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Trump Distances Himself from Giuliani Associates

October 10, 2019 at 5:34 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Trump said that he doesn’t know the two business associates of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani who were arrested on campaign finance charges, but acknowledged he may have been photographed with them at some point,” The Hill reports.

Said Trump: “I don’t know those gentleman. Now, it’s possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody.”

He added: “I don’t know them, I don’t know about them, I don’t know what they do/ I don’t know, maybe they were clients of Rudy’s. You’d have to ask Rudy.”

Who Is Paying Rudy Giuliani?

October 10, 2019 at 5:32 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Trevor Potter and Delaney Marsco: “Rudolph W. Giuliani is not the secretary of state. In fact, he has no official position in President Trump’s Cabinet or administration. Yet he is traveling the world holding himself out as a U.S. government operative, engaging in some unknown amount of ‘unofficial’ diplomacy and insisting his work is not only officially sanctioned by the president but also assisted by the State Department. The president’s ‘private lawyer’ is not charging Trump for his services, but he and his law firm are known to have dozens of clients — including foreign entities — who are paying for whatever services they think Giuliani can provide for them.”

“That is a very convenient setup for Giuliani — but it leaves the public in the dark about the wealthy special interests who might be subsidizing his gratis work for Trump — or for whom he might actually be working while invoking Trump’s name and that of the State Department. Because Giuliani is not officially a federal employee, he can sidestep ethics obligations that would require transparency behind the foreign or domestic interests who are paying him.”

Watergate Prosecutors Say Trump Should Be Impeached

October 10, 2019 at 4:49 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Seventeen former Watergate special prosecutors write in the Washington Post that President Trump should be impeached:

“In reaching these conclusions, we take note of 1) the public statements by Trump himself; 2) the findings of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation; 3) the readout that the president released of his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky; 4) the president’s continuing refusal to produce documents or allow testimony by current and former government employees for pending investigations, as well as for oversight matters; and 5) other information now publicly available, including State Department text messages indicating that the release of essential military aid to Ukraine was conditioned on Ukraine’s willingness to commence a criminal investigation designed to further the president’s political interests.”

House Subpoenas Giuliani Associates Under Indictment

October 10, 2019 at 4:07 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“House investigators issued subpoenas on Thursday to compel two associates of Rudy Giuliani to sit for depositions in the impeachment inquiry, just hours after the men were indicted on campaign finance charges that touched on their work in Ukraine,” the New York Times reports.

Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are “required to appear for a deposition next Wednesday and hand over records related to their work with Mr. Giuliani.”

Rick Perry Subpoenaed

October 10, 2019 at 4:06 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Three House committees leading the impeachment inquiry against President Trump issued a subpoena for Energy Secretary Rick Perry to testify, NBC News reports.

Lindsey Graham Tricked By Russian Pranksters

October 10, 2019 at 3:41 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) thought he was talking Turkey’s minister of defense in an August call but he was really talking to Russian pranksters, Politico reports.

In the call, Graham was primarily concerned with getting Turkey back into the F-35 program and urging the “defense minister” to refrain from using Russia’s S-400 anti-aircraft weapon system.

But Graham also expressed sympathy for Turkey’s “Kurdish problem” and described the Kurds as a “threat.” Those private comments appear to contradict his public statements this week, in which he criticized Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of northern Syria.

Partisan Antipathy Grows More Intense

October 10, 2019 at 3:29 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new Pew Research survey finds that 55% of Republicans say Democrats are “more immoral” when compared with other Americans; 47% of Democrats say the same about Republicans. Three years ago, 47% of Republicans and 35% of Democrats said members of the other party were less moral than other people.

For the most part, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to ascribe negative characteristics to people in the opposing party, with one exception: 75% of Democrats say Republicans are ‘more closed-minded’ than other Americans, while 64% of Republicans say the same about Democrats.

Trump Calls Jeff Sessions a ‘Total Disaster’

October 10, 2019 at 3:02 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump slammed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a Daily Caller interview, calling him a “total disaster.”

Said Trump: “You look at what’s happening over at the Justice Department, now we have a great attorney general. Whereas before that, with Jeff Sessions, it was a disaster. Just a total disaster. He was an embarrassment to the great state of Alabama.”

He added: “And I put him there because he endorsed me, and he wanted it so badly. And I wish he’d never endorsed me.”

