https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2019/11/27/mikie-sherrill-impeachment-tearing-apart-her-district-074097
The Town Hall That Impeachment Blew Up
Moderate Democrat Mikie Sherrill Returned To Her District — And A Wave Of Anger.
By MICHAEL KRUSE
11/27/2019 05:05 AM EST
Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for POLITICO.
WHIPPANY, N.J.—One of Representative Mikie Sherrill's district directors began the town hall in a filled community center Monday night with her customary call for civility. Hanover Township Boy Scout Troop 155 led the crowd in the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. An elementary school teacher sang a rousing national anthem. Everybody clapped and then sat down together in rows and rows of plastic folding chairs. Then came the first question.
"We sent you to Washington," a woman began, "to get work done, for us and for our country, and it appears that for the last couple years all that has been going on is investigations." Sitting in the front, I could almost feel people's shoulders tense up. Everybody knew what was coming. The towheaded scouts had filed to the back. The adults had the floor now. And impeachment was in the air. "We honestly," the woman continued, "can't trust Adam Schiff …"
"Do you have a question?" a man yelled.
"Sit down!" another shouted.
"Excuse me!" Sherrill interjected. "We agreed to be respectful!"
This was Sherrill's first town hall since the late September start of the formal impeachment inquiry directed at President Donald Trump—triggered, in part, by her, when the new Democratic congresswoman from this state's 11th District, a mostly suburban Republican stronghold, joined six other moderate freshman members with national security backgrounds and called for impeachment hearings in an op-ed in the Washington Post. "We do not," they wrote, "arrive at this conclusion lightly."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/24/seven-freshman-democrats-these-allegations-are-threat-all-we-have-sworn-protect/
Sherrill, after all, had spent months during the Mueller investigation toeing an increasingly tenuous line, urging caution and preaching patience. But the first rounds of reporting about the Ukraine scandal, she believed, had left her no choice but to change her mind. This impeachment process, she told me tearfully in her office on Capitol Hill, was a "1776 kind of fight"—a fight, potentially, for the continued existence of the democracy. She also said she knew she must explain clearly and carefully to her constituents why this extreme constitutional remedy had become a necessity.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/27/trump-impeachment-national-security-house-democrats-moderate-mikie-sherrill-228430
So here she was, two months later, barely more than a year after she was elected, in a right-leaning part of her district, miked up, dressed in red shoes and a blue blazer, standing in front of a colossal American flag … explaining. "So, as most of you know here, I did not run for office to impeach the president. I ran on taxes and health care and infrastructure," she told the more than 250 people on hand. "However, as somebody who spent her life working on issues of national security, as someone who spent her life working with foreign governments and our allies across the world, the president crossed a line for me when it seemed as if he had withheld critical military funding from a security partner because he wanted them to investigate an opponent of his in an election."
The forceful cheers and the boos signaled the predicament facing Sherrill and the other centrists who helped flip the House in the 2018. Though many of them ran and won on local issues that attracted moderate Republicans, the explosive impeachment proceedings have generated a centrifugal partisanship that is testing the strength of their cross-party support.
Sherrill pivoted to what else she is doing in Washington, citing her work on the House Armed Services Committee; on the committee on science, space and technology; and on election security legislation she's co-sponsored.
"But I do think it's critical," she concluded, "that we understand just what happened with respect to Ukraine. I think it's a matter of national security. And I think it's important that Congress performs its duty there as well."
What became more and more evident as the evening went on, though, was that this explanation was not enough. Not for everybody. Because impeachment didn't stop coming up. Trump didn't stop coming up. Since I started following Sherrill at the beginning of the year, I've been to almost all of her town halls—in a rec center gym, in a middle school auditorium, at an assisted living facility, in the council chambers of a rural borough. None of those town halls—polite, orderly, at times even staid—felt like this town hall. This one pulsed with a frayed, unruly kind of energy.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/15/congress-house-democrats-freshmen-mikie-sherrill-aoc-225054
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/01/mikie-sherrill-new-jersey-pressure-227995
The emotion Sherrill showed that September day in her office was remarkable not only because it gave a glimpse of the toll of her role in a moment of such consequence but also because she's usually so unflappable. Beyond her biography—former Navy helicopter pilot, former federal prosecutor, mother of four—what propelled her to victory last year was, in fact, her demeanor. She was steady, and she was moderate—moderate in her politics as well as her mien, and she was sufficiently centrist to flip a district that had been in GOP control for more than 30 years. While she ran in some ways because of her alarm at the ascension of Trump, her effective pitch was the opposite of divisive. It was all "bipartisan" and "broad coalitions." It was country over party. It was let's get stuff done by coming back together again.
But Monday night was … not that.
Over the course of an hour and a half, Sherrill was asked about vaping, anti-Semitism, federal spending, the national debt, state and local taxes, and even her book recommendations for children ( To Kill a Mockingbird). But the conversation kept coming back to an overarching theme. One of the Boy Scouts squeaked out a plea for Republicans and Democrats to stop the "fighting." He wondered what she might be able to do to make it stop. One woman, recently retired, gave a sort of rambling confessional about how scared she is, worrying out loud whether her son, daughter and grandson are going to be OK. Whether anybody is. "What's going to happen to all of us?" she said. "What's going to happen to our government? To our country?" Monday night at the Hanover Township Community Center was, in sum, a raw, unsettling, ground-level manifestation of the living-on-different-planets tenor of the impeachment hearings of the past two weeks and, more broadly, the intractably split Congress and nation.
After it was over, people milled about. On the tips of tongues was the first question of the night.
"Off the wall," said Democrat Jack Gavin, 60, an IT professional who's a staple at Sherrill's events.
A woman in a fur coat, a Republican named Ruth Anne, on the other hand, didn't think the question was "off the wall." She thought the answer was. "Very disturbing," she told me. "I thought, by now, after the two weeks of hearings, she would have seen, 'Oh, my G-d, there's nothing there.'" She wouldn't tell me her last name.
Gavin had on his tan hat that read "FACTS MATTER." Ruth Anne had on her red hat that read "TRUMP." They walked separately into the dark.
The students weren't surprised. In attendance at the town hall were Julie White, Bianca Walder and Anna Agresti, all enrolled in Whippany Park High School's Advanced Placement course in U.S. government and politics, taught by Richard Schwartz—for whom Sherrill's events act as an extension of the the classroom. White had on her phone screenshots from a Hanover Township Facebook group. A man named Doug Emann had posted news of the town hall. Others had posted their responses.
"Stop the impeachment bullshit!!!" wrote a Frank Pedalino.
"I had high hopes for this coward. I thought she ran on a platform of being an independent & open minded. But she has just proved she is no different than the rest of the swamp," wrote a William Ulrich.
"VOTE her OUT OF CONGRESS," wrote a Julian Crawford.
The online vitriol now manifested IRL.
The man who asked Sherrill for the children's book recommendations somehow worked into his warm-and-fuzzy, blessedly-off-politics question a Trump dig. "I'm a big reader of books," he told her, "unlike our president."
A different woman stood up and asked another question about impeachment. If Trump were a Democrat, too, she wanted to know, would Sherrill still have the same stance?
Sherrill answered by reminding everybody that she ran saying she wasn't going to vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the House and then went to Washington and on her first day made good on that promise. "And that's an interesting way to start your career as a member of the House of Representatives and the Democratic Caucus," she said, calling that a "proof point" that she wasn't beholden to some party line, returning to explaining. "So, if we had a Democratic president who had withheld military aid from a foreign leader who was facing an existential threat—Russia is an existential threat to Ukraine—and then was trying to force that foreign power to investigate an American citizen, namely a son of his political opponent … would I want to hear more about that? Would I want to learn more about that? Would I want to begin an inquiry? Yes. I would."
The recently retired woman who said she is scared wore a shirt showing support for Sherrill, and she embedded in all that she said a short question for the congresswoman.
"How are you feeling?"
After the woman finished, Sherrill opted to answer.
"How do I feel?" she said. "Um, I guess, you know—I think there's a lot of people across the country that are scared, worried about their future—how they're going to pay for their retirement, how they're going to put their kids through college, worried about the epidemic of gun violence. And, now, those things are really scary, no doubt. But I look across this room, and I see where we've gotten to tonight. ... We had a lot of questions. There are a lot of questions that really I think frustrate people in one way or another and even anger people in one way or another. But we all sat here together, and we're going to keep sitting here for a little longer"—people laughed, just a little—"and we're going to talk about this, because this is a democracy, and maybe we leave here a little frustrated, or maybe we leave here thinking, 'I'm going to do more.' Maybe some of you think, 'I'm going to go knock on more doors for Mikie Sherrill.' Maybe you think, 'I'm going to get rid of Mikie Sherrill.' But at the end of the day, we're here because we care about this country. And that gives me such a great deal of hope."
It sounded good.
***
After Sherrill's first town hall, in January, I told her it had been "a little boring."
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/15/congress-house-democrats-freshmen-mikie-sherrill-aoc-225054
She laughed.
"That's — OK?" she said.
It's become something of a recurring joke.
"I'm surprised you came back," she said with a smile after a May town hall in Bloomfield.
"I love boring town halls," I said.
On Monday night, after most people had left, I returned to the well.
"This town [hall] was … not boring," I said.
She smiled, but this time only kinda, and seemed not to be in the mood. "I don't think any of my town halls are boring, so …"
She told me she wasn't surprised by how this one had gone. "There's not much I don't expect in our district," she said. "We have people from across the political spectrum."
I, too, wanted to know what the woman wearing the Sherrill shirt wanted to know. How was she feeling, heading into the holidays, as 2019 hurtles toward ( deep breath) 2020?
She talked about everything but herself. She talked about everything but impeachment. "I feel like we're moving forward on a lot of the issues that people in my district care deeply about. I hope to see H.R. 3 pass soon. … I hope we can conference that with the Senate. … I'm on the state and local tax deduction task force. … We haven't moved forward as quickly on getting shovels in the ground. … I've been back and forth with the secretary of Transportation's office. …" She went on. "Congress," she said, "doesn't move as quickly or as orderly as military movements."
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/3
One of Sherrill's staffers was making faces at another trying to nudge her out of the community center.
Her support for impeachment, of course, was for the inquiry. How she votes next month remains to be seen. For a rookie member from the sort of district at the heart of the balance of power in Congress, Sherrill appears to be, at least for now, electorally secure. She has a primary challenger who got in mainly because of her initial reluctance to come out in favor of impeachment. She has a Republican challenger who just got in the other day. Others are still mulling runs. It will be an uphill battle for any and all of them. Prognosticators peg Sherrill as safe.
https://www.insidernj.com/cd11s-washburne-running-congress/
https://morristowngreen.com/2019/11/25/accusing-dems-of-socialism-and-picking-on-trump-casha-of-gop-says-hell-challenge-sherrill-for-congress-in-11th-district/
https://cookpolitical.com/ratings/house-race-ratings
Then again, in this cultural and political moment, the only certainty is volatility. Things can and do, as we've seen and keep seeing, change.
I shook Sherrill's hand and wished her a happy Thanksgiving. It was time for a break.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
This @AP graphic is the single most helpful thing I’ve seem about the most fateful day of the Trump presidency.
https://twitter.com/TheBradMielke/status/1200840558459138050
https://twitter.com/TheBradMielke/status/1200840558459138050
https://twitter.com/TheBradMielke/status/1200840558459138050
NBA Highlights | Excellent Games + Wondrous Talent/Skill/Artistry All Season Long | http://www.espn.com/nba/schedule
DeMar DeRozan drains a three to give Spurs a 14-pt lead over the Clippers
https://streamable.com/pbnqt
The San Antonio Spurs (7-13) get a quality win over the LA Clippers (15-5) 107-97 in Kawhi’s second return to San Antonio
Paul George finishes the game against San Antonio with 33 Minutes, 5 Points, on 2-11 FG, 1-5 3PT, and 5 Turnovers.
Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Lou Williams combine for 31 points on 12/44 shooting in tonight's loss against the Spurs.
In a tough loss against the Pacers, Trae Young pours in 49/6 and 2 steals on 16/28 FG, 8-15 3P, 9/9 FT including the floater to send it to OT
Trae Young tonight: 49PTS on 16-28 shooting (8-15 from 3). The rest of the Hawks starters: 19PTS on 8-29 shooting (1-9 from 3). The Hawks are now 4-15.
