I was distracted last night with the debate and cooking dinner and arguing with my husband about the thermostat and having a glass or five of red wine because I was COLD, so I first started trying to make sense of the Parnas document dump this morning. I confess I am still agog. This take by Charlie Pierce makes sense to me:
As it turns out, Marie Yovanovich was even braver than she looked in front of the House Intelligence Committee. And, as it turns out, Speaker Nancy Pelosi really knows what she’s doing. At the end of the day on Tuesday, just as the Democratic presidential candidates were taking the stage in Des Moines and the president* was taking the stage in Milwaukee, the House Democrats unleashed the hounds. They dumped a whole truckload of ugly from the files of Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani’s great and good “associate” and, apparently, one of the great sleazebags of the western world.
Also released were a bunch of texts from a Trumper in Connecticut named Robert Hyde. He was in touch with Parnas, and there were text messages between the two in which Hyde seemed to indicate that, at the very least, Yovanovich was being monitored—which, I will grant you, sounds a bit grandiose coming from a landscaper from Connecticut. Nevertheless, this stuff is positively ominous.
Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ! The ambassador’s account of being told to hop on the next plane for “security reasons” always seemed like a strange and unexplained facet of the hatchet job on Yovanovich’s reputation. This certainly puts an even more chilling spin on Trump’s “she’s gonna go through some things” comments on the “perfect call.”
Here’s another bizarre fact in this thoroughly crazypants scenario: the Connecticut landscaper/hit-man purveyor was Baker Acted (involuntarily taken into custody by authorities under Florida law for a psych eval) at Trump’s Florida golf club last year. David Corn at MoJo:
According to an “incident/investigation” report filed by the Doral, Florida, police department, on May 16, 2019, an officer was dispatched to the Trump National Doral Miami to deal with a “male in distress fearing for his life.” That man was Hyde. The report noted that Hyde explained to the police officer that “he was in fear for his life, was set up and that a hit man was out to get him. Mr. Hyde spoke about e-mails he sent that may have placed his life in jeopardy. Mr. Hyde explained several times that he was paranoid that someone was out to get him.”
The report stated that Hyde cited “a variety of different names, contacts and provided information in reference to why he felt his life was in danger.” After being taken into custody by the police, according to the report, “Mr. Hyde continued to act paranoid telling us not to stop next to certain vehicles…[H]e explained that he was scared due to several painting workers and landscape workers trying to do harm to him because they weren’t working. Additionally Mr. Hyde explained that his computer was being hacked by Secret Service. And then went on to further explain that the secret service [sic] was arrival [sic] on the premises watching him.”
What in the wide world of fuck? It’s tempting, if only for the sake of one’s own sanity, to surmise Hyde is just a random nutbag who wasn’t really commissioned by the president’s personal attorney to at least surveil — if not actually harm — a U.S. ambassador abroad. But, as in the case of Rudy Giuliani’s henchmen, including Parnas, there are tons of photos of Hyde with Trump, Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka, Giuliani, etc. Hyde has also donated tens of thousands of dollars to Trump and other Republicans. It seems to be a pattern, no?
Anyhoo, even aside from the increasingly alarming and accumulating evidence that Trump is running the federal government for his personal and political benefit via mafia-style shakedowns and intimidation tactics, the Parnas document dump blows multiple absurd impeachment defenses right out of the water. Here’s an excerpt of Neal Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer summarizing that aspect in The Post:
Americans who have been wondering why President Trump has taken the extraordinary step of trying to block every document from being released to Congress in his impeachment inquiry need wonder no longer. The new documents released Tuesday evening by the House Intelligence Committee were devastating to Trump’s continuing — if shifting — defense of his Ukraine extortion scandal, just days before his impeachment trial is likely to begin in the Senate. These new documents demolish at least three key defenses to which Trump and his allies have been clinging: that he was really fighting corruption when he pressured Ukraine on matters related to the Biden family; that Hunter Biden should be called as a witness at the Senate impeachment trial; and that there’s no need for a real, honest-to-goodness trial in the Senate.
They’re right, although the evidence the House Democrats cobbled together in the face of unprecedented obstruction suggested that weeks ago, and Trump’s enablers have been unmoved. Still, WTF, fellow citizens? The wily Pelosi — who will go down in history as one of the most effective and consequential Speakers of the House ever — will transmit the articles to the Senate today.
As MisterMix noted, Pelosi has already boxed McConnell in (boxed turtle?) on summary dismissal and witnesses — either he allows a trial with witnesses, or he presides over such a flagrant cover-up that it may cost him his gavel, which is certainly more precious to him than that son of a bitch Trump.
I’m speculating here, and maybe I’m totally wrong, but won’t people want to get to the bottom of this shit, even at least some Republican voters in red states? Perhaps not, but maybe?
In any case, can this latest Parnas business be raised in the trial? It’s material to Trump’s claims, as Katyal and Geltzer argue, so I don’t see why not. Also, I don’t know which shoes will drop off the centipede next, but is it possible the House Democrats have even more stuff under wraps? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all, and it’s way too early for wine.
