“I do wonder why it was necessary to smear my reputation.”
— Former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, quoted by Politico, acknowledging President Trump had the right to remove her for any reason.
“I do wonder why it was necessary to smear my reputation.”
— Former Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, quoted by Politico, acknowledging President Trump had the right to remove her for any reason.
Sen. Kamala Harris is getting the presidential endorsement of the United Farm Workers, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
“The major endorsement is timed with the California Democratic Party Endorsing Convention in Long Beach, and comes as a shot in the arm as the Democrat’s campaign has struggled in recent months.”
“The first official from inside the White House Office of Management and Budget to break ranks and testify in the impeachment inquiry against President Trump will appear for his closed-door deposition Saturday morning, offering insight into the decision to delay military aid to Ukraine,” the Washington Post reports.
“House investigators have spoken to officials from the Pentagon and the State Department about the hold placed on the congressionally appropriated funds, but they’re hoping Mark Sandy, a longtime career employee, will fill out their understanding of what transpired when he meets with them privately.”
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Aaron Blake: “At three distinct points, we have seen Sondland’s testimony called into question. The first time was when other witnesses said he talked about a quid pro quo with Ukrainian officials on July 10, which Sondland soon confirmed via clarified testimony. The second was this week, when Taylor disclosed that Holmes had overheard a Sondland call with Trump on July 26 that Sondland had failed to mention and in which Trump asked about the investigations he was asking for.”
“And now Holmes undermines a central claim in Sondland’s testimony: That Sondland didn’t know that Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s interest in investigating a Ukrainian company that employed Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden had anything to do with the Biden family.”
“Among the many guests who had their pictures taken with President Trump at the White House’s annual Hanukkah party last year were two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman,” CNN reports.
“At one point during the party that night, Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a large reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani.”
“Parnas said that ‘the big guy,’ as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and Fruman with what Parnas described as ‘a secret mission’ to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.”
“Former President Barack Obama offered an unusual warning to the Democratic primary field on Friday evening, cautioning the candidates not to move too far to the left in their policy proposals, even as he sought to reassure a party establishment worried about the electoral strength of their historically large primary field,” the New York Times reports.
“Speaking before a room of wealthy liberal donors, Mr. Obama urged Democrats to remember the long, combative slog of his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton in 2008, arguing that the 16 month battle ultimately made him a stronger general election candidate.”
“Yet, he also raised concerns about some of the liberal ideas being promoted by some candidates, citing health care and immigration as issues where the proposals may have gone further than public opinion.”
“Secret Service agents had identified four U.S. sites as finalists for next year’s Group of Seven summit — but then they were told to add a new finalist: President Trump’s Doral resort, according to an internal Secret Service email released late Friday,” the Washington Post reports.
“It sheds light on the process that led to Trump’s short-lived decision last month to award the Group of Seven summit — a gathering of top world leaders — to his own business.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CBS News that President Trump’s ongoing attacks on witnesses in the impeachment probe — including his tweets about former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch Friday — are “very significant” as the impeachment probe progresses.
Said Pelosi: “Because he knows — well, he made a mistake and he knows her strength. And he was trying to undermine it.”
She added: “I think part of it is his own insecurity as an imposter. I think he knows full well that he’s in that office way over his head. And so he has to diminish everyone else.”
“DC does not give a shit about Ukraine. It is a tool in their political fight. An object. A dildo with which Dems and GOP fuck each other.”
— Konstantin Kilimnik, former business partner of Paul Manfort’s in Ukraine, to BuzzFeed News.
Michael Bloomberg’s final decision on a presidential run is “days, not weeks” away, a person familiar with his thinking tells Axios — with an announcement expected before Thanksgiving.
“US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told President Trump that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ‘loves your ass’ and that Ukraine was going to move forward with the investigation Trump had asked Zelensky for a day earlier, according to new testimony from a US official in Kiev who overheard the phone conversation,” CNN reports.
“David Holmes told lawmakers in a closed-door impeachment inquiry Friday that Sondland had told Trump the Ukrainian President would do ‘anything you ask him to’ and that Sondland had confirmed the Ukrainians were going to ‘do the investigation,’ one day after Trump has asked Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden.”
New York Times: “After the call ended, Mr. Holmes asked it if was true that the president did not care about Ukraine, the people said. The ambassador replied that Mr. Trump cared only about the ‘big stuff,’ like investigations that his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was pushing for, because they affected him personally.”
President Trump intervened in three military justice cases involving war-crimes accusations Friday, issuing at least two pardons that will prevent the Pentagon from pursuing future charges against the individuals involved, the Washington Post reports.
“A federal judge excoriated Justice Department officials Thursday for their handling of potential criminal charges against former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, saying the continued uncertainty over the prosecution was unfair to McCabe and the public,” Politico reports.
“Deval Patrick’s entry into the Democratic presidential contest has focused new attention on his 2014 decision as governor to push out two members of the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board who had sought to put his brother-in-law on the registry due to a rape conviction,” the Washington Post reports.
“The case has been in the news even before Patrick’s announcement because his brother-in-law earlier this year was convicted of raping Patrick’s sister for a second time. The first rape conviction occurred in 1993.”
BuzzFeed News: “For nearly three years, he worked at McKinsey & Company, an elite management consulting firm with offices around the world. It was work that took him, he has said, to Iraq and Afghanistan. And for years after that, in his early campaigns for public office, Buttigieg held up his stint at McKinsey as a selling point and proof that he was a business-friendly Democrat, while only vaguely describing what he did and never revealing his clients.”
“A deeper understanding of his time there a decade ago would be relevant to evaluating a 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who’s now trying to prove he has the experience to be president. But Buttigieg continues to keep most details a secret, citing a confidentiality agreement. He also now describes the job — which informed his views on business issues — as ‘not something that I think is essential in my story.'”
Key point: “McKinsey has become known for working with authoritarian regimes and taking on other ethically complicated projects.”
“Angered by the testimony of ousted ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) upbraided a reporter for The Hill and ripped the outlet’s publication of columns by John Solomon, the conservative journalist whose work is at the center of what Yovanovitch described as a ‘smear campaign’ against her,” Politico reports.
Said Spier: “I just find it reprehensible that any newspaper would just be willing to put that kind of crap out that is not — has no veracity whatsoever, and not check to see if it had any veracity.”
Jonathan Chait: “From the perspective of President Trump’s frustrated critics, the attempts to subject him to legal accountability have amounted to a long string of failures. Robert Mueller failed to produce a clear indictment of his dealings with Russia, and impeachment appears headed toward a partisan stalemate that will leave him in office.”
“But as Trump’s constant boil of rage attests, those efforts have hardly failed. The legal ring surrounding him is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.”
“For the second day in a row, President Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to protect his personal and business financial records from disclosure, this time to a congressional committee,” the Washington Post reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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