Gardner Won’t Answer About Election Interference

October 10, 2019 at 2:55 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) repeatedly refused to answer a “hypothetical question” from KDVR about whether it would be acceptable for a president to request election assistance from a foreign power.

Giuliani Had Lunch with Indicted Donors Yesterday

October 10, 2019 at 2:37 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rudy Giuliani reportedly had lunch with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman at Trump International Hotel in Washington yesterday, the same day that they were arrested on campaign-finance charges, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Prosecutors said at a press conference that Parnas and Fruman were attempting to leave the country when they were arrested at Dulles International Airport.

Warren’s Been Talking to Andrew Gillum

October 10, 2019 at 2:34 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Presidential candidates often keep a running list of influential individuals who they will informally call for ideas, advice, and, perhaps, to scope them out as a potential running mate,” the Daily Beast reports.

“And for several candidates, including at least one in the top tier, former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum is on speed dial. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), in particular, has been in contact with Gillum over the past several months.”

“Two sources said the talks between Warren and Gillum resemble the kind of courtship that happens when a leading presidential candidate is exploring potential vice presidential contenders.”

The GOP Deploys an Old Tactic for Warren

October 10, 2019 at 2:23 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “Republicans have tried to brand her as a socialist, attack her policy ideas and portray her as too left-wing for the American electorate. None of those arguments have diminished her political momentum, robust fund-raising or polling.”

“But in the past week, conservative news sites have challenged Ms. Warren’s story about how a public school principal forced her out of a teaching job in 1971 because she was ‘visibly pregnant,’ and the Republican National Committee grabbed onto the issue to wage its own attack. In doing so, Republicans employed a tactic — questioning a female candidate’s authenticity — that is at once often a sexist trope in politics and a strategy used against Hillary Clinton in 2016.”

Support for Impeachment Rises

October 10, 2019 at 2:21 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

A new PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist poll finds 52% of Americans said they supported the House impeachment inquiry, and 49% of U.S. adults said President Trump should be impeached.

When asked what should happen after he is impeached, 48% of Americans said Trump should be removed from office.

The Republican Party Is ‘Docile, Supine and Invertebrate’

October 10, 2019 at 2:16 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

George Will: “The canine loyalty of Senate Republicans will keep Trump in office. But until he complies with House committee subpoenas, the House must not limply hope federal judges will enforce their oversight powers. Instead, the House should wield its fundamental power, that of the purse, to impose excruciating costs on executive branch noncompliance. This can be done.”

“In 13 months, all congressional Republicans who have not defended Congress by exercising ‘the constitutional rights of the place’ should be defeated. If congressional Republicans continue their genuflections at Trump’s altar, the appropriate 2020 outcome will be a Republican thrashing so severe — losing the House, the Senate and the electoral votes of, say, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina and even Texas — that even this party of slow-learning careerists might notice the hazards of tethering their careers to a downward-spiraling scofflaw.”

Nita Lowey Will Retire

October 10, 2019 at 1:04 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-NY) announced that she is not running for reelection, Roll Call reports.

GOP Congressman Ends Support for Trump

October 10, 2019 at 1:02 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rep, John Shimkus (R-IL) told KMOX that President Trump’s decision to pullout of Syria was “terrible and despicable.”

Shimkus added that he told staff “to take my name off the I support Donald Trump list” and that he is “saddened for the Kurdish people.”

Shimkus is not running for re-election.

How the Trump Campaign Tracks Supporters

October 10, 2019 at 12:59 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Wall Street Journal: “When Donald Trump took the stage last month in Fayetteville, N.C., to support Republican candidate Dan Bishop in a special election, thousands of people showed up.”

“Unknown to the crowd, the Committee to Defend the President, a Republican political-action committee that supports Mr. Trump, had hired a company to collect unique identification numbers from attendees’ smartphones that evening, based on location data those phones were sending to third parties. The goal was to target ads at people it could drive to the polls the next day. Mr. Bishop won by about 3,800 votes.”

“The PAC now plans to use the technique, which is called geofencing, in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election in about half a dozen swing states to find people who may not be registered to vote, said its chairman, Ted Harvey.”

John Bolton to Write Trump Book

October 10, 2019 at 12:49 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has decided to write a book about his time in the Trump administration, Axios reports.

“Given the fact that he wrote a book about his tenure in the George W. Bush administration, from the moment he left the White House, senior officials privately expressed concerns about what Bolton might say and reveal about his time serving Trump.”