Jeffro
Too early for wine? What??
Just have some champagne, and call it an OJ-less mimosa!
MattF
Just as a side note, this has the added effect of getting the Senate Democrats to line up behind Pelosi. We’re not hearing any more off-notes from DiFi.
Kent
Nothing fucking surprises me anymore about the utter criminality of the Trump and GOP cabal. I keep wanting to be surprised and shocked. Because none of this is remotely normal. But there is always some new crime uncovered tomorrow.
Sigh. Only thing left is November 2020. No other institutions are capable of dealing with him and them. And November 2020 needs to be so overwhelming that the ratfucking and voter suppression can’t steal it back like in 2000 and 2016.
Jeffro
On a more serious note…is there anyone around the spray-tan toddler who isn’t thoroughly corrupt, insane, or both? This Hyde sounds like a complete whack-job.
I have just one question for our president* today, and if the national snooze media wouldn’t mind pressing for an answer until we get one, that would be greatly appreciated:
“mr president*, what, exactly, did you mean when you said ‘[Ambassador Yovanovitch]’s going to go through some things’ “?
zhena gogolia
@Jeffro:
Could a single reporter ask him that simple question? To me it’s the (cliche incoming) smoking gun that links him to this loathsome plan.
At the risk of Cole calling me a tinfoil hat or a scarecrow, I just have this sickening feeling that what the Repubs are really afraid of is being offed.
Baud
I remember when it was a big national security scandal that the Secret Service failed prevent that couple from crashing Obama’s White House parties.
This seems worse.
Baud
@Jeffro:
It was a perfect death threat.
The Moar You Know
No. The GOP has their savior and will happily go down to destruction with him, just so long as he drags all the rest of us with him.
From my understanding, no, as the charges and evidence have already been referred. I hope I’m wrong about that. If not, well, there’s still plenty of time to do more impeachments.
Lapassionara
Did I imagine it, or did Giuliani send a letter (to whom) asserting he was acting for Trump as an individual and not on behalf of Trump as president? What were Trump’s “individual interests” at stake? Bueller? Anyone?
randy khan
Anyone who reads my comments probably can recite this without me writing it and also probably is very tired of it by now, but as I’ve been saying since 2017, the Republicans will be with Trump until they’re against him, if it happens, it will happen more less all at once, and it will happen only if they conclude that sticking with him hurts them more than staying with him.
I’ve never thought that was at all likely, but something like this is the kind of event that could cause them to flip. Documentary evidence from the people doing it that shows that the Ukraine affair always was a shakedown for Trump’s personal benefit plus the added shock of the possibility that they were thinking of assassinating a U.S. ambassador as part of the plan certainly is not something that any of the Republicans had planned for. I’d still give conviction less than a 5% chance, but last week it was at a firm less than 1%.
geg6
Apparently, it is being sent over with all the other evidence they managed to dig up in the face of unprecedented stonewalling. It will be used. Everyone I saw talking about this last had no doubt about that. And that group included former USAs, former impeachment prosecutors and Ari Melber.
germy
Frankensteinbeck
That doesn’t seem likely, but McConnell does not have the ‘champion of white supremacy’ official title that makes every Republican, elected and voting base, defend Trump to the death. It could happen. If it does, it would remove a threat to American democracy much bigger than Trump. His replacement will be an extreme, probably crazy pants asshole, but will probably be incompetent and certainly won’t have McConnell’s one unholy genius: A psychopathic ability to see all of the unwritten rules of society and break them.
MattF
@Jeffro: A clinical psychologist I once knew told me that the first question you ask a new ‘patient’ like Hyde is “What is the name of the medication you’ve stopped taking?”
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
lol
zhena gogolia
God, I have so much work to do. Could stuff just stop happening?
zhena gogolia
@Lapassionara:
You didn’t imagine it.
germy
Snarki, child of Loki
“an officer was dispatched to the Trump National Doral Miami to deal with a “male in distress fearing for his life.” That man was Hyde. The report noted that Hyde explained to the police officer that “he was in fear for his life, was set up and that a hit man was out to get him. Mr. Hyde spoke about e-mails he sent that may have placed his life in jeopardy.”
Sounds like Mr. Hyde will fit right in with the GOP House Caucus.
Jinchi
I’m sure McConnell and the Republicans in the Senate would want to shut it down. But the upside of impeachment is that Senators can’t ignore evidence just because it wasn’t presented at trial. If the news starts reporting chilling new details about a plot to assassinate an American ambassador, Susan Collins won’t have anonymity or the safety of jury sequestration to claim she didn’t know anything about it.
Biff Longbotham
(On knees, hands clasped in prayer) Please let it be a real trial , with witnesses! Please let it be a real trial , with witnesses! Please let it be a real trial , with witnesses! Please let it be a real trial , with witnesses! Please let it be a real trial , with witnesses!
Spanky
@Frankensteinbeck: Soooo, a Democrat, then?
