US Politics, October 2019 — I guess statement you could say with thread. I made a thread. The thread was PERFECT.

Well, this happened
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trumps-former-top-russia-adviser-to-testify-in-house-impeachment-probe/2019/10/14/e6015c1c-ee34-11e9-8693-f487e46784aa_story.html

Fiona Hill, the White House’s former top Russia adviser, told impeachment investigators on Monday that Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, ran a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that circumvented U.S. officials and career diplomats in order to personally benefit President Trump, according to a person familiar with her testimony.

NEWS: Sondland will also testify that after he attended Zelensky’s inauguration in May, he met with Trump, Rick Perry and Kurt Volker in the Oval Office. Trump told them that any in-person meeting between Trump and Zelensky would have to be approved by Giuliani. - @JoshNBCNews

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) October 15, 2019

And since we discussed whether the whitehouse can stop people from testifying

Lots of hand waving at supposed privileges and vaguely threatening language from the WH here, but the thing this letter really reveals is the weakness of their position. If people want to testify, the WH can’t do anything to stop them. https://t.co/JaFR4twu6G

— Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) October 15, 2019

That's the stuff

i think it's weird giuliani didn't get any formal position. maybe that was part of the dumbass scheme.

That’s an oops

Breaking: Bolton instructed aide to report Giuliani pressure campaign to White House lawyer. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton said, according to testimony to House investigators. @npfandos https://t.co/GO1pnMSyBl

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) October 15, 2019

lol

Not sure there is a formal position that can just circumvent the State Department

Son-In-Law?

secretary of crime

lol

i hereby nominate myself for this illustrious position *shakes ur hand, slides other hand into ur wallet to finesse ur cash*

https://frinkiac.com/gif/S05E03/973655/978660.gif?b64lines=V0FMTEVUIElOU1BFQ1RPUi4=

(l to r) me, the three richest ppl in america

Neil Cavuto is all outta fucks to give pic.twitter.com/rQYGx2nRaj

— Ron DOV (@rez512) October 14, 2019

whoops didn't realize that was old

Neil Cavuto could have made the same commentary three months ago, minus about three or four examples out of the twenty five or thirty he used. But they could have been easily replaced by others just as true and worth mentioning. But for some reason he didn't make that commentary three months ago. Or seven months ago. Or a year ago. Why not? Why now?

he made it one and a half months ago

If trump is not removed from office (which he probably won’t be) it seems inconceivable that this guy is not going to need a pardon

The president’s lawyer got half a million dollars from Fraud Guarantee. https://t.co/o4E6tPXzfR

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) October 15, 2019

he made it one and a half months ago

he still flunked the first 2.5 years of the test.

So how much of this 10 hour testimony are we ever going to hear about? It's weird to me that the sum total of such a long session would be a couple juicy quotes. What do they spend all that time talking about?

"fraud guarantee" is just... why do i even make an effort anymore inside this simulation

it’s not even on-the/nose, it’s just... nose

You you to take Kyiv Post articles with a pinch of salt but this has some useful background information on what's probably going on:

https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/destination-vienna-connecting-giuliani-two-fixers-and-a-ukrainian-oligarch.html?cn-reloaded=1

The shortish version is that Ukrainian politics is dominated by half a dozen extremely rich oligarchs. None of them are really, inherently, Ukrainian nationalist or pro-Russia, they're opportunists, and have realigned their positions for the sake of convenience as time went on. Dmytro Firtash and Rinat Akhmetov were more closely associated with Yanukovich, Petro Poroshenko became president himself and Ihor Kolomoisky is linked to the current president, Zelenskyy. They're all crooks.

Firtash was on the outs when Poroshenko came to power and set up a base in Vienna. He was indicted by the US on bribery charges linked to a deal in India and was subject to an extradition request. He argued (probably correctly) that the US wasn't particularly interested in international bribery or Ukrainian crooks, given that they were still backing one as president, and just wanted to get him to America to force him to testify against another Yanukovich associate - Manafort. iirc, this argument was accepted initially by the Austrian courts but was either overturned on appeal or there was some kind of political intervention, meaning he was still likely to be sent to the US.