Luka Doncic tonight: 42 points (12-24 FG, 15-18 FT), 11 assists, 9 rebounds, 2 turnovers
Carmelo Anthony second in points with 23 Points 11 rebounds on 50% shooting, tied for a team high +/- in Portland Win
The Toronto Raptors (14-4) defeat the Orlando Magic (7-11), 90-83, behind a career high 33 points from Norman Powell
Fred VanVleet just finished his night against Orlando with 7 steals.
Norman Powell outscored the Magic 19-12 all by himself in the 3rd quarter
Markelle Fultz drains a three with a hand in his face to open the gameHighlights
https://streamable.com/mdu3f
Hakeem on MJ's absence: I won't guard MJ. It's a different matchup. But the year after, they didn't give Orlando credit. MJ was there, they beat them. We didn't play them in Finals, but they lost. They make it seem like he retired for 2 years & that years we won. He was there the 2nd year, they lost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq0ZT1UdIPM
The Portland Trail Blazers (8-12) defeat the Chicago Bulls (6-14) 107-103 behind 23 points and 11 rebounds from Carmelo Anthony
AD blocks Hachimura from behind which leads to a LeBron behind the back pass to Green for 3 at the other endHighlights
https://streamable.com/4i6c6
Hassan gets his 10th block of the night to set a Trail Blazer franchise recordHighlights
https://streamable.com/te7p9
The Los Angeles Lakers have tied their win total from the 2015-2016 season in less than 20 games
Giannis starts the game with a nasty jam!Highlights (streamable.com)
https://streamable.com/fll2f
The Milwaukee Bucks (16-3) defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers (5-14) 119-110 to extend their win streak to 10 games behind Giannis' 33 points and 12 rebounds
Thomas Bryant gets a piece of AD's shot attempt, but it still goes in, and Bryant cannot believe it
https://streamable.com/rzxvf
Porzingis with 2 PTS , 1 AST, 0/8 shooting but also 13 RBS, 2 STLS and 3 BLKS on 0 PFs.
Ben Simmons with the clutch steal on the inbound and the dunk
https://streamable.com/86tw1
Julius Randle with the ferocious poster on Norvel Pelle
https://streamable.com/c3sc5
Load Management unlocked for LeBron & AD, as the Lakers take down the Wizards behind LeBron's 23 points/ 11 Assists and AD's 26 points/ 13 rebounds & 3 blocks.
Simmons warming up in his favourite corner
https://streamable.com/3g8me
Norm drops a career high 33 pts on 12-18 shooting
Dwight Howard throws it down over former Laker Moe Wagner and gets a technical for taunting
https://streamable.com/15n0b
Hassan gets his 8th block of the night and Melo knocks down the transition three
https://streamable.com/551ll
The Philadelphia 76ers (13-6) escape the New York Knicks (4-15) 101-95 after trailing by 16
The Miami Heat (13-5) crush tmy Golden State Warriors (4-16), 122-105
Goran Dragic drops the defender and throws the behind the back pass to Tyler Herro for the 3
https://streamable.com/05r71
Cedi Osman strips Giannis, and then finishes on the other end
https://streamable.com/t3uzy
Rondo alley oop to LeBron poster on Bertans
https://streamable.com/nc9k4
Melo with a sweet touch pass to Skal for the slam
https://streamable.com/ipfd2
LeBron finds Anthony Davis in transition with an over-the-head bounce pass
https://streamable.com/y8ht8
Markelle Fultz challenges Marc Gasol at the rim and scoresHighlights
https://streamable.com/0juch
Luka Doncic becomes just the third player ever to average a 30-point triple double for an entire month
Steven Adams throws it down against Okafor to give OKC a 5-pt lead
https://streamable.com/pea7v
The Warriors are having the best free throw shooting season ever (410/489, 83.8%)
[Letourneau] “I’ve been told that, if the Warriors get the No. 1 pick, they will almost definitely keep it. If Golden State got another pick in the top-5, I still think there’s a good chance it holds onto the selection.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/warriors/article/Warriors-mailbag-Trade-for-Giannis-14871399.php
The Charlotte Hornets (8-12) defeat the Detroit Pistons (6-13) 110-107 to extend their head-to-head winning streak to 9 straight games
Anthony Davis destroys Rui Hachimura's shot attempt and stares at his victim
https://streamable.com/x8dmh
With his 755th 20+ point game, Carmelo Anthony has passed Oscar Robertson for 10th all time 20+ point games in NBA history
A great defensive possession by Giannis Antetokounmpo
https://streamable.com/q444t
Kawhi Leonard tonight: 19 points on 8/23 shooting and 0/1 from 3
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/e3q5d6/kawhi_leonard_tonight_19_points_on_823_shooting/
Trae Young drains another three to cut the deficit, he now has 44
https://streamable.com/6zsq6
Tim Hardaway Jr. has scored 20.2 points on 60/61/88 shooting splits in his last 5 games
Tyler Herro hits his 5th three of the night on DraymondHighlights
https://streamable.com/emy96
Giannis slams the putback on Tristan Thompson's head
https://streamable.com/6491i
Hornets rookie PJ Washington tonight: 26 points on 9/12 shooting, 3/3 from deep, 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 steals
Bojan Bogdanovic with two 30+ point games in a row (self.nba)
Brandon Ingram with the spin and slam!Highlights
https://streamable.com/nwkqe
The Pacers-Hawks game tonight was a contrast of opposites: Trae Young was the only member of the Hawks starting five scoring in double-digits (49 points), while all 5 Indiana starters scored at least 16 points.
Philadelphia 76ers 6th man James Ennis III is averaging a career high 38.2% from 3 point range so far this season.
Hassan Whiteside is the 10th player in NBA history to record 5+ games with 10+ blocks
Embiid rejects Randle off the glassHighlights (streamable.com)
https://streamable.com/prhm6
Trae Young goes right down the lane and ties the game
https://streamable.com/ag8nz
Trae Young hits the three in the corner, but the Hawks have run out of time
https://streamable.com/ybbii
T. J. Warren with a corner three to give Indiana the lead in crunch time
https://streamable.com/98axc
Vintage DeAndre Jordan skies to catch the lob
https://streamable.com/gmutl
The LAC hot wings finish a cold shooting night with 24 points combined, on 10/34 shooting.
Cam Reddish's miserable shooting to start his career continues - with another 1/7 performance tonight - his FG% sits in at .286 - the next closest that qualifies if Lauri Markkanen at .353
Trae Young with back-to-back buckets to give Atlanta the lead, he now has 35 of Hawks' 87 points
https://streamable.com/59ef8
Bradley Beal with the steal, Rui Hachimura takes it to LeBronHighlights
https://streamable.com/t27dq
Duncan Robinson runs into a long three and drains
https://streamable.com/vxpxv
Bismack Biyombo denies Andre Drummond at the top
https://streamable.com/tx01s
Jordan Poole shakes off Dragic and hits the three
https://streamable.com/mfnnd
Pistons' final possession against the Hornets
https://streamable.com/yvkzl
Doug McDermott drains back-to-back catch-and-shoot threes
https://streamable.com/4n9ul
Siakam shoots 4/22 against the Magic..still leads the Raptors in +/- with a +13
Devonte' Graham drills a three to give Charlotte the lead with 1:40 left in Q4
https://streamable.com/7pfhn
Jordan Poole makes three consecutive 3-point attempts in Q2
https://streamable.com/o0vmr
Hornets were supposed to be one of the worst teams in recent history and are now 8th seed in the East for the moment, congrats and enjoy
Bismack Biyombo with a difficult shot over Drummond
https://streamable.com/1i9dg
Nets fans chant "Kyrie's better!" Kemba prepares to shoot free throws
https://streamable.com/hzzyn
Joe Harris and finds Jarrett Allen for the slam to put the Nets up 6 with 34 seconds left
https://streamable.com/96jeb
Kyrie Irving embraces Williams, Ojeleye, Wanamaker, Tatum, Smart, and Walker after the game
https://streamable.com/4pv9f
Vintage DeAndre Jordan skies to catch the lob
https://streamable.com/gmutl
The Brooklyn Nets (10-9) defeat the Boston Celtics (13-5), 112-107. Kyrie working on returning. Dinwiddie puts up 32/5/11/2/2 for the Nets.
Kawhi Leonard isn't having a great season. He's currently shooting 43% from the field and 30% from three while averaging 25 points and has already sat out 6 games due to injuries/ load management, is this just a case of small sample size still or something to do with his knee still being banged up? Kawhi is shooting his worst % (43.5) from the field while taking the most FGA in his career (20.9).
Trae Young is Averaging: 27.9 pts 8ast 1.5 steals a game as a Sophmore on a 45/38/85 shooting split
Trae Young has the worst RAPTOR on court/off court defensive rating of any player in the league. He also has the 7th *best* on/off court *offensive* rating in the league.
Rajon Rondo is currently shooting 44.8% on 3 pointers, on a career high 3.2 attempts per game
LeBron James had 17 games last year with 20+ PTS/10+ AST. 19 games into this season he already has 13
Fred Vanvleet’s amazing finals run is currently taking away from what he’s currently doing this season. I feel like he should be in the MIP conversation but he isn’t just because people “assumed” he was this good last postseason? He went from 11/3/5 to 19/4/7 (55% TS) with 2 steals a game. He’s top 5 in steals per game, first in minutes played and top 10 in assists per game while spearheading the raptor’s perimeter defence. Over this 10 game stretch with Lowry/Ibaka out, I could argue that he’s been at the same level as / better than Siakam over this stretch. The team went 8-2 while he put up 21/4/7 with 2.5 steals on 56.3% TS (Siakam has gone 23/8/4 on 50% TS). Watching these games, whenever the game is about to get out of reach, it’s Vanvleet that gets the drive or gets the 3 to keep us in it.
LeBron is getting fouled just 13% of the time on his shot attempts, a career low. Same with AD, who is getting fouled on just 13.5% of his shot attempts, a career low.
Rodney Hood is shooting career highs in every zone except 3-10 feet! And this is despite being assisted on only 28.3% of 2-point FGs -- assisted on 40.4% last year.
https://streamable.com/pbnqt
The San Antonio Spurs (7-13) get a quality win over the LA Clippers (15-5) 107-97 in Kawhi’s second return to San Antonio
Paul George finishes the game against San Antonio with 33 Minutes, 5 Points, on 2-11 FG, 1-5 3PT, and 5 Turnovers.
Kawhi Leonard, Paul George and Lou Williams combine for 31 points on 12/44 shooting in tonight's loss against the Spurs.
In a tough loss against the Pacers, Trae Young pours in 49/6 and 2 steals on 16/28 FG, 8-15 3P, 9/9 FT including the floater to send it to OT
Trae Young tonight: 49PTS on 16-28 shooting (8-15 from 3). The rest of the Hawks starters: 19PTS on 8-29 shooting (1-9 from 3). The Hawks are now 4-15.
Luka Doncic tonight: 42 points (12-24 FG, 15-18 FT), 11 assists, 9 rebounds, 2 turnovers
Carmelo Anthony second in points with 23 Points 11 rebounds on 50% shooting, tied for a team high +/- in Portland Win
The Toronto Raptors (14-4) defeat the Orlando Magic (7-11), 90-83, behind a career high 33 points from Norman Powell
Fred VanVleet just finished his night against Orlando with 7 steals.
Norman Powell outscored the Magic 19-12 all by himself in the 3rd quarter
Markelle Fultz drains a three with a hand in his face to open the gameHighlights
https://streamable.com/mdu3f
Hakeem on MJ's absence: I won't guard MJ. It's a different matchup. But the year after, they didn't give Orlando credit. MJ was there, they beat them. We didn't play them in Finals, but they lost. They make it seem like he retired for 2 years & that years we won. He was there the 2nd year, they lost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq0ZT1UdIPM
The Portland Trail Blazers (8-12) defeat the Chicago Bulls (6-14) 107-103 behind 23 points and 11 rebounds from Carmelo Anthony
AD blocks Hachimura from behind which leads to a LeBron behind the back pass to Green for 3 at the other endHighlights
https://streamable.com/4i6c6
Hassan gets his 10th block of the night to set a Trail Blazer franchise recordHighlights
https://streamable.com/te7p9
The Los Angeles Lakers have tied their win total from the 2015-2016 season in less than 20 games
Giannis starts the game with a nasty jam!Highlights (streamable.com)
https://streamable.com/fll2f
The Milwaukee Bucks (16-3) defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers (5-14) 119-110 to extend their win streak to 10 games behind Giannis' 33 points and 12 rebounds
Thomas Bryant gets a piece of AD's shot attempt, but it still goes in, and Bryant cannot believe it
https://streamable.com/rzxvf
Porzingis with 2 PTS , 1 AST, 0/8 shooting but also 13 RBS, 2 STLS and 3 BLKS on 0 PFs.