Betty Cracker
@Lapassionara: Yes, there is that letter, which Katyal and Geltzer excerpt in the WaPo link above:
It’s a smoking howitzer, not that we have a lack of those. Still, I don’t think Rudy is going to be the hero in all of this.
germy
Looks like Eric Carmen has Gone All The Way
Kent
@Baud: Yes, and a big scandal when the Clintons fired a handful of crooked employees under FBI investigation for embezzlement in the White House Travel Office.
JPL
@zhena gogolia: After wading through the texts and letters, my stomach was in absolute knots. Where is Barr in all of this?
You can discount Hyde’s text and it’s still as damaging.
NotMax
@Jeffro
Might consider a Mexican morning pick-me-up.
Or one in a nod to Ukraine.
;)
Kent
@Biff Longbotham: And make Rudy one of those witnesses.
germy
Jinchi
And please let Rudy be Trump’s defense attorney.
Cheryl Rofer
And another two-bit gangster joins the cast of thousands.
I’m not up for a hot take right now. The big point I think we need to keep in sight is that the President of the United States should not be messing around with two-bit gangsters, even if he’s insulated himself with Rudy. And what those two-bit gangsters are doing is running a shadow foreign policy.
JUST. NO.
Searcher
At least now that this information has come to light, the Senate will have no choice but to vote to convict.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The problem with having this make an impact is that it sounds too insane to be true. Such is our era.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@germy: He may be “All by Myself”.
JPL
@Cheryl Rofer: trump is comfortable around mobsters. They helped him bankrupt those casinos.
Mallard Filmore
Murder one of our diplomats for personal gain … I wonder if this situation will influence any on the Supreme Court pertaining to their view on whether the President in immune from prosecution while in office.
Also I am confused about timing. Wasn’t the Perfect Call (July) ‘[Ambassador Yovanovitch]’s going to go through some things’ long after she came back to the USA (May)? So how was Trump’s statement still an active threat?
Kent
Honestly guys. I think I have been following this as much as anyone who isn’t a House Intelligence Committee staffer or full time reporter.
But one thing I really haven’t wrapped my head around is why the white hot focus on getting rid of Yovanovich? It really doesn’t make sense to me. Rudy and his gang had already built their back-channel to Ukraine and were doing an end-run around all the normal State Department channels. Why was it so necessary and urgent to be rid of Yovanovich? Especially when her replacement also seemed to be a stand-up guy.
Seems to me that there MUST be a missing part of the story. Yovanovich must have been aware of some other layer of corruption in Ukraine that we haven’t fully seen revealed yet. There HAS to be some other reason for why it was so urgent to have her not only removed, but destroyed that we haven’t seen yet. Nothing else makes sense. The whole Biden plot was cooking along swimmingly with or without Yovanovich in the embassy. It was the whistleblower that brought it down, not her.
What am I missing guys?
Just Chuck
@Cheryl Rofer: Just maybe POTUS also shouldn’t be a two-bit gangster. Just sayin’
Baud
@Kent: Good question.
Kent
@Searcher: Does the purple represent irony?
germy
Cheryl Rofer
@JPL: Yahbut these aren’t even classy mobsters.
MattF
@Just Chuck: I recommend watching ‘The Irishman’ for the insight you get into White House operations.
Spanky
@germy: Fortunately, nobody cares what a whiny-voiced, crapass has-been “singer” from the 60s has to say.
And if any of you youngs are tempted to find him on Youtube, just don’t. Your life will be better this way.
trollhattan
@germy:
“I’m just asking questions. Could it be…satan???”
I presume you misspelled Cartman. :-)
zhena gogolia
@Searcher:
Is magenta the new sarcasm font?
Alex
Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you…
Cheryl Rofer
@Just Chuck: The reason I’m formulating that statement the way I am is that one of the defenses will be that Trump didn’t know.
So far, Trump has managed to use Mob tactics to distance himself from the actual crimes. I have been very careful not to accuse him of things that there isn’t proof for, and I wind up saying that we don’t know he’s a Russian asset. Which statement I continue to stand by.
But if we step back a bit, the whole picture of these creeps is thoroughly undesirable. These are the people whom one of the President’s operatives think can carry out substantive foreign policy? And the President is all right with that?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is the part I don’t get going all the way back to his tax returns. I get why McConnell and Collins and Romney don’t want to know, they don’t want any evidence that would make it harder for them to pretend they don’t trust their own lying eyes. But why aren’t more people who aren’t full-on trumpers, the ones who disapprove but don’t think he should be removed, why aren’t they at least curious? They want to know about Harry and Meghan, they want to know all about whatever the current version of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston is, they want to know all about the real housewives and the bachelor and the bachelorette, they want to know how their neighbor afforded that new car and why their cousin’s husband really didn’t come to Christmas dinner, but they don’t want to know what the President of the United States is hiding? what he is willing to go to court for and turn the Constitution inside out to hide from them? I’ve been baffled for going on four years now.
@Dorothy A. Winsor: this is a huge part of it, I think.
zhena gogolia
@Mallard Filmore:
That’s one of the puzzling things. I’d like to see someone ask him what he meant by that sentence.
