives them what they need to really shine.

cnn, abc, etc.

and nobody *ever* brings up baylor.

starr, dersh, bondi, ray.

all of them are regular guests/contributors over there.

.

(starting Tuesday)

Not sure what other roles they'll have.

... :-)