Ben Simmons with the clutch steal on the inbound and the dunk
https://streamable.com/86tw1
Julius Randle with the ferocious poster on Norvel Pelle
https://streamable.com/c3sc5
Load Management unlocked for LeBron & AD, as the Lakers take down the Wizards behind LeBron's 23 points/ 11 Assists and AD's 26 points/ 13 rebounds & 3 blocks.
Simmons warming up in his favourite corner
https://streamable.com/3g8me
Norm drops a career high 33 pts on 12-18 shooting
Dwight Howard throws it down over former Laker Moe Wagner and gets a technical for taunting
https://streamable.com/15n0b
Hassan gets his 8th block of the night and Melo knocks down the transition three
https://streamable.com/551ll
The Philadelphia 76ers (13-6) escape the New York Knicks (4-15) 101-95 after trailing by 16
The Miami Heat (13-5) crush tmy Golden State Warriors (4-16), 122-105
Goran Dragic drops the defender and throws the behind the back pass to Tyler Herro for the 3
https://streamable.com/05r71
Cedi Osman strips Giannis, and then finishes on the other end
https://streamable.com/t3uzy
Rondo alley oop to LeBron poster on Bertans
https://streamable.com/nc9k4
Melo with a sweet touch pass to Skal for the slam
https://streamable.com/ipfd2
LeBron finds Anthony Davis in transition with an over-the-head bounce pass
https://streamable.com/y8ht8
Markelle Fultz challenges Marc Gasol at the rim and scoresHighlights
https://streamable.com/0juch
Luka Doncic becomes just the third player ever to average a 30-point triple double for an entire month
Steven Adams throws it down against Okafor to give OKC a 5-pt lead
https://streamable.com/pea7v
The Warriors are having the best free throw shooting season ever (410/489, 83.8%)
[Letourneau] “I’ve been told that, if the Warriors get the No. 1 pick, they will almost definitely keep it. If Golden State got another pick in the top-5, I still think there’s a good chance it holds onto the selection.”
https://www.sfchronicle.com/warriors/article/Warriors-mailbag-Trade-for-Giannis-14871399.php
The Charlotte Hornets (8-12) defeat the Detroit Pistons (6-13) 110-107 to extend their head-to-head winning streak to 9 straight games
Anthony Davis destroys Rui Hachimura's shot attempt and stares at his victim
https://streamable.com/x8dmh
With his 755th 20+ point game, Carmelo Anthony has passed Oscar Robertson for 10th all time 20+ point games in NBA history
A great defensive possession by Giannis Antetokounmpo
https://streamable.com/q444t
Kawhi Leonard tonight: 19 points on 8/23 shooting and 0/1 from 3
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/e3q5d6/kawhi_leonard_tonight_19_points_on_823_shooting/
Trae Young drains another three to cut the deficit, he now has 44
https://streamable.com/6zsq6
Tim Hardaway Jr. has scored 20.2 points on 60/61/88 shooting splits in his last 5 games
Tyler Herro hits his 5th three of the night on DraymondHighlights
https://streamable.com/emy96
Giannis slams the putback on Tristan Thompson's head
https://streamable.com/6491i
Hornets rookie PJ Washington tonight: 26 points on 9/12 shooting, 3/3 from deep, 5 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 steals
Bojan Bogdanovic with two 30+ point games in a row (self.nba)
Brandon Ingram with the spin and slam!Highlights
https://streamable.com/nwkqe
The Pacers-Hawks game tonight was a contrast of opposites: Trae Young was the only member of the Hawks starting five scoring in double-digits (49 points), while all 5 Indiana starters scored at least 16 points.
Philadelphia 76ers 6th man James Ennis III is averaging a career high 38.2% from 3 point range so far this season.
Hassan Whiteside is the 10th player in NBA history to record 5+ games with 10+ blocks
Embiid rejects Randle off the glassHighlights (streamable.com)
https://streamable.com/prhm6
Trae Young goes right down the lane and ties the game
https://streamable.com/ag8nz
Trae Young hits the three in the corner, but the Hawks have run out of time
https://streamable.com/ybbii
T. J. Warren with a corner three to give Indiana the lead in crunch time
https://streamable.com/98axc
Vintage DeAndre Jordan skies to catch the lob
https://streamable.com/gmutl
The LAC hot wings finish a cold shooting night with 24 points combined, on 10/34 shooting.
Cam Reddish's miserable shooting to start his career continues - with another 1/7 performance tonight - his FG% sits in at .286 - the next closest that qualifies if Lauri Markkanen at .353
Trae Young with back-to-back buckets to give Atlanta the lead, he now has 35 of Hawks' 87 points
https://streamable.com/59ef8
Bradley Beal with the steal, Rui Hachimura takes it to LeBronHighlights
https://streamable.com/t27dq
Duncan Robinson runs into a long three and drains
https://streamable.com/vxpxv
Bismack Biyombo denies Andre Drummond at the top
https://streamable.com/tx01s
Jordan Poole shakes off Dragic and hits the three
https://streamable.com/mfnnd
Pistons' final possession against the Hornets
https://streamable.com/yvkzl
Doug McDermott drains back-to-back catch-and-shoot threes
https://streamable.com/4n9ul
Siakam shoots 4/22 against the Magic..still leads the Raptors in +/- with a +13
Devonte' Graham drills a three to give Charlotte the lead with 1:40 left in Q4
https://streamable.com/7pfhn
Jordan Poole makes three consecutive 3-point attempts in Q2
https://streamable.com/o0vmr
Hornets were supposed to be one of the worst teams in recent history and are now 8th seed in the East for the moment, congrats and enjoy
Bismack Biyombo with a difficult shot over Drummond
https://streamable.com/1i9dg
Nets fans chant "Kyrie's better!" Kemba prepares to shoot free throws
https://streamable.com/hzzyn
Joe Harris and finds Jarrett Allen for the slam to put the Nets up 6 with 34 seconds left
https://streamable.com/96jeb
Kyrie Irving embraces Williams, Ojeleye, Wanamaker, Tatum, Smart, and Walker after the game
https://streamable.com/4pv9f
Vintage DeAndre Jordan skies to catch the lob
https://streamable.com/gmutl
The Brooklyn Nets (10-9) defeat the Boston Celtics (13-5), 112-107. Kyrie working on returning. Dinwiddie puts up 32/5/11/2/2 for the Nets.
Kawhi Leonard isn't having a great season. He's currently shooting 43% from the field and 30% from three while averaging 25 points and has already sat out 6 games due to injuries/ load management, is this just a case of small sample size still or something to do with his knee still being banged up? Kawhi is shooting his worst % (43.5) from the field while taking the most FGA in his career (20.9).
Trae Young is Averaging: 27.9 pts 8ast 1.5 steals a game as a Sophmore on a 45/38/85 shooting split
Trae Young has the worst RAPTOR on court/off court defensive rating of any player in the league. He also has the 7th *best* on/off court *offensive* rating in the league.
Rajon Rondo is currently shooting 44.8% on 3 pointers, on a career high 3.2 attempts per game
LeBron James had 17 games last year with 20+ PTS/10+ AST. 19 games into this season he already has 13
Fred Vanvleet’s amazing finals run is currently taking away from what he’s currently doing this season. I feel like he should be in the MIP conversation but he isn’t just because people “assumed” he was this good last postseason? He went from 11/3/5 to 19/4/7 (55% TS) with 2 steals a game. He’s top 5 in steals per game, first in minutes played and top 10 in assists per game while spearheading the raptor’s perimeter defence. Over this 10 game stretch with Lowry/Ibaka out, I could argue that he’s been at the same level as / better than Siakam over this stretch. The team went 8-2 while he put up 21/4/7 with 2.5 steals on 56.3% TS (Siakam has gone 23/8/4 on 50% TS). Watching these games, whenever the game is about to get out of reach, it’s Vanvleet that gets the drive or gets the 3 to keep us in it.
LeBron is getting fouled just 13% of the time on his shot attempts, a career low. Same with AD, who is getting fouled on just 13.5% of his shot attempts, a career low.
Rodney Hood is shooting career highs in every zone except 3-10 feet! And this is despite being assisted on only 28.3% of 2-point FGs -- assisted on 40.4% last year.
Friday, November 29, 2019
The Woke Attack on Pete Buttigieg [theatlantic.com]
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/attack-mayor-pete/602755/
The Woke Attack on Pete Buttigieg
In The Root, Michael Harriot misreads the presidential candidate’s old comments on role models.
November 27, 2019
John McWhorter
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and professor at Columbia University
A beautiful illustration of the difference between Twitter and the real world is the viral status of Michael Harriot’s attack on Mayor Pete Buttigieg in The Root as a “lying MF.”
https://www.theroot.com/pete-buttigieg-is-a-lying-mf-1840038708
Buttigieg’s sin was to state, in 2011, that inner-city black kids are hobbled from getting the education they need because they lack role models who attest to the benefits of education. “And there are a lot of kids—especially [in] the lower-income, minority neighborhoods—who literally just haven’t seen it work. There isn’t someone who they know personally who testifies to the value of education.”
Many will already wonder what was wrong here: After all, is it not a mantra of enlightened thought about race to bemoan the absence of role models for various beneficial behaviors? However, to Harriot, Buttigieg’s reference to this truism was “lying.” The nut of the issue is that there are other reasons inner-city kids fail to graduate or go to college, such as funding disparities, unequal curriculum resources, and violence.
All of those things are real. Unreal, however, is Harriot’s leap of logic: that in not mentioning those things, Buttigieg was inherently denying their existence, and that in noting the lack of role models, he was blaming black people for their own problems. Buttigieg’s transgression seems to have been that he did not mention all of the reasons black kids have trouble accessing education in underserved neighborhoods. A more elaborate answer would have been more sophisticated. But why would anyone read him as an “MF” for not ticking off the whole list?
Civil-rights leaders of the recent past would be baffled by the pique here, as, I’m sure, would Americans who don’t spend most of their waking hours on social media. It’s been widely noted of late that “woke” white people are “woker” than most black people. It is also true that “woke” black people in academia and media are “woker” than a great many black people who don’t have the privilege of a byline. Harriot is assuming that Buttigieg must have meant that the lack of role models is due simply to some pathology among black people, when actually, almost anyone who publicly talks of role models in this way intends, via implication, that the lack of role models is due to larger societal factors.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/
Harriot and those who agree with him are reading Buttigieg as having simply preached that black people don’t care about school. But sheer psychological plausibility rules out that this is what he meant. Let’s suppose that for some reason, this is what thoughtful, Millennial Buttigieg, who at the time was running for mayor of a town with a large black population, actually believed. Let’s just suppose that. But: Would a sober, ambitious figure like Buttigieg sit in public casually assailing black America as too lazy, stupid, or unfocused to present role models to its kids?
Buttigieg was speaking out of informed sympathy, as anyone familiar with American sociopolitical discussion should have noticed. Our antennae must go up when notions of what an insult is become this strained. We must heed our inner blip of confusion instead of suspending logic when we grapple with race issues.
The degree of aggrievement here must be clear. I will let Harriot speak for himself:
This is why institutional inequality persists. Not because of white hoods and racial slurs. It is because this insidious double-talk erases the problem by camouflaging it. Because it is painted as a problem of black lethargy and not white apathy. Pete Buttigieg is standing over a dying man, holding the oxygen machine in his hand and telling everyone: “Nah, he doesn’t need CPR. He’s just holding his breath.” Negligent homicide is still homicide.