Lapassionara
@Betty Cracker: Thanks, Betty. It seemed like a bombshell to me. Glad someone else thinks so.
zhena gogolia
@Alex:
Exactly.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: I’ve been assuming that Yovanovich was an obstacle to the festival o’ grift Rudy, Perry, Parnas, Fruman, et al, planned to hold after doing this one favor for Trump. But you raise a good question WRT Taylor.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@zhena gogolia: I guess all my comments need to be in magenta now, if that’s the case.
AliceBlue
@Spanky: I was wondering who Eric Carmen was, but you’re telling me it’s THAT Eric Carmen? Ack.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: Yovanovich is an honest and knowledgeable person who was working for the interests of the United States as Ambassador to Ukraine. She worked against corruption. Corruption has been an enormous problem in Ukraine, but President Poroshenko started to work against it, and it’s becoming quite clear that Zelinsky is going to better Poroshenko at that.
A similar question to yours came up on Twitter this morning, and it stumped me for a while, but I think I’ve got an answer. That question was why go to the trouble of looking to put a hit on Yovanovich, when Trump could just have fired her.
Here’s my answer for now, subject to acquisition of further information: The corrupt Prosecutor General of Ukraine, Viktor Shokin, was being edged out. He is the person that Biden was urging the government to remove. Shokin hated Yovanovich with a white heat. It appears that Rudy’s gang were taking orders from Shokin. Trump would have told Rudy to take care of things; he wanted to stay as far from the ugliness as possible. It would not be surprising if Shokin was okay with killing Yovanovich.
Smott
@Kent:
Letsenko conditioned his release of “dirt” on Biden upon the removal of Yovanovitch.
H.E.Wolf
Robert Finley Hyde’s opponent, if he gets the Republican nomination for CT-05, would be first-term Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes, another one of our Balloon Juice wins in 2018. She was in the 2nd of the 3 fundraisers. Here’s her US House bio:
https://hayes.house.gov/about
Note the Teacher of the Year award – another data point in support of Kay’s thesis that education is an excellent campaign (and governing) issue for Democrats.
trollhattan
We interrupt the Trump dump to share news you already knew.
The asshole-in-chief has made killing climate reversal policy and strategy a top priority since entering office. He, for example, slapped a 30% tariff on imported solar panels. He also obviously has an abiding aversion to wind turbines as counterpoint to his inexplicable love of coal. It’s worth noting the Aussie PM is exactly the same, just somewhat better behaved. As a cabinet minister he displayed a lump of coal in Parliament and accused Liberals of being coal-phobic. Australia so happens to be the world’s largest coal exporter and are currently scheming to open an entirely new deposit, previously unexploited. In the meantime, fires.
H.E.Wolf
Did a quick Google search on Robert Finley Hyde, and was surprised by what age he apparently is: 40 or 41 years old.
jonas
Um, no. They think it’s totally badass that the president is a corrupt, wannabe mafioso who surrounds himself with mentally unstable b-list hucksters and assorted other hangers-on from the central European criminal underworld.
jeffreyw
@zhena gogolia:
That’s the color you use when you want other commenters to scroll past quickly without reading the comment.
Aimai
I work with people with psychotic disorders. It is not an either/or situation. This guy Hyde can be a wannabe player with delusions of grandeur and STILL been part of a real plot. And its not uncommon for someone’s guilty conscience combined with mania or depression to produce hypervigilance and then paranoia. Sounds like he got in over his head and got Baker Acted because he didn’t have anyone in the secret to calm him down. Its not the case that because he was delusional about the gardeners that he was delusional about being part of the conspiracy.
mellythiss
@Kent: Apparently Shokin had it in for her. So presumably yet another quid pro quo to getting his phony docs incriminating the Bidens was to make her life hell.
West of the Rockies
@Frankensteinbeck:
One nice thing about McConnell… He is aged and in poor shape and has reached the stage where he is physically stumbling and hurting himself at home. He is no Jack LaLanne. He is one broken hip from running down fast.
Also, too, he may get grim and grubby satisfaction from being a festering turd in the punch bowl of the body politic, but he gets no joy. His is a blissless life I think (like Trump and Melania’s).
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan:
I’ve heard that if you hear the sound they make, you get cancer. I’m concerned since I often pass those windmills going to to shoot in the desert.
germy
@AliceBlue:
The only reason I saw Carmen’s tweet is because it was re-tweeted by “Hyde For Congresss [sic]”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jeffreyw: Heh.
Kent
So the Trumpers didn’t need Yovanovich gone for their own purposes. They already had their back-channel already established.
They needed her gone to appease the corrupt Ukranians with whom they were trying to work.
germy
@H.E.Wolf:
“Everything will be okay once all the boomers die out”
zhena gogolia
@AliceBlue:
Like someone else, I keep thinking it’s referring to Eric Cartman.
NotMax
@BilinGlendaleCA
Can we put the kibosh on the eye-searing hues please?