Up to this point, his legal team was led by Lanny Davis - a former Clinton lawyer / advisor. Firtash sacked Davis and hired two Giuliani associates, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. Around the same time Firtash (and Kolomoisky, incidentally) started to suggest that they knew a lot of background dirt on Hunter / Joe Biden. It seems likely that Fruman and Parnas are part of Firtash's lobbying effort to get himself out of extradition and Giuliani's efforts to engage with them, go to Vienna, etc, are because he believes (or was open minded about) the suggestion that Firtash might have something explosive on the Bidens.

This is the key sentence negating all but the most severe claims of executive privilege:

"The deliberative process privilege disappears altogether when there is any reason to believe government misconduct occurred.”

The shortish version is that Ukrainian politics is dominated by half a dozen extremely rich oligarchs.

phew, good thing this model isn't replicated elsewhere

(interesting piece tho, thx for posting sv)

🚨Fiona Hill describes this scene:

In a White House meeting, Sondland tells Ukrainians they will get a Trump meeting if they open the investigations Trump wants. Then, Sondland follows the Ukrainians out of the meeting to privately make clear he's talking about Hunter Biden.

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) October 15, 2019

"just in case you're confused, we're doing crimes here"

best part of this testimony is bolton calling the ukraine efforts, "whatever drug deal sondland and giuliani are cooking up in ukraine"

pretty funny. bolton should be invited to ilx.

lol i'm still worried he's going to come out of this looking like a patriot

i love how US Senators are now delivering the news with drudge sirens

can we get a quick list of who would have to be lying/committing treason in order for trump to be telling the truth

it is thousands of people

the deep state has a deep bench iirc

don't worry, those maverickin' GOP moderates in the Senate have got Trump's back!

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/465779-trumps-gop-impeachment-firewall-holds-strong

it was assumed that trump fired bolton because they didn't agree on...anything other than that he was on fox news and was on the tv and that trump liked that, at one time.

have to wonder if bolton reporting giuliani to white house lawyers may have played a role

Bolton would still kill us all if given half the chance, but he's a politician. He's survived this long in spite of being nuts. The rest are the Keystone Kops.

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) October 15, 2019

So enjoyable that Rudy got half a million dollars for "business and legal advice" from a guy who was subsequently arrested at an airport. Apparently your "legal advice" sucks, dude.

For the record, I would happily give terrible legal advice to anyone for WAY less than that.

Heck, I'd be willing to tell a criminal to flee the country for more like $200K. A bargain.

RAND PAUL: If we're going to investigate Giuliani, then we should investigate Hunter Biden.@SRuhle: Does that mean we should investigate how Kushner's family got foreign money? Ivanka's Chinese trademarks?

RP: If we want to go down the road of self-destruction, we can do that. pic.twitter.com/4jqvRepoms

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2019

party motto is now I Know You Are But What Am I

Just today, I have seen Donald Trump's son, Ron Paul's son and Mitt Romney's niece speak out forcefully about how bad it is to use family connections to advance your career.

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) October 15, 2019

that wd be George Romney's son's niece

tbf, 22% of people under the age of 30 are related to the Romneys

cf. that episode of new girl where max greenfield convincingly passed himself off as "tagg romney"

xp was that via one of those conversion ceremonies

correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't all this Hunter Biden stuff investigated years ago?

Peter Navarro, Trump's trade adviser and chief cheerleader of his China policy, has apparently been quoting staunch China hawk "Ron Vara" in his books for years. But:

1. Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro.
2. Ron Vara doesn't exist.@tebartl digs in: https://t.co/6GJb24pjmq

— Megan Cassella (@mmcassella) October 15, 2019

the stand up comedy routine trump is doing at the "values summit" is--predictably--fucking insane

ok lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EG8G00pX0AAh-oI?format=jpg&name=large