Recall, folks, that this is being written about Pete Buttigieg. Pique of this heat in this situation seems totally unjustified, unless you perceive Buttigieg’s comments as a form of blasphemy. It is as if Buttigieg gave a Christian sermon without mentioning G/d or Jesus, or listed only five Commandments. It’s one thing to observe that someone’s analysis is incomplete. It’s another to read that incompleteness as a kind of willful denial, sit in fury, and tar someone as a lying MF guilty of negligent homicide. As I’ve said before, this sort of response is more religious than rational; it bypasses the bounds of logic into the realm of imposed liturgy, of ritual: We are less to think than to pose and follow.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/jussie-smollett-story-shows-rise-victimhood-culture/583099/
Yesterday, Buttigieg was large enough to actually telephone Harriot, upon which they had what The Root billed as a “productive” conversation. However, this verdict is based on the assumption that Buttigieg had something to apologize for and needed to be “schooled” on how structural racism works. That is based on a kabuki version of race relations, all about striking poses. Buttigieg has made it glaringly obvious in countless ways that he understands structural racism. He also understands the rituals of our current race debate, amid which, as a candidate for president, it will serve him well to seek out Harriot to “listen” and “acknowledge.”
If Pete Buttigieg has done anything that reveals him as an MF, it was not that night in 2011.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
John McWhorter is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He teaches linguistics at Columbia University, hosts the podcast Lexicon Valley, and is the author, most recently, of Words on the Move.
The Woke Attack on Pete Buttigieg
In The Root, Michael Harriot misreads the presidential candidate’s old comments on role models.
November 27, 2019
John McWhorter
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and professor at Columbia University
A beautiful illustration of the difference between Twitter and the real world is the viral status of Michael Harriot’s attack on Mayor Pete Buttigieg in The Root as a “lying MF.”
https://www.theroot.com/pete-buttigieg-is-a-lying-mf-1840038708
Buttigieg’s sin was to state, in 2011, that inner-city black kids are hobbled from getting the education they need because they lack role models who attest to the benefits of education. “And there are a lot of kids—especially [in] the lower-income, minority neighborhoods—who literally just haven’t seen it work. There isn’t someone who they know personally who testifies to the value of education.”
Many will already wonder what was wrong here: After all, is it not a mantra of enlightened thought about race to bemoan the absence of role models for various beneficial behaviors? However, to Harriot, Buttigieg’s reference to this truism was “lying.” The nut of the issue is that there are other reasons inner-city kids fail to graduate or go to college, such as funding disparities, unequal curriculum resources, and violence.
All of those things are real. Unreal, however, is Harriot’s leap of logic: that in not mentioning those things, Buttigieg was inherently denying their existence, and that in noting the lack of role models, he was blaming black people for their own problems. Buttigieg’s transgression seems to have been that he did not mention all of the reasons black kids have trouble accessing education in underserved neighborhoods. A more elaborate answer would have been more sophisticated. But why would anyone read him as an “MF” for not ticking off the whole list?
Civil-rights leaders of the recent past would be baffled by the pique here, as, I’m sure, would Americans who don’t spend most of their waking hours on social media. It’s been widely noted of late that “woke” white people are “woker” than most black people. It is also true that “woke” black people in academia and media are “woker” than a great many black people who don’t have the privilege of a byline. Harriot is assuming that Buttigieg must have meant that the lack of role models is due simply to some pathology among black people, when actually, almost anyone who publicly talks of role models in this way intends, via implication, that the lack of role models is due to larger societal factors.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/large-majorities-dislike-political-correctness/572581/
Harriot and those who agree with him are reading Buttigieg as having simply preached that black people don’t care about school. But sheer psychological plausibility rules out that this is what he meant. Let’s suppose that for some reason, this is what thoughtful, Millennial Buttigieg, who at the time was running for mayor of a town with a large black population, actually believed. Let’s just suppose that. But: Would a sober, ambitious figure like Buttigieg sit in public casually assailing black America as too lazy, stupid, or unfocused to present role models to its kids?
Buttigieg was speaking out of informed sympathy, as anyone familiar with American sociopolitical discussion should have noticed. Our antennae must go up when notions of what an insult is become this strained. We must heed our inner blip of confusion instead of suspending logic when we grapple with race issues.
The degree of aggrievement here must be clear. I will let Harriot speak for himself:
This is why institutional inequality persists. Not because of white hoods and racial slurs. It is because this insidious double-talk erases the problem by camouflaging it. Because it is painted as a problem of black lethargy and not white apathy. Pete Buttigieg is standing over a dying man, holding the oxygen machine in his hand and telling everyone: “Nah, he doesn’t need CPR. He’s just holding his breath.” Negligent homicide is still homicide.
Recall, folks, that this is being written about Pete Buttigieg. Pique of this heat in this situation seems totally unjustified, unless you perceive Buttigieg’s comments as a form of blasphemy. It is as if Buttigieg gave a Christian sermon without mentioning G/d or Jesus, or listed only five Commandments. It’s one thing to observe that someone’s analysis is incomplete. It’s another to read that incompleteness as a kind of willful denial, sit in fury, and tar someone as a lying MF guilty of negligent homicide. As I’ve said before, this sort of response is more religious than rational; it bypasses the bounds of logic into the realm of imposed liturgy, of ritual: We are less to think than to pose and follow.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/jussie-smollett-story-shows-rise-victimhood-culture/583099/
Yesterday, Buttigieg was large enough to actually telephone Harriot, upon which they had what The Root billed as a “productive” conversation. However, this verdict is based on the assumption that Buttigieg had something to apologize for and needed to be “schooled” on how structural racism works. That is based on a kabuki version of race relations, all about striking poses. Buttigieg has made it glaringly obvious in countless ways that he understands structural racism. He also understands the rituals of our current race debate, amid which, as a candidate for president, it will serve him well to seek out Harriot to “listen” and “acknowledge.”
If Pete Buttigieg has done anything that reveals him as an MF, it was not that night in 2011.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
John McWhorter is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. He teaches linguistics at Columbia University, hosts the podcast Lexicon Valley, and is the author, most recently, of Words on the Move.
When they go low, we kick them. That’s what this new Democratic Party is about. Thank You Eric Holder. Major Reason Why 2018 Midterms And 2019 Elections In Virginia+Pennsylvania Were A Blue Wave
Eric Holder:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/10/eric-holder-when-they-go-low-we-kick-them-thats-what-this-new-democratic-party-is-about/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2018/10/10/eric-holder-when-they-go-low-we-kick-them-thats-what-this-new-democratic-party-is-about/
Light News Dump
Critically endangered Sumatran orangutan found alive after being shot 24 times. Just a few thousand individuals remain in northern Sumatra, as palm oil plantations have decimated habitat.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sumatran-orangutan-shot-indonesia-sustainable-palm-oil-nestle-cadburys-unilever-a9225761.html
Borneo is burning. How the world’s demand for palm oil is driving deforestation in Indonesia.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/11/asia/borneo-climate-bomb-intl-hnk/index.html
Engineered Bacteria Produces BeeFree Honey: A team of 12 students from the Department of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at Israel's the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology has developed a bee-free honey produced by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis
http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=17855
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-possible-climate-breakthrough-israel-scientists-engineer-bacteria-to-eat-co%e2%82%82/
NO, REALLY? : Black Friday sales contribute to waste and overconsumption, a group of French lawmakers have said, arguing that the annual retail extravaganza should be banned.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/29/french-lawmakers-hope-to-ban-black-friday-due-to-environmental-impact.html
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi says he will submit his resignation to Parliament in the wake of anti-democracy protests which have claimed hundreds of lives.
https://apnews.com/c1aaa0b3b0ff4f4c860b781bdb1da25c
Brazil’s president blames Leonardo DiCaprio amid Amazon fires
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/brazils-president-blames-leonardo-dicaprio-amid-amazon-fires
WikiScanner founder and Ethereum employee Virgil Griffith arrested in Los Angeles for allegedly helping North Korea evade sanctions with advice on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology - DOJ
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-arrest-united-states-citizen-assisting-north-korea
‘Generation Greta’ - Angry youths put heat on climate talks: 'Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mostly young people are expected to rally in cities around the world Friday to demand that governments step up their efforts to curb climate change'
https://apnews.com/0070e5b1f63742b7a68cd7038fbde4fc
$200,000 to buy a "New York Times Best Seller" sticker on all future copies despite the fact the New York Times is fake news to them
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/472411-a-warning-replaces-donald-trump-jrs-triggered-as-no1-book-on-nyt-bestseller
Devin Nunes must stop suing fake cows and explain $60,000 Europe trip
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article237841409.html
From Rule 25 of the Senate impeachment trial rules: Form of a subpena to be issued on the application of the managers of
the impeachment, or of the party impeached, or of his counsel
To ------ ------, greeting:
You and each of you are hereby commanded to appear before
the Senate of the United States, on the ------ day of ------,
at the Senate Chamber in the city of Washington, then and there
to testify your knowledge in the cause which is before the
Senate in which the House of Representatives have impeached --
---- ------.
Fail not.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-99sdoc33/html/CDOC-99sdoc33.htm
TikTok, Huawei helping China's campaign to repress Uighurs
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/tiktok-huawei-helping-china-s-campaign-to-repress-uighurs-report-20191129-p53fcs.html
Two members of the public have died in a stabbing attack at London Bridge, in which police shot dead the suspect. A further three were injured in the attack - declared a terrorist incident - and are being treated in hospital. The suspect, who died at the scene, was wearing what is believed to have been a hoax explosive device, police said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50604781
The citizens jumping on top of him knowing he had (what they would've thought was real) bomb jacket were incredibly brave
Nadler sets Dec. 6 deadline for White House to say if it will take part in impeachment hearings
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/472441-nadler-sets-dec-6-deadline-for-trump-to-say-whether-counsel-will-take-part-in
It’s about time Starbucks stopped charging its vegan surcharge for plant-based milk. It's so annoying. It is behind the times. There is no reason why it should not roll its milk costs into one. PETA's campaign is well short of its 200,000 signature target. Starbucks should stop penalising vegans
https://www.vegansbethechange.com/what-is-vegan/ethics/starbucks-plant-milk-surcharge/
Ridicule and disbelief as Boris Johnson insists he's never told a single lie in his whole political career - 'He was sacked twice for lying. So when he says he has never lied, he’s literally lying,' says Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-lie-career-general-election-brexit-itv-a9225601.html
Vancouver hikes empty homes tax by 25 per cent - Since the empty homes tax was launched in the 2016, city hall has collected nearly $40 million in tax revenue to fund several affordable housing initiatives.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouver-hikes-empty-homes-tax-by-25-per-cent
Sale and Trade of Shark Fin Now Banned in New Jersey
https://www.livekindly.co/new-jersey-banned-shark-fin-sales/
House Democrats have passed nearly 400 bills. Trump and Republicans are ignoring them. | Congress has passed just 70 bills into law this year. Granted, it still has one more year in its term, but the number pales in comparison to recent past sessions of Congress, which typically see anywhere from 300-500 bills passed in two years (and that is even a diminished number from the 700-800 bills passed in the 1970s and 1980s).
https://www.vox.com/2019/11/29/20977735/how-many-bills-passed-house-democrats-trump
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
At least nine Republican Party committees, candidates, or groups with ties to President Trump are selling or promoting a new book by his son, Donald Trump, Jr., records show. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-book.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Happy Thanksgiving 🍁! This Thanksgiving, I am especially grateful for the doctors, nurses, public health staff & vaccine workers who are vaccinating children against deadly diseases, including measles, and fighting #antivax misinformation. They're heroes. #VaccinesWork
https://twitter.com/ChelseaClinton/status/1200129462773469185
Iraqi authorities imposed a curfew on Najaf and deployed additional security forces after protesters stormed and burned the Iranian consulate in the southern Iraqi city in a show of anger against Tehran's involvement in the country's affairs
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-protesters-torch-iranian-consulate-in-city-of-najaf-11574928419
By the end of this campaign that sentence will apply to a number of candidates......: "One adviser said the fixation that some younger staffers have with liberals on Twitter distorted their view of what issues and moments truly mattered" | How Kamala Harris's Campaign Unraveled
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/us/politics/kamala-harris-2020.html
All three of those stabbed in The Hague are minors, say the police. Perpetrator still at large: De slachtoffers van het steekincident aan de #Grotemarktstraat zijn alledrie minderjarig. Er is contact met hun familie @PolJanHen
https://twitter.com/POL_DenHaag/status/1200533021671219200
"The Ukrainian government could still announce new investigations which could be seen as politically beneficial to the US President. However, it is unclear what exactly those potential investigations would cover or when they would be announced."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/politics/ukrainian-efforts-trump-good-graces/index.html
The attacker is understood to have been wearing an electronic tag when he staged the attack after being released from prison a year ago for terrorism related offences. He was known to the authorities at MI5 and police because of his previous conviction, sources confirm. Times reporting the London Bridge attacker was a convicted terrorist released on licence who was attending a conference on prisoner rehabilitation and I'm not posting the link because their article includes crime scene photos.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2019/nov/29/london-bridge-incident-police-city
A guy who was with us at Fishmongers Hall took a 5’ narwhale tusk from the wall and went out to confront the attacker. You can see him standing over the man (with what looks like a white pole) in the video. We were trying to help victims inside but that man’s a hero #LondonBridge
https://twitter.com/theamycoop/status/1200513388889223169
Stabbing attacks in The Hague & London. Bomb discovered in Gare Du Nord station in Paris. Our European friends facing significant threats. Remember: their overwhelmed CT folks are critical line of defense to prevent terrorists from boarding transatlantic flights to attack us.
https://twitter.com/mdubowitz/status/1200522559558733826
Cardinals’ CB Josh Shaw being suspended indefinitely by the NFL for betting on games on multiple occasions is the first time in more than 35 years that a player has been banned for gambling.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1200539333146660865
Imagine a player on IR that had no impact on the games making a bet getting a longer suspension than players who beat women. I mean he also beat up his girlfriend in college too but he made it to the NFL regardless instead of prison.