NickM
What’s more stunning is when you think that these are the cards Parnas is showing *first*.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Omnes won’t like this.
zhena gogolia
@Cheryl Rofer:
That’s my impression just from the small amount of time I’ve been able to give to this.
patrick II
My first thought too, but it didn’t last long. The Presiden’s “she’s about to go through some bad things”, and the warning from the State Department to take the first flight home argues for the absurd reality. I would love to know more about that phone call, who called Yovanovich to warn her, and from what original (white house?) source did the safety of Yovanovich’s safety come into question.
zhena gogolia
@Kent:
Right.
zhena gogolia
@patrick II:
These are issues that of course should have been a matter of prime concern to the Secretary of State. If we had one.
Frankensteinbeck
@trollhattan:
Trump’s love of coal is merely a side effect of his hatred of wind turbines. As usual with Trump, this issue is petty and personal. He’s been forced by environmental regulations to cancel some of his projects. In Scotland, he didn’t want a wind turbine farm going up next to his golf course, and he didn’t get his way. So, he’s decided he will destroy all environmentalism he can get his hands on. Welcome to narcissism, where petty spite becomes obsessive ideology.
Bruce K
I’m assuming – and have been for several years now – that the GOP’s going to be all-in for Trump until the consequences of supporting him become worse than the consequences of turning on him. The problem is that a lot of the current GOP higher-ups are acting as though the consequences of losing power are too catastrophic to imagine, and if they turn on Trump, they run the real risk of losing the Southern Strategy voters and ending up out of power…
…but what the hell is so horrific about being out of power for a few years? It’s happened before and the GOP returned from it.
Except now, with all the obstruction of justice and stymieing of investigations, it’s looking like there’s a lot of deep, dark secrets that they feel they can’t afford to have discovered, stuff that a marginally competent investigation would unearth, that would leave them out of power for the better part of a generation.
It’s as though Trump’s their only hope of retaining power, and retaining power is the only way they’ll avoid fates too awful for them to contemplate. And I suspect that for a lot of them – McConnell, Graham, Cruz, the charlatans on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees – they’re worrying about do-not-pass-go-do-not-collect-two-hundred-dollars consequences. Personal consequences.
topclimber
@Cheryl Rofer: Let me channel Josh Marshall and go for the stupid explanation. Yovanovich was a woman and she was bucking Trump (whether she knew it or not). The state pro who took her spot (but as charge d’affaires not ambassador, so less clout?) if from the other binary camp.
Kent
@Cheryl Rofer: So corrupt Ukrainian mobsters were put in charge of determining who our ambassadors are, and were enabled by the President and the President’s henchmen in their attempt to off or silence an American ambassador.
That seems to me like a fully sufficient independent reason for impeachment. The corruption of the State Department to accommodate foreign mobsters.
Barbara
@Smott: You scratch my back . . . Plus, you know, it’s standard gangland behavior to require a “downpayment” of demonstrated criminality in order to receive favors. Basically, making sure someone has also committed a crime is a good way to ensure that they will be very reluctant to throw you under the bus. The Parnas document release shows how that works.
Hortense
I will add to your assessment of Madame Speaker that when the history books about this debacle are written, she and Adam Schiff will have whole chapters and Robert Mueller will be just a footnote.
Kent
@Hortense: Raise of hands here of those who think we would have been better served over the past 12 months with….[checks notes] Marcia Fudge or Tim Ryan as Speaker of the House, as those were the two challengers by the anti-Pelosi crowd.
Can you all fucking imagine that?
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think you don’t understand what it is the ones who aren’t full-on Trumpers dislike about him. They’re fine with his policy, they just don’t like the optics. As long as they can focus on tax cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and judges, they can be happy with Trump. It’s when they see the cost in terms of corruption, malfeasance, and just plain ugliness that they get nervous about him. Their response is to pretend none of that bad stuff is happening, and the last thing they want is something that forces them to look at it.
zhena gogolia
@Kent:
You’re doing a good job of summarizing the situation, IMO.
patrick II
@patrick II:
Spitballin’
To just add to what I have said, according to the text messages Yovanovich had recently been given increased security with guards around her whenever she left the embassy making her difficult to get to. Who knew to increase security? And why haven’t they come forward to explain why? Did Pompeo have knowledge of the threat, but did not want to have it carried out? So, keeping silent about the broader conspiracy, he physically protected his ambassador? (without protecting her from political retribution, which may have required more courage than he has.)
It seems that the increased security saved our ambassador from physical harm or death. That actually could have happened.
J R in WV
Well, if Ambassador Yovanovich was specifically intent upon helping to stop Ukrainian corruption, perhaps these two-bit RWNJ mobsters intending to commit massive corruption in Ukraine were worried about her potential for nailing their scheme as they tried to execute it.
After all, the Ambassador seemed to have pretty good instincts and intentions when she was interviewed / testified before the House committees. I wouldn’t want to be breaking financial laws where she could find out, if I were a small time RWNJ hustler.
zhena gogolia
@patrick II:
It was a distinct possibility. I wonder the same things you do.
I HAVE TO GET BACK TO WORK!!! But this is so upsetting.