Travis Kelce (Kansas City Chiefs) needs just 167 yards to become the first TE in NFL history to have four consecutive seasons with 1,000 receiving yards.
Patriots list 17 players as questionable on Friday injury report.
https://www.patriots.com/news/week-13-patriots-texans-injury-report
Cowboys/Bills game draws 32.538 million viewers, making it CBS' most-watched Thanksgiving game in 27 years
https://www.cbspressexpress.com/cbs-sports/releases/view?id=54073
The Cowboys have scored more points than Seattle. The Cowboys have allowed fewer points than Seattle. The Cowboys have gained more yards than Seattle. The Cowboys have allowed fewer yards than Seattle. Seattle has a much better record than the Cowboys.
https://twitter.com/fbgchase/status/1200483643178803202
Sunday will now feature the #1 offense vs the #1 defense. Ravens vs 49ers.
The Saints feasted last night and tallied 41 (!!!) total QB pressures. The most of any team in a single game this year.
https://twitter.com/PFF_Saints/status/1200458069450403843?s=19
The Atlanta Falcons have been eliminated from playoff contention
Trump administration plans to illegally open national forests in Texas to more oil and gas drilling
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Trump-administration-plans-to-open-national-14867890.php
HHS documents report thousands of migrant children were sexually abused in U.S. custody
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thousands-of-migrant-children-were-sexually-abused-in-u-s-custody-hhs-docs-say/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a
EPA Weakens Safeguards for Weed Killer Atrazine, Linked to Birth Defects
https://civileats.com/2019/11/20/epa-weakens-safeguards-for-weed-killer-atrazine-linked-to-birth-defects/
Anti-vaxx epidemic: Samoa buries its children as measles outbreak worsens. Four years ago, roughly 85% of one-year-olds were vaccinated, by 2018 only 31% of children under five had been vaccinated.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/30/there-are-no-words-samoa-buries-its-children-as-measles-outbreak-worsens
The "Left": THE RICH MUST PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE!"
The "Left": EXTERMINATE BUTTIGIEG FOR PROPOSING THAT THE RICH MUST PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE!"
Bernie: The rich will have to start paying their fair share. Twitter: FUCK YEAH Buttigieg: The children of the rich will also have to pay their fair share. Twitter: Heeeyyyyy hey hey hey heeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy theeeereeeeeeeeeeee
https://twitter.com/agraybee/status/1200527860747898885?s=20
Bernie in 1994 - Against means testing. Bernie in 1995 - says programs without means testing are "Welfare for the wealthy". How many times has he flip-flopped on this issue?
https://imgur.com/a/ifhd2kW
I really wish candidate bashing would stop. George Takei said it best. We have to stop piling on out Dem candidates. We have a looming evil we have to defeat. For normal people, not to pay for people who don't need the help sounds fair. And it's a sign of entitlement. Tax payers' money should be used to support those who need it, not by those who are entitled. We can’t even get public schooling right, and we want to offer free public college? Being a moderate is a legit prerogative & pointing out flaws in your opponents’ strategies is okay. BERNIE and Hillary ran on the SAME COLLEGE TUITION proposal in 20015-2016. The proposal was a state-level proposal adopted by the Obama Administration. CANCEL THE RACIST ANTISEMITIC MYGONIST PRO-PEDOPHILIA PRO-TERRORISM PRO-CRIMINAL MENTALLY ILL LEFT. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND GO BACK THE GREEN PARTY.
Back in 2017, Bernard Enthusiastically Endorsed NY's Excelsior Scholarship, Which Gives Free Tuition to Families Earning up to $125,000
https://twitter.com/Sebasti42819755/status/1200537533756661765
I'm trying to wrap my mind around the fact that certain segments of the online left base their entire identities around railing against millionaires and billionaires, but then take issue when a candidate says he doesn't want the middle class to fund the upper class's education.
https://twitter.com/magi_jay/status/1200515647001780224?s=21
Palm oil is used in half of all supermarket products, from chocolate to shampoo. And the demand for it is driving deforestation in Indonesia. Experts say it's a climate bomb with disastrous consequences for the world in years to come.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/11/asia/borneo-climate-bomb-intl-hnk/index.html
Worker who survived New Orleans hotel collapse deported
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hard-rock-hotel-collapse-worker-who-survived-new-orleans-hotel-collapse-deported-2019-11-29/
“Usman Khan was attending a program that works to educate prisoners when he launched Friday’s attack just yards from the site of a deadly 2017 van and knife rampage”
https://apnews.com/edbd48353f9b4766abc7ddb34c0300cb
These fellas are amazing. The terrorist has already killed 2 people, injured others and they chase him down with a whale tusk and a fire extinguisher. He’s wearing a suicide vest which they don’t know is fake. Incredible. True heroes. #LondonBridge
https://twitter.com/mrdanwalker/status/1200690348625944577
Soon after Jeffrey Epstein died, a mysterious man came forward. He said he had CCTV footage from Epstein's homes. He said it showed powerful men having sex and that Epstein used it for blackmail.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/business/david-boies-pottinger-jeffrey-epstein-videos.html
One way statistics has dumbed down our political discourse is that now you can take literally any correlate of mortality, and say that policymakers are "literally killing people" if they refuse to reduce that correlate to 0.
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1200462056199094272?s=20
London Bridge hero is actually a murderer on day release who slit a woman’s throat in 2003 | London Bridge attacker Usman Khan were former prisoners attending a rehabilitation event at Fishmongers’ Hall, including a man convicted of killing a young woman. James Ford, 42, was out on day release when he joined those who chased Khan out on to the street before he was pinned to the ground on Friday afternoon. Ford was jailed for life with a minimum of 15 years in 2004 for the murder of Amanda Champion, who had a mental age of 15.
It is thought Ford rushed to the scene and tried to save the life of a female victim of Khan. Sources said his actions during the attack had probably saved lives. But Ms Champion’s family expressed concern that Hall had been allowed on day release from prison without his victims’ relatives being informed in advance.
Ms Champion was found strangled and with her throat cut on waste ground near her home in Ashford, Kent, in July 2003.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/london-bridge-hero-murderer-day-20994055
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sumatran-orangutan-shot-indonesia-sustainable-palm-oil-nestle-cadburys-unilever-a9225761.html
Borneo is burning. How the world’s demand for palm oil is driving deforestation in Indonesia.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/11/asia/borneo-climate-bomb-intl-hnk/index.html
Engineered Bacteria Produces BeeFree Honey: A team of 12 students from the Department of Biotechnology and Food Engineering at Israel's the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology has developed a bee-free honey produced by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis
http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=17855
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-possible-climate-breakthrough-israel-scientists-engineer-bacteria-to-eat-co%e2%82%82/
NO, REALLY? : Black Friday sales contribute to waste and overconsumption, a group of French lawmakers have said, arguing that the annual retail extravaganza should be banned.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/29/french-lawmakers-hope-to-ban-black-friday-due-to-environmental-impact.html
Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi says he will submit his resignation to Parliament in the wake of anti-democracy protests which have claimed hundreds of lives.
https://apnews.com/c1aaa0b3b0ff4f4c860b781bdb1da25c
Brazil’s president blames Leonardo DiCaprio amid Amazon fires
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/brazils-president-blames-leonardo-dicaprio-amid-amazon-fires
WikiScanner founder and Ethereum employee Virgil Griffith arrested in Los Angeles for allegedly helping North Korea evade sanctions with advice on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology - DOJ
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/manhattan-us-attorney-announces-arrest-united-states-citizen-assisting-north-korea
‘Generation Greta’ - Angry youths put heat on climate talks: 'Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mostly young people are expected to rally in cities around the world Friday to demand that governments step up their efforts to curb climate change'
https://apnews.com/0070e5b1f63742b7a68cd7038fbde4fc
$200,000 to buy a "New York Times Best Seller" sticker on all future copies despite the fact the New York Times is fake news to them
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/472411-a-warning-replaces-donald-trump-jrs-triggered-as-no1-book-on-nyt-bestseller
Devin Nunes must stop suing fake cows and explain $60,000 Europe trip
https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article237841409.html
From Rule 25 of the Senate impeachment trial rules: Form of a subpena to be issued on the application of the managers of
the impeachment, or of the party impeached, or of his counsel
To ------ ------, greeting:
You and each of you are hereby commanded to appear before
the Senate of the United States, on the ------ day of ------,
at the Senate Chamber in the city of Washington, then and there
to testify your knowledge in the cause which is before the
Senate in which the House of Representatives have impeached --
---- ------.
Fail not.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CDOC-99sdoc33/html/CDOC-99sdoc33.htm
TikTok, Huawei helping China's campaign to repress Uighurs
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/tiktok-huawei-helping-china-s-campaign-to-repress-uighurs-report-20191129-p53fcs.html
Two members of the public have died in a stabbing attack at London Bridge, in which police shot dead the suspect. A further three were injured in the attack - declared a terrorist incident - and are being treated in hospital. The suspect, who died at the scene, was wearing what is believed to have been a hoax explosive device, police said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50604781
The citizens jumping on top of him knowing he had (what they would've thought was real) bomb jacket were incredibly brave
Nadler sets Dec. 6 deadline for White House to say if it will take part in impeachment hearings
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/472441-nadler-sets-dec-6-deadline-for-trump-to-say-whether-counsel-will-take-part-in
It’s about time Starbucks stopped charging its vegan surcharge for plant-based milk. It's so annoying. It is behind the times. There is no reason why it should not roll its milk costs into one. PETA's campaign is well short of its 200,000 signature target. Starbucks should stop penalising vegans
https://www.vegansbethechange.com/what-is-vegan/ethics/starbucks-plant-milk-surcharge/
Ridicule and disbelief as Boris Johnson insists he's never told a single lie in his whole political career - 'He was sacked twice for lying. So when he says he has never lied, he’s literally lying,' says Liberal Democrat Jo Swinson
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-lie-career-general-election-brexit-itv-a9225601.html
Vancouver hikes empty homes tax by 25 per cent - Since the empty homes tax was launched in the 2016, city hall has collected nearly $40 million in tax revenue to fund several affordable housing initiatives.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouver-hikes-empty-homes-tax-by-25-per-cent
Sale and Trade of Shark Fin Now Banned in New Jersey
https://www.livekindly.co/new-jersey-banned-shark-fin-sales/
House Democrats have passed nearly 400 bills. Trump and Republicans are ignoring them. | Congress has passed just 70 bills into law this year. Granted, it still has one more year in its term, but the number pales in comparison to recent past sessions of Congress, which typically see anywhere from 300-500 bills passed in two years (and that is even a diminished number from the 700-800 bills passed in the 1970s and 1980s).
https://www.vox.com/2019/11/29/20977735/how-many-bills-passed-house-democrats-trump
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
At least nine Republican Party committees, candidates, or groups with ties to President Trump are selling or promoting a new book by his son, Donald Trump, Jr., records show. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/us/politics/donald-trump-jr-book.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Happy Thanksgiving 🍁! This Thanksgiving, I am especially grateful for the doctors, nurses, public health staff & vaccine workers who are vaccinating children against deadly diseases, including measles, and fighting #antivax misinformation. They're heroes. #VaccinesWork
https://twitter.com/ChelseaClinton/status/1200129462773469185
Iraqi authorities imposed a curfew on Najaf and deployed additional security forces after protesters stormed and burned the Iranian consulate in the southern Iraqi city in a show of anger against Tehran's involvement in the country's affairs
https://www.wsj.com/articles/iraqi-protesters-torch-iranian-consulate-in-city-of-najaf-11574928419
By the end of this campaign that sentence will apply to a number of candidates......: "One adviser said the fixation that some younger staffers have with liberals on Twitter distorted their view of what issues and moments truly mattered" | How Kamala Harris's Campaign Unraveled
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/us/politics/kamala-harris-2020.html
All three of those stabbed in The Hague are minors, say the police. Perpetrator still at large: De slachtoffers van het steekincident aan de #Grotemarktstraat zijn alledrie minderjarig. Er is contact met hun familie @PolJanHen
https://twitter.com/POL_DenHaag/status/1200533021671219200
"The Ukrainian government could still announce new investigations which could be seen as politically beneficial to the US President. However, it is unclear what exactly those potential investigations would cover or when they would be announced."
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/politics/ukrainian-efforts-trump-good-graces/index.html
The attacker is understood to have been wearing an electronic tag when he staged the attack after being released from prison a year ago for terrorism related offences. He was known to the authorities at MI5 and police because of his previous conviction, sources confirm. Times reporting the London Bridge attacker was a convicted terrorist released on licence who was attending a conference on prisoner rehabilitation and I'm not posting the link because their article includes crime scene photos.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2019/nov/29/london-bridge-incident-police-city
A guy who was with us at Fishmongers Hall took a 5’ narwhale tusk from the wall and went out to confront the attacker. You can see him standing over the man (with what looks like a white pole) in the video. We were trying to help victims inside but that man’s a hero #LondonBridge
https://twitter.com/theamycoop/status/1200513388889223169
Stabbing attacks in The Hague & London. Bomb discovered in Gare Du Nord station in Paris. Our European friends facing significant threats. Remember: their overwhelmed CT folks are critical line of defense to prevent terrorists from boarding transatlantic flights to attack us.
https://twitter.com/mdubowitz/status/1200522559558733826
Cardinals’ CB Josh Shaw being suspended indefinitely by the NFL for betting on games on multiple occasions is the first time in more than 35 years that a player has been banned for gambling.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1200539333146660865
Imagine a player on IR that had no impact on the games making a bet getting a longer suspension than players who beat women. I mean he also beat up his girlfriend in college too but he made it to the NFL regardless instead of prison.
Travis Kelce (Kansas City Chiefs) needs just 167 yards to become the first TE in NFL history to have four consecutive seasons with 1,000 receiving yards.
Patriots list 17 players as questionable on Friday injury report.
https://www.patriots.com/news/week-13-patriots-texans-injury-report
Cowboys/Bills game draws 32.538 million viewers, making it CBS' most-watched Thanksgiving game in 27 years
https://www.cbspressexpress.com/cbs-sports/releases/view?id=54073
The Cowboys have scored more points than Seattle. The Cowboys have allowed fewer points than Seattle. The Cowboys have gained more yards than Seattle. The Cowboys have allowed fewer yards than Seattle. Seattle has a much better record than the Cowboys.
https://twitter.com/fbgchase/status/1200483643178803202
Sunday will now feature the #1 offense vs the #1 defense. Ravens vs 49ers.
The Saints feasted last night and tallied 41 (!!!) total QB pressures. The most of any team in a single game this year.
https://twitter.com/PFF_Saints/status/1200458069450403843?s=19
The Atlanta Falcons have been eliminated from playoff contention
Trump administration plans to illegally open national forests in Texas to more oil and gas drilling
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Trump-administration-plans-to-open-national-14867890.php
HHS documents report thousands of migrant children were sexually abused in U.S. custody
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thousands-of-migrant-children-were-sexually-abused-in-u-s-custody-hhs-docs-say/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a
EPA Weakens Safeguards for Weed Killer Atrazine, Linked to Birth Defects
https://civileats.com/2019/11/20/epa-weakens-safeguards-for-weed-killer-atrazine-linked-to-birth-defects/
Anti-vaxx epidemic: Samoa buries its children as measles outbreak worsens. Four years ago, roughly 85% of one-year-olds were vaccinated, by 2018 only 31% of children under five had been vaccinated.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/30/there-are-no-words-samoa-buries-its-children-as-measles-outbreak-worsens
The "Left": THE RICH MUST PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE!"
The "Left": EXTERMINATE BUTTIGIEG FOR PROPOSING THAT THE RICH MUST PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE!"
Bernie: The rich will have to start paying their fair share. Twitter: FUCK YEAH Buttigieg: The children of the rich will also have to pay their fair share. Twitter: Heeeyyyyy hey hey hey heeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy theeeereeeeeeeeeeee
https://twitter.com/agraybee/status/1200527860747898885?s=20
Bernie in 1994 - Against means testing. Bernie in 1995 - says programs without means testing are "Welfare for the wealthy". How many times has he flip-flopped on this issue?
https://imgur.com/a/ifhd2kW
I really wish candidate bashing would stop. George Takei said it best. We have to stop piling on out Dem candidates. We have a looming evil we have to defeat. For normal people, not to pay for people who don't need the help sounds fair. And it's a sign of entitlement. Tax payers' money should be used to support those who need it, not by those who are entitled. We can’t even get public schooling right, and we want to offer free public college? Being a moderate is a legit prerogative & pointing out flaws in your opponents’ strategies is okay. BERNIE and Hillary ran on the SAME COLLEGE TUITION proposal in 20015-2016. The proposal was a state-level proposal adopted by the Obama Administration. CANCEL THE RACIST ANTISEMITIC MYGONIST PRO-PEDOPHILIA PRO-TERRORISM PRO-CRIMINAL MENTALLY ILL LEFT. GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND GO BACK THE GREEN PARTY.
Back in 2017, Bernard Enthusiastically Endorsed NY's Excelsior Scholarship, Which Gives Free Tuition to Families Earning up to $125,000
https://twitter.com/Sebasti42819755/status/1200537533756661765
I'm trying to wrap my mind around the fact that certain segments of the online left base their entire identities around railing against millionaires and billionaires, but then take issue when a candidate says he doesn't want the middle class to fund the upper class's education.
https://twitter.com/magi_jay/status/1200515647001780224?s=21
Palm oil is used in half of all supermarket products, from chocolate to shampoo. And the demand for it is driving deforestation in Indonesia. Experts say it's a climate bomb with disastrous consequences for the world in years to come.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/11/asia/borneo-climate-bomb-intl-hnk/index.html
Worker who survived New Orleans hotel collapse deported
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/hard-rock-hotel-collapse-worker-who-survived-new-orleans-hotel-collapse-deported-2019-11-29/
“Usman Khan was attending a program that works to educate prisoners when he launched Friday’s attack just yards from the site of a deadly 2017 van and knife rampage”
https://apnews.com/edbd48353f9b4766abc7ddb34c0300cb
These fellas are amazing. The terrorist has already killed 2 people, injured others and they chase him down with a whale tusk and a fire extinguisher. He’s wearing a suicide vest which they don’t know is fake. Incredible. True heroes. #LondonBridge
https://twitter.com/mrdanwalker/status/1200690348625944577
Soon after Jeffrey Epstein died, a mysterious man came forward. He said he had CCTV footage from Epstein's homes. He said it showed powerful men having sex and that Epstein used it for blackmail.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/30/business/david-boies-pottinger-jeffrey-epstein-videos.html
One way statistics has dumbed down our political discourse is that now you can take literally any correlate of mortality, and say that policymakers are "literally killing people" if they refuse to reduce that correlate to 0.
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1200462056199094272?s=20
London Bridge hero is actually a murderer on day release who slit a woman’s throat in 2003 | London Bridge attacker Usman Khan were former prisoners attending a rehabilitation event at Fishmongers’ Hall, including a man convicted of killing a young woman. James Ford, 42, was out on day release when he joined those who chased Khan out on to the street before he was pinned to the ground on Friday afternoon. Ford was jailed for life with a minimum of 15 years in 2004 for the murder of Amanda Champion, who had a mental age of 15.
It is thought Ford rushed to the scene and tried to save the life of a female victim of Khan. Sources said his actions during the attack had probably saved lives. But Ms Champion’s family expressed concern that Hall had been allowed on day release from prison without his victims’ relatives being informed in advance.
Ms Champion was found strangled and with her throat cut on waste ground near her home in Ashford, Kent, in July 2003.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/london-bridge-hero-murderer-day-20994055
Here's The Proof That Trump's "No Quid Pro Quo" Call Never Happened [justsecurity]
At the heart of the impeachment inquiry, members of
Congress may have been mistakenly led to believe that there were two
phone calls between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon
Sondland in early September—with the second call having the possibility
of helping the President’s case. That’s not what happened. There was
only one call, and it was highly incriminating.
The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his’ deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.
Sondland has testified there was a call on September 9th in which Trump said there was “no quid pro quo,” but that he wanted President Zelenskyy “to do” the right thing. A close reading of the publicly available evidence shows that the latter call was actually the very one that sent Morrison to the lawyers, and that Ambassador Bill Taylor foregrounded in his written deposition to inform Congress of the quid pro quo.
As this article was in the publication process at Just Security, the Washington Post published a report raising doubts about the existence of the September 9 call. The analysis that follows is consistent with the Post’s report and, among other points, shows why Sondland’s “no quid pro quo” call is in fact the same as the September 7th call that Morrison reported to NSC lawyers on September 7th.
One of the central questions that the House’s impeachment inquiry is
attempting to resolve is “whether President Trump sought to condition
official acts, such as a White House meeting or U.S. military
assistance, on Ukraine’s willingness to assist with two political
investigations that would help his reelection campaign.” And, over the
past several weeks, witnesses testifying before the House Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) have given uncontested
testimony that established the following:
What then, is there left for the impeachment inquiry to prove?
In the face of this damning and conclusive evidence, the White House and House Republicans have been forced to retreat to their current defense: that President Trump himself has not been proven to have done anything wrong, because there was no witness who testified to having personally heard the President announce that he was seeking a quid pro quo from Ukraine, in exchange for release of the security assistance.
This “defense,” it should be noted, is hardly a defense at all. There is no dispute that the President used the powers of his office to coerce a foreign state into investigating a domestic political rival, nor is there any dispute that the Ukrainians were informed by the Trump administration that the hold on security assistance would not be lifted until these investigation were publicly announced. Multiple witnesses also testified that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland had told them that, in his conversations with the president, Trump had described his requirement for Zelenskyy to publicly announce the investigations into Biden and 2016. However, to the extent that no witness testified to having personally heard Trump request a quid pro quo in regards to the security assistance, there are two reasons for this.
The first is that, with a single exception, every individual who interacted directly with President Trump refused to comply with House subpoenas for their testimony.
The second is that the single exception who did testify, Ambassador Sondland, did not testify accurately when he said that President Trump had never asked him for a quid pro quo from Ukraine. In fact, President Trump had personally informed Sondland of his specific demands for a quid pro quo from Ukraine – and the White House National Security Council is sitting on documents that confirm it.
Of all the omissions from Ambassador Sondland’s testimony, one of the
most significant has to do with his testimony about what has been
dubbed the “no quid pro quo” call. Because the White House and State
Department did not comply with the House’s subpoenas for records, no
documents concerning this call have been produced, but all witnesses
agree that, some time around the second week of September, President
Trump and Ambassador Sondland had a phone call, and at some point during
this call, Trump said the words “no quid pro quo.”
Sondland has, at times, been ambiguous as to when exactly this phone call took place, and has vacillated between the dates of September 6-9. But in the version of events that Sondland most frequently describes in his testimony, he says that he made the “no quid pro quo” call on September 9th. Sondland has testified it was a brief conversation, in which he asked President Trump a single question:
President Trump has taken to regularly invoking Sondland’s testimony at rallies and at press events, asserting that Sondland’s description of the “no quid pro” call exonerates him. In fact, in the middle of Sondland’s public testimony, President Trump made an appearance on the White House lawn, a portion of Sondland’s paraphrased testimony in hand, to perform a dramatic reenactment of the call, as it was described by Sondland.