Betty Cracker
@Aimai: That makes sense, Aimai — thanks!
I try not to fall down the paranoia rabbit hole myself with all this crazy shit going on — dead Deutschebankers, convenient suicides and erased video and what-not. And it sure is interesting that mega-MAGA Parnas decided to share his dirt on the Trumpsters with the House Dems. Was it solely to avoid or reduce jail time, or is he worried about his safety? When a mobbed up narcissist controls the government, the line between paranoia and rational fear can get a bit blurry.
PS: Good to see you again!
Mallard Filmore
@patrick II:
Whoa there! The timing does not work out for this. She took the first flight home in May, and Trump’s perfect call was in July.
A revenge move by Trump to ruin her professionally or personally makes more sense.
Emerald
@The Moar You Know: Ah, but Nancy already had said that she might just start investigating NEW articles of impeachment, thus giving her even more control over the whole process.
She might be considering it.
Heh.
Cheryl Rofer
@topclimber: Her being a woman put her on Trump’s wrong side, and probably that of the corrupt Ukrainians in government. But it was more than that.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kent: I’m hoping it comes up as part of the impeachment proceedings. It’s certainly a part of Trump’s corrupt Ukraine dealings.
Kent
@Roger Moore: There are plenty of GOPers who dislike Trump and want to see him gone. And who are looking forward to the post-Trump GOP when they can get back to normal graft. It’s just that none of them have the courage to defy the base and be the one standing out alone to do it.
This is the consequence of Trump’s entire approach to politics which is doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on the base with white-hot obsession. It may not win him re-election in 2020 if he doesn’t expand his electorate. But by endlessly and on on a daily basis riling up his base directly, he has made it essentially impossible for GOP elected representatives to defy him directly. I don’t think we have ever seen a Dem or GOP politician wield the threat of primary opponents so effectively and ruthlessly as Trump. He is truly the mob boss.
Hortense
@germy: I read that as Eric Cartman.
patrick II
@Mallard Filmore:
Thanks, I have to work on the timeline, all of the conspiracies have not made it easy.
TomV
Could it be like this?
1) Yovanovich announces investigation of the Bidens, 2) Yovanovich is assasinated in the Ukraine. Conclusion: Ukraine is a violent, corrupt place and the Bidens were neck deep in it.
Lapassionara
@Betty Cracker: I think Parnas is afraid for his safety. As is Hyde. Projection can explain a lot of what we are seeing from the current mal-administration.
Roger Moore
@Cheryl Rofer:
Shorter: Giuliani may have been working for Trump, but he wasn’t working only for Trump, and it may have been one of his other employers who wanted Yovanovich dead.
This is one of the dangers of Trump’s way of doing stuff; the corruption never stops with one guy. Everyone who has the tiniest bit of influence on Trump is now in position to sell that influence, and Trump is likely to go along as long as he gets a cut. He contaminates the whole government.
patrick II
@Kent:
I’ll put it on the list.
Mallard Filmore
@patrick II: On the other hand, Trump would certainly personally green-light the murder of one of our ambassadors. But “going through some things” doesn’t fit in with that.
yellowdog
@Kent: 1. She’s a woman. Enough reason for the shitgibbon to fear her.
2. She didn’t hang the Shitgibbon’s portrait in the embassy for many months. (No one did; the White House or the State Department was characteristically incompetent about send out new portraits. But obviously that explanation was rejected.)
Immanentize
@Aimai: First, Hi! Nice to see you here today.
Second
I’ll go you one better and report that some criminal organizations, like drug cartels, organized crime groups, etc. embrace (if not look for) people with delusions to be on their team because they are easy to discredit, if necessary.
Kay
This is why Republicans in Congress continue to lockstep support him. If they give an inch they are going to be buried in shit. It’s much, much worse than has been revealed and they know it. One crack in the GOP obstruction wall and the avalanche starts. It isn’t “how bad does it have to get before Republicans act?” It’s “it’s already so bad there’s absolutely no upside to them allowing any further revelations” – they passed any “incentive to break ranks” point long ago. Now they’re just hanging on hoping they can keep enough hidden to get thru the next cycle.
Betty Cracker
Ooo! Pelosi just squashed Collins (R-GA) like a goddamned bug!
patrick II
@J R in WV:
Yovanovich is a smart, experienced ambassador who at the least would have been giving a mixed message of Presidential wishes to Zelensky. So it would be best if she was gone just for that. Additionally, as you state, she would probably have uncovered the plot if she had stayed there, so once again she had to be gone.
But why she had to be physically harmed requires a different answer.
Frankensteinbeck
@Bruce K:
They won’t get it back. You’re thinking of elections, where sure, they’ll win some in the future. They’re thinking about the power of white men. They only have to lose a few elections for gerrymandering and voter suppression to be dust, and minorities to have enough power to break the systemic power that allows, oh, Weinstein and Trump to sexually assault women for decades and have it ignored. If Democrats are allowed to actually govern even briefly, death threats and harassment on Twitter might be illegal and prosecuted, ‘Jesus wants this’ will have no legal power at all, and it will be illegal to deny medical or any other services to transgender folks. The demographic clock is ticking, and Republican power is a mile wide and an inch deep. There has been a black president and only mountains of cheating and luck prevented a woman president by a hair. This is an apocalypse to Republicans, and most liberals are completely blind to it.