Overall, it must be noted, Sondland’s testimony was incredibly damning for Trump. However, it was not quite as damning as it should have been.
Because in reality, as shown from the testimony of other witnesses, the “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th. What’s more, the call was not prompted by any text from Bill Taylor. And lastly, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most important part: the part where President Trump informed Sondland that the security assistance would be at a “stalemate” until President Zelenskyy stood in front of a microphone and personally announced that he was opening an investigation into Trump’s political rivals.
II. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Took Place on Sept. 7, Not on Sept. 9
The “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th, as Sondland claimed at one point in his testimony; instead, it took place on September 7th. This is shown from the testimony of Tim Morrison, Senior Director for European Affairs for the National Security Council, and Charge D’Affaires Bill Taylor, both of whom were briefed on the call by Sondland shortly after it occurred.
This detail is critically important, not because the precise date of the call is significant in and of itself, but because of what it shows about the true content of that call – the substance of the conversation that Morrison and Taylor described in their testimony, and that Sondland omitted from his.
Sondland’s Testimony
Though Ambassador Sondland testified that, to the best of his recollection, the “no quid pro quo” call occurred on September 9th, Sondland was also quick to point out that as a result of his inability to review certain State Department records, his “memory admittedly has not been perfect.” (Sondland Testimony of Nov. 20, 2019) Still, Sondland said he had a distinct reason for remembering the date of this particular call: it was prompted by what Sondland described as a “fairly shocking” and “alarming” text message he received from Charge Taylor, in a group chat that included Ambassador Kurt Volker. It was in response to this text, Sondland said, that Sondland made the call to President Trump:
After speaking to President Trump, Sondland testified, he texted a response to Taylor at 5:19am,[1] which Sondland described as a “paraphrase” of what Trump had just told him: “The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quos of any kind.”
With these text records to support his account, Ambassador Sondland testimony’ that this this call took place on September 9th went largely unchallenged during the hearings before the HPSCI. But despite the text recordings – which would seemingly corroborate Sondland’s memory and provide him precise evidence about when the call occurred – Sondland’s testimony has had a curious uncertainty too. For instance, in Sondland’s amendment to his closed-door testimony, he avoided identifying the precise date for the call altogether, instead giving a range of possible dates – from September 6th to September 9th – and then noting that his lack of access to his phone records prevented him from identifying the date with more certainty:
And, in his public testimony before HPSCI, when asked to confirm that this call had indeed taken place on September 9th, Sondland repeatedly invoked his lack of access to the records to explain his inability to say with certainty if the call occurred on September 6th or September 9th:
Finally, it makes little sense that Sondland would have considered Taylor’s September 9th text message to be “fairly shocking” and “alarming,” or necessitate a pre-dawn call to the White House to ask the President about whether there was a quid pro quo. After all, Sondland himself had told Taylor just one day before that the President had communicated a quid pro quo, and Sondland had told Morrison the same thing the day before that.
Morrison’s Testimony
After Fiona Hill resigned in mid-July as the NSC’s Senior Director for European Affairs, Tim Morrison took over her role, and for the next three months, he received updates on Ukraine-related matters from Ambassador Sondland. In his closed-door testimony, Morrison described how, on September 7th, he received a call from Sondland, who wanted to update him on a call he had just had with President Trump:[2]
In Morrison’s public testimony, he once again placed the “no quid pro quo” call on September 7th:
In other words, on September 7th, when Sondland was briefing Morrison about Trump’s demands for Zelenskyy to announce the investigations, there were only eight days left before the security assistance evaporated all together. Ukraine only had eight days left to provide Trump with something that would satisfy his demands.
And Morrison had another reason for knowing the precise date this call occurred – because as soon as the call was over, he went to the NSC lawyers to report it.
After going to the NSC lawyers to document what Sondland had told him about the “no quid pro quo” call, Morrison’s next move was to email Charge Bill Taylor with an urgent request for a call. In his testimony, Taylor described how, because this happened on a Saturday, he had to make a special trip in to the embassy in Kiev, in order to use the facilities there to make a secured call to Morrison. (Taylor Depo at. 250-252) Morrison then briefed Taylor on the call he had just had with Sondland:
Taylor testified that during his September 8th call with Sondland, Sondland briefed him on what Taylor understood to be the same phone call with President that Morrison had briefed him on the day before:
Based on the testimony of both Morrison and Sondland, as well as the corresponding text records, Sondland’s “no quid pro quo” call with Trump had already happened on September 7th. Indeed, it also explains why Sondland’s text message in reply to Taylor on Sept. 9 began, “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.” It was a reference to their phone conversation the day before, when Sondland debriefed Taylor about his call with the President.
III. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Was in Response to Negotiations That Occurred in Warsaw, Not Bill Taylor’s Text
In addition to Sondland giving incorrect testimony about the date of the “no quid pro quo” call, Sondland was also incorrect about what had prompted the call in the first place. His September 9th text exchange with Bill Taylor could not have been what caused him to call President Trump, because that call had happened at least two days before the text. Instead, Sondland had called Trump in order to confirm whether a proposed modification to the quid pro quo arrangement would be acceptable to Trump.
The proposed modification to the quid pro quo arrangement had been worked out the week before, during the American delegation’s trip to Warsaw. Originally, this trip had been intended to include a bilateral meeting between President Trump and President Zelenskyy, but Trump had canceled at the last minute, citing his need to monitor an incoming hurricane. Vice President Pence was sent in his place, and on September 1st, Pence and Zelenskyy met at the Warsaw Marriott. Both Sondland and Morrison were in attendance.
After the bilateral meeting concluded, several officials from both sides stayed behind, including Sondland and Zelenskyy’s senior adviser Andriy Yermak. Morrison observed Sondland and Yermak speaking to one another, and immediately after, Morrison testified, Sondland came over to brief him on the conversation:
It was this September 1st conversation with Andriy Yermak that led to ’the “no quid pro quo” call, because the “no quid pro quo” call was a discussion about whether Trump was willing to accept what Sondland had offered to Yermak: that it be the chief prosecutor, and not Zelenskyy, who announced the Biden and 2016 investigations.
As Morrison testified regarding the September 1st discussions in Warsaw:
These discussions about whether it would be acceptable for the Prosecutor General to make the announcement – and not President Zelenskyy – were an attempt to find a compromise solution to Trump’s demands. Having Ukraine’s chief prosecutor make the announcement would at least minimize the damage, by helping to maintain the appearance of a regularly instituted investigation, rather than a politically motivated scheme. In contrast, if President Zelenskyy were to make the announcement himself, any illusion that this was an independent prosecutorial decision would have been dispelled. Worse yet, it would compromise Zelenskyy in the process, undermining his independence as Ukraine’s president. Thus, in Warsaw, the American and Ukrainians officials had discussed whether the Prosecutor General might be an acceptable substitute, and left it to Sondland to determine if it would be acceptable to President Trump.
And that brings us to the September 7th call between Sondland and President Trump, when Sondland called Trump to ask “one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine?” (Sondland Depo. at 106) Sondland did not make this call because of anything Taylor had texted him; rather, Sondland was apparently calling to ask President Trump if the solution that had been negotiated in Warsaw, in which the Prosecutor General made the announcement, would be acceptable to him.
It was not. President Trump rejected the substitution of the Prosecutor General, and demanded that President Zelenskyy himself make the announcement. As Morrison testified in his closed-door deposition,
IV. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Was In Fact a Demand for Quid Pro Quo
Whether due to a faulty memory, or due to intentional deceit, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most critical part of the conversation: President Trump’s rejection of the compromise offer for the Prosecutor General to announce the investigations, and his demand that Zelenskyy himself do it. The “no quid pro quo” call was, in reality, a “here is the specific quid pro quo I want” call. And, by erroneously placing the call on September 9th, Sondland helped obscure these omissions from his testimony, by divorcing the call from its actual context in the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine over what form of quid pro quo would be acceptable. More importantly, it also gave the appearance that the call Sondland was describing was somehow different from the call that was described by two other witnesses – both of whom testified that the call included an explicit demand by Trump for a quid pro quo.
When Sondland briefed Morrison and Taylor on the “no quid pro quo” call on September 7th and 8th, he included details that caused both Morrison and Taylor to be alarmed, as was John Bolton when he was informed of it. For instance, Sondland’s description of his conversation with Trump had caused Morrison to become “pessimistic” that President Trump’s demands could be met in time for the aid to be release. (Morrison Depo. at 145) Morrison testified that when he learned of what President Trump said on the call with Sondland, he had a “sinking feeling,” because he “did not think it was a good idea for the Ukrainian President to [ ] involve himself in our politics.” (Id.) And when Sondland briefed Taylor on his call with President Trump, Sondland made plain his own understanding that the President’s demands were transactional in nature – that what Trump was asking for was a quid pro quo. As Taylor testified, Sondland explained to him that the reason President Trump was “a businessman,” and “[w]hen a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, [ ] the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.” (Taylor Depo. at 40) Taylor understood “the check” in this analogy to be the military assistance. (Id. at 146)
And yet, when Sondland appeared before Congress to testify about this same exact same phone call with President Trump, he could no longer recall any of the content of their conversation that had caused such alarm for Morrison, Taylor, and Bolton.
Still, as much as these omissions from Sondland’s testimony may have benefited President Trump, ’the differences between Sondland’s testimony and the testimony of the other witnesses are cosmetic. In substance, Sondland does not dispute the accuracy of the testimony given by the other witnesses.
For instance, Sondland does recall having a conversation with someone in which he was told what quid pro quo Trump required from Ukraine. The only problem is that Sondland has said he cannot recall if he had this conversation with President Trump, or with President Trump’s attorney:
So Sondland does remember a phone call in which someone told him about the quid pro quo that Trump was demanding – Sondland just ’can’t remember if it was President Trump that he had this conversation with. (Though whether the conversation was with Giuliani or President Trump makes little difference, since Sondland testified that he understood Giuliani was conveying the President’s conditions.)
But Morrison and Taylor both confirmed, in their testimonies, that it was President Trump. And Sondland has agreed that he has no reason to doubt the version of events described by Morrison and Taylor:
In fact, according to Sondland’s text message to Taylor, there had been “multiple convos” with Trump and Zelenskyy that he needed to brief Taylor on:
Sondland has never testified about the substance of his conversations with President Zelenskyy on September 7th and/or 8th. In his private deposition, when shown this text exchange and asked about the referenced calls, Sondland responded, “Yeah. I don’t recall… I don’t recall the – I don’t recall the conversations. … I don’t – I don’t recall the conversations. I’d need more refreshment to recall the conversations.” (Sondland Depo. at 351)
But on September 8th, Sondland still recalled these conversations, and he briefed Taylor on them. And according to Taylor, Sondland told him his conversation with President Zelenskyy had “concluded with President Zelenskyy agreeing to make a public statement in an interview with CNN.” (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 12) Taylor testified that this was “the first time” he had had heard about Zelenskyy giving a CNN interview. (Taylor Depo. at 207)
In other words: on September 7th-8th, Sondland spoke to both President Trump and President Zelenskyy. In his call with President Trump, Sondland was told that Trump required Zelenskyy “to go to the microphone and announce personally that he would open the investigations.” (Morrison Depo. at 144-145) And in his call with President Zelenskyy, Sondland secured an agreement from Zelenskyy that he would “do a CNN interview” in which he “would make a statement regarding investigations.” (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 12) (see also Kent Depo. at 330-31, 333; Holmes Opening Statement, Nov. 21, at 10-11)[5]
Sondland may no longer have any memory of what occurred on the September 7th-8th phone calls, but the sequence of events depicted by the text exchanges and Taylor’s testimony is clear: Trump told Sondland his demands for Zelenskyy; Sondland conveyed to Zelenskyy what Trump demanded; and Zelenskyy then agreed “to go to the microphone and announce personally that he would open the investigations.”
V. The White House Has Contemporaneous Written Records of the “No Quid Pro Quo” Call
As much as President Trump and the House Republicans like to claim that this is all a matter of “hearsay” or “second-hand information,” and that the true contents of President Trump’s communications with Sondland can be dismissed as some kind of unknowable he said/they said, the evidence of the “quid pro quo” call is not limited to witness testimony.