Kay
But it will come out. There’s too much of it to hide it forever. Rationally, the GOP should hope he loses. They are going to run out of time if he’s re-elected.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Where? Google only gives me Collins criticizing Pelosi.
And I have to get back to work! Dammit!
joel hanes
@Kent:
No love here for Seth Moulton, either.
No forgiveness too also
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker:
This is mightily bothering me as well.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Watching MSNBC. I should be working too, damn it.
@Kay: Pelosi is making a similar point on the House floor right now.
J R in WV
@Mallard Filmore:
Sure it does… he isn’t going to say out loud to anyone “We’re gonna whack that Ambassador Bitch to get he out of the way!”
But telling the world she’s “going to go through some things” before she has a terrible bathtub falling on her out the window accident (which seems really common in the Russian sphere of influence, along with polonium tea accidents!), that makes the point really well, without confessing to the crime.
Mess with Trump, get killed is the message, without the confession attached to that message.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Pelosi knew about the Ukraine funding- they all did. She didn’t have proof he was using it to pressure Ukraine to announce a phony investigation into Biden but they all knew it was going on and they’re professional politicians- 90% of them had a good idea what it was about, especially since Trump’s sleazy lawyer was on Fox every day telling them
They all know there’s a ton more.
Immanentize
Hmmm. I just learned that Val Demings used to be a Cop — literally! And was Orlando’s first female Chief of Police. I love her!
joel hanes
@Kay:
Rationally
Iron Law of Institutions.
Each remaining Republican politician acts to maximize his own power within the Republican Party, not to maximize the long-term power of the party.
The ones with any rationality got out as soon as Trump was elected, and are sitting this out more or less untainted, waiting to see if it will be possible to return and pick up some of the pieces after the coming firestorm. I haven’t any use for Paul Ryan, but he apparently saw what was coming and decided to stay well out of it.
Kay
I think this is a good question for the NY bar. State bars hammer ordinary lawyers. I hope we don’t have a new lower standard for politically powerful sleazy cable tv lawyers/lobbyists now.
The former mayor of NY should be treated the same as any ordinary lawyer. If he isn’t, the NY bar is complicit in the corruption and sleaze.
Kay
@joel hanes:
Right. The whole thing has made more sense to me in the last six months, because that’s when I realized “this is much worse than we know”.
One whistleblower and look what came out. That carpet is so lumpy I’m amazed they’re still walking around without tripping and falling. They all know it just like they all knew he was holding the Ukraine aid hostage.
Van Buren
Do the Democrats have more things under wraps?
Narrator voice: They do.
zhena gogolia
@Immanentize:
She is terrific. She was one of the very best during the impeachment hearings.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Just take the facts as we know them and it’s horrifying. Forget about the wanna-be trumpette hyde.
MCA1
@Roger Moore: Spot on analysis, I think. At least with respect to those who actually pay some attention to what’s going on. While it feels like we’re living in a post-shame world these days, the way we get to below 40% approval ratings and above 70% “Remove the Motherfucker” polling is to keep pressing on the “horrible human being you don’t want to be associated with” button. By rubbing their faces in the criminality and boorishness and betrayal and forcing them to confront it, even in the privacy of their own minds. I’ve started getting a lot more outspoken these days about how you’d have to be completely morally bankrupt and/or not a patriot to not support removal at this point.
That said, there’s still a huge group of people who regard all of politics as sports/entertainment, so the task there is different. But the continuing cavalcade of horrible revelations serves the correct end for those people, too: make fandom of the GOP and Drumpf toxic and deeply uncool. The worse the ratings get, the less people want to admit they’re still watching the show.
catclub
Extreme lack of imagination. Everybody knows that the Uranium went: US-Canada-Clinton Foundation-Benghazi!-Russia-Iran
MCA1
@Kay: Yep. Same general point for DiGenova and Toensing and whatever their relevant Bar is.
catclub
@Van Buren: Plus all the documents that WH and State have refused to turn over to House investigators.
Jay
@Cheryl Rofer:
yeah, the “more” according to Dolt 45 was that she didn’t hang his portrait photo in the Embassy,…..
Sebastian
@Kent:
Don’t make me start drinking or sniffing glue this early.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
No. Look at how much the Democrats have been able to dig up in one year with control of one House of Congress. Now imagine how much they’d be able to do in 4 years with control of DOJ. That’s what they’re afraid of. They know if they don’t keep control of DOJ, a lot of their wrongdoing will come to light. Many of them will face prosecution, and it’s not going to help their chances of regaining power any time soon.
IMO, this is the underrated danger of corruption. Yes, we’re worried about all the little ways it causes problems, but the biggest problem is when it forces politicians to cling to power for their own personal safety. The Republicans are justifiably terrified of what will happen if they lose control, and that makes them that much more willing to engage in all kinds of criminal conduct to stay in power.
Ruckus
@germy:
That of course would be the normal way things are done, so no, it would never be done that way in this maladministration.
Shit for brains doesn’t do realistic, or normal, or even a little off, he’s a blind, deranged, demented bull in an operating room in the middle of a heart replacement operation for the entire country. And it was going bad enough before all his “friends” brought in the M80s and started setting them off.
Eunicecycle
@Roger Moore: That makes a lot of sense to me.
catclub
The Jay Sekulow letter that says the President okay’ed
John Dowd being Parnas’ lawyer is an example where Trump can no longer say he knew nothing about the guy.
Kent
@Roger Moore: Trump has set a new precedent for investigating your formal rivals with the ENDLESS and ongoing investigations of Clinton’s emails that continued to this month. As well as all the continued FBI investigations of the fake story about Obama spying on the Trump campaign.
They established the precedent of investigating one’s former rivals. It is going to envelope them them if the Dem’s take back the White House and start using the Justice Department to look into Trump corruption.
catclub
@Roger Moore: They know if they don’t keep control of DOJ, a lot of their wrongdoing will come to light. Many of them will face prosecution, and it’s not going to help their chances of regaining power any time soon.
If you thought there was a shitstorm of outrage over “criminalizing policy differences” (and there was), when the Obama admin had to decide whether to prosecute the Bush admin torture team, that will be nothing compared to what comes out if the DOJ goes after any of these guys with a new Democratic admin. And I have my doubts about how well a Democratic admin will stand up to it.
Cliff not in Nh
Sounds like someone was a tad scared about ‘falling’ out of a window, like so many others.
JPL
You mean the one in office right? The one who according to a new book didn’t understand the significance of Pearl Harbor..
Searcher
@zhena gogolia: It isn’t catching on but I refuse to give it up.
Jamie
@Roger Moore: Yep. I’ve seen this referred to as “the Dictator’s Treadmill.” Once you’ve broken laws to gain power, you have to stay in power to avoid prosecution.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes. This, what are all these guys well into some second childhood?
yellowdog
@Bruce K: I’m convinced that the Russians have something damaging/illegal/compromising on every single Republican in the House and Senate (and the Cabinet). Some are also right wing nut jobs true believers but I think the Russian kompromat is the main reason for their intrangesance. They can’t vote to remove the shitgibbon from office because it would mean the loss of their power/money/personal relationships/freedom if they defy Putin.
Kent
No there isn’t. SASQ
opiejeanne
@Baud: The sarcasm font was always red on a long gone forum, which helped avoid a lot of flaming, although we did have to explain it to newbies because they didn’t know the poster well enough to get it, and there were always new people wandering through. .
Shalimar
@germy: Scarf-face? That does not mean what he thinks it means
Shalimar
@germy: Scarf-face? That does not mean what he thinks it means
mrmoshpotato
Dump: Uhhh the best people.
Reality: Fuck, not even the best mobster shitbags.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Scarfface, eh? Is this fucker battling a fierce winter headwind? Such the douchest of bags.
Bill Arnold
@West of the Rockies:
Once an older person has fallen, the probability of them falling in a near future time interval is significantly higher, in my experience.
sdhays
A crucial aspect is that the Senate trial is not like a regular trial with the Senators sequestered away from all media until the trial ends and the decision of the jury being final. The Senators can take whatever information that want into account in how the vote, and voters will not parse the nuances of whether a certain piece of evidence was “official” in the trial or not. The voters will be delivering a verdict later this year, so the Senate simply ignores stuff like this at their peril.
Bill Arnold
@Mallard Filmore:
You’re assuming that Trump remembers details related to time and causality; he’s often confused about such things. Also, if he wasn’t confused, he could have been talking about causing trouble for her here in the US, either illegal goon stuff or using some bureaucratic apparatus.
One possibility is that some [hypothetical/speculation !!!] minor expense report style irregularities were found (hard to avoid) and that the DJT administration was toying with blowing them out of proportion to complete the ruination of her career.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@Jamie: It’s also “Macbeth”.
Ruckus
@Bill Arnold:
A normally corrupt administration might try get rid of a disliked employee that way or to keep them in line, this douchebag collection of losers and assholes would have to improve 10 or 20 thousand percent to be just normally corrupt.
Evil_Paul
@Kent: There’s also the fact that she’s a woman. And she’s in the way. A woman. Interfering with Trump’s divine prerogative to do whatever he feels like. And she might have been able to stop him. It’s worth looking for an additional motive but don’t underestimate the power of sheer, vile, insecure misogyny
Hell, he was mad enough to tweet at her even as she was giving testimony in front of the House…
greenergood
Sorry – only read through the first hundred posts – no time – just want Yovanovich and Nancy Smash to be SAFE. Nothing more, nothing less just now – until they can bring their truth to the wide open spaces. And I wish the bastard MSM would do its job
J R in WV
@greenergood:
They are doing their job, profits are up from all the clicks! That’s all that counts in our capitalist society so far. Dammit!!