In fact, there does exist a detailed, contemporaneous record of what exactly Sondland said on that call with Trump. Because on September 7th, after his call with Sondland, Morrison immediately went to the NSC lawyers to report what had happened, because “[he] was concerned about what Ambassador Sondland was saying were requirements” for the release of the security assistance. (Morrison Depo. at 145) That is, Morrison went to the NSC lawyers to report Sondland’s claim that President Trump was involved in making an explicit quid pro quo demand to Ukraine.
In his deposition testimony, Morrison framed his repeated visits to the NSC lawyers as an effort to “protect” the President. “I wanted to make sure, in going to the lawyers,” Morrison said, “that there was a record of what Ambassador Sondland was doing, to protect the President.” (Morrison Depo. at 184) Morrison explained that he felt the need to document Sondland’s September 7th call with the NSC lawyers because Sondland had represented to him that President Trump was behind the quid pro quo scheme: “[P]art of what I’m trying to do here in talking to the lawyers is making sure they’re aware of what Mr. Sondland is doing. And he’s saying the President is aware, but I’m still not entirely certain that he is.” (Morrison Depo. at 224) (emphasis added)Of course, as Morrison later acknowledged under questioning from Chairman Schiff, it was also possible that Sondland was telling the truth about his conversations with President Trump. In which case, rather than serving to protect the President, Morrison’s efforts to document these calls would have the opposite result:
– – – – – – – – – –
[1] Based on other text exchanges for which the exact time is known, Volker’s texts appear to have been recorded on Eastern time. If that is the case, then Sondland and Trump must have connected between approximately 1am, when Taylor sent the text, and approximately 5am, just before Sondland’s response to Taylor at 5:19am. It is hard to understand why Sondland would have thought he needed to call the White House at a time when most people – including presumably the president – would be sleeping, in order to ask a non-emergency question of: “What do you want from Ukraine?” Additionally, as the Washington Post reported, the White House has no record of the call. The Post also reported that “impeachment investigators believe the messages were logged in Eastern time, according to people familiar with the inquiry.”
[2] Morrison is clear that this call happened on September 7th, and Sondland does not dispute that Morrison is describing that the “no quid pro quo” call that Sondland testified took place on September 9th. (Sondland Testimony on Nov. 20, 2019)
[3] Additionally, after returning from Warsaw, Morrison went to the NSC lawyers to report Sondland’s conversation with Yermak.
[4] Based on the reported meeting times for the bilateral between Zelenskyy and Pence, these texts were recorded in Eastern time.
[5] This interview was scheduled for September 13th, on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, and a renewed effort occurred for a statement in a CNN interview later in September, but neither ultimately took place.
The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his’ deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.
Sondland has testified there was a call on September 9th in which Trump said there was “no quid pro quo,” but that he wanted President Zelenskyy “to do” the right thing. A close reading of the publicly available evidence shows that the latter call was actually the very one that sent Morrison to the lawyers, and that Ambassador Bill Taylor foregrounded in his written deposition to inform Congress of the quid pro quo.
As this article was in the publication process at Just Security, the Washington Post published a report raising doubts about the existence of the September 9 call. The analysis that follows is consistent with the Post’s report and, among other points, shows why Sondland’s “no quid pro quo” call is in fact the same as the September 7th call that Morrison reported to NSC lawyers on September 7th.
Background
- During a July 10, 2019 meeting at the White House, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union told Ukrainians officials that there would be a “pre-requisite of investigations” before any White House meeting would occur. (Sondland Opening Statement, Nov. 20, 2019, at 10; Hill Depo. at 27; Vindman Depo. at 29)
- During a July 25, 2019 phone call, President Trump asked President Zelenskyy for the “favor” of an investigation into Joe Biden and the false, Russian-backed claims that it was Ukraine that interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. (Memcon of Trump-Zelenskyy Call, July 25, 2019)
- Following a July 26, 2019 meeting between the Ambassador to the EU and Ukrainians officials, President Trump asked the ambassador, “So [Zelenskyy is] going to do the investigation?”, to which the ambassador replied, “He’s going to do it.” (Holmes Depo. at 24; Sondland Testimony on Nov. 20, 2019)
- President Trump demanded that President Zelenskyy make a public announcement that he was opening an investigation into Biden and the 2016 election as a pre-requisite before he would agree to a White House meeting. (Sondland Opening Statement, Nov. 20, 2019, at 14)
- President Trump’s personal attorney told both American officials and Ukrainian officials that the president would require, as a quid pro quo, that Ukraine announce the desired investigations before any White House meeting would occur. (Sondland Opening Statement, Nov. 20, 2019, at 14)
- At a meeting in Warsaw, Poland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union informed a senior Ukrainian official that the security assistance money would not be released until Ukraine publicly announced an investigation into “Burisma and 2016.” (Sondland Declaration, Nov. 4, 2019, at 2; Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 10-11; Morrison Depo. at 144-145)
What then, is there left for the impeachment inquiry to prove?
In the face of this damning and conclusive evidence, the White House and House Republicans have been forced to retreat to their current defense: that President Trump himself has not been proven to have done anything wrong, because there was no witness who testified to having personally heard the President announce that he was seeking a quid pro quo from Ukraine, in exchange for release of the security assistance.
This “defense,” it should be noted, is hardly a defense at all. There is no dispute that the President used the powers of his office to coerce a foreign state into investigating a domestic political rival, nor is there any dispute that the Ukrainians were informed by the Trump administration that the hold on security assistance would not be lifted until these investigation were publicly announced. Multiple witnesses also testified that EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland had told them that, in his conversations with the president, Trump had described his requirement for Zelenskyy to publicly announce the investigations into Biden and 2016. However, to the extent that no witness testified to having personally heard Trump request a quid pro quo in regards to the security assistance, there are two reasons for this.
The first is that, with a single exception, every individual who interacted directly with President Trump refused to comply with House subpoenas for their testimony.
The second is that the single exception who did testify, Ambassador Sondland, did not testify accurately when he said that President Trump had never asked him for a quid pro quo from Ukraine. In fact, President Trump had personally informed Sondland of his specific demands for a quid pro quo from Ukraine – and the White House National Security Council is sitting on documents that confirm it.
I. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call
Sondland has, at times, been ambiguous as to when exactly this phone call took place, and has vacillated between the dates of September 6-9. But in the version of events that Sondland most frequently describes in his testimony, he says that he made the “no quid pro quo” call on September 9th. Sondland has testified it was a brief conversation, in which he asked President Trump a single question:
I asked him one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine? And as I recall, he was in a very bad mood. It was a very quick conversation. He said: I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I want Zelenskyy to do the right thing. (Sondland Depo. at 106)It is this testimony from Sondland that the White House and House Republicans have clung to, in support of their claim that the impeachment inquiry has failed to show misconduct by the President. ’’
President Trump has taken to regularly invoking Sondland’s testimony at rallies and at press events, asserting that Sondland’s description of the “no quid pro” call exonerates him. In fact, in the middle of Sondland’s public testimony, President Trump made an appearance on the White House lawn, a portion of Sondland’s paraphrased testimony in hand, to perform a dramatic reenactment of the call, as it was described by Sondland.
Overall, it must be noted, Sondland’s testimony was incredibly damning for Trump. However, it was not quite as damning as it should have been.
Because in reality, as shown from the testimony of other witnesses, the “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th. What’s more, the call was not prompted by any text from Bill Taylor. And lastly, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most important part: the part where President Trump informed Sondland that the security assistance would be at a “stalemate” until President Zelenskyy stood in front of a microphone and personally announced that he was opening an investigation into Trump’s political rivals.
II. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Took Place on Sept. 7, Not on Sept. 9
The “no quid pro quo” call did not take place on September 9th, as Sondland claimed at one point in his testimony; instead, it took place on September 7th. This is shown from the testimony of Tim Morrison, Senior Director for European Affairs for the National Security Council, and Charge D’Affaires Bill Taylor, both of whom were briefed on the call by Sondland shortly after it occurred.
This detail is critically important, not because the precise date of the call is significant in and of itself, but because of what it shows about the true content of that call – the substance of the conversation that Morrison and Taylor described in their testimony, and that Sondland omitted from his.
Sondland’s Testimony
Though Ambassador Sondland testified that, to the best of his recollection, the “no quid pro quo” call occurred on September 9th, Sondland was also quick to point out that as a result of his inability to review certain State Department records, his “memory admittedly has not been perfect.” (Sondland Testimony of Nov. 20, 2019) Still, Sondland said he had a distinct reason for remembering the date of this particular call: it was prompted by what Sondland described as a “fairly shocking” and “alarming” text message he received from Charge Taylor, in a group chat that included Ambassador Kurt Volker. It was in response to this text, Sondland said, that Sondland made the call to President Trump:
Because Ambassador Volker’s text exchanges were one of the few documentary records produced in response to the HSPCI’s subpoenas, we have a copy of the text exchange Sondland referred to. Per Volker’s records, Taylor’s text was sent at 12:47am on September 9th:So rather than ask the President nine different questions – is it this, is it this, is that – I just said what do you want from Ukraine? I may have even used a four letter word. And he said I want nothing, I want no quid pro quo, I just want Zelensky to do the right thing, to do what he ran on or – or words to that effect. (Sondland Testimony of Nov. 20, 2019)
After speaking to President Trump, Sondland testified, he texted a response to Taylor at 5:19am,[1] which Sondland described as a “paraphrase” of what Trump had just told him: “The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quos of any kind.”
With these text records to support his account, Ambassador Sondland testimony’ that this this call took place on September 9th went largely unchallenged during the hearings before the HPSCI. But despite the text recordings – which would seemingly corroborate Sondland’s memory and provide him precise evidence about when the call occurred – Sondland’s testimony has had a curious uncertainty too. For instance, in Sondland’s amendment to his closed-door testimony, he avoided identifying the precise date for the call altogether, instead giving a range of possible dates – from September 6th to September 9th – and then noting that his lack of access to his phone records prevented him from identifying the date with more certainty:
And, in his public testimony before HPSCI, when asked to confirm that this call had indeed taken place on September 9th, Sondland repeatedly invoked his lack of access to the records to explain his inability to say with certainty if the call occurred on September 6th or September 9th:
CASTOR: And then the – the next time, you know, we tried to unpack this, the – the next time you talked with the President was on the telephone – was September 9th, according to your deposition, right?Again and again, Sondland deferred from providing a certain date for the phone call, focusing instead on his inability to refresh his memory with the relevant records:
SONDLAND: I may have even spoken to him on September 6th but again I just don’t have all the records. I wish I could get them, then I could answer your questions very easily.
CASTOR: Okay. And then in your September 9th communication with The President during your deposition that was a striking moment when you walked us through your telephone call with President Trump on September 9th.Sondland’s testimony about the White House’s inability to locate records of this call is also curious. On the one hand, the failure to preserve such critical records might appear to be something like obstruction, if not the outright destruction of evidence. On the other hand, the White House informing Sondland that it “cannot locate” a record of the September 9th call makes perfect sense – if in fact no call occurred at all between Sondland and Trump on September 9th.
SONDLAND: By the way I still cannot find a record of that call because the State Department or The White House cannot locate it. But I’m pretty sure I had the call on that day.
Finally, it makes little sense that Sondland would have considered Taylor’s September 9th text message to be “fairly shocking” and “alarming,” or necessitate a pre-dawn call to the White House to ask the President about whether there was a quid pro quo. After all, Sondland himself had told Taylor just one day before that the President had communicated a quid pro quo, and Sondland had told Morrison the same thing the day before that.
Morrison’s Testimony
After Fiona Hill resigned in mid-July as the NSC’s Senior Director for European Affairs, Tim Morrison took over her role, and for the next three months, he received updates on Ukraine-related matters from Ambassador Sondland. In his closed-door testimony, Morrison described how, on September 7th, he received a call from Sondland, who wanted to update him on a call he had just had with President Trump:[2]
In the phone call, he told me that he had just gotten off the phone — the September 7th phone call — he told me he had just gotten off the phone with the President. I remember this because he actually made the comment that it was easier for him to get a hold of the President than to get a hold of me, which led me to respond, “Well, the President doesn’t work for Ambassador Bolton; I do,” to which Ambassador Sondland responded, “Does Ambassador Bolton know that?” But that’s why I have a vivid recollection of this. And he wanted to tell me what he had discussed with the President. … He told me [ ] that there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelenskyy must announce the opening of the investigations and he should want to do it. (Morrison Depo. at 190) (emphasis added)Important to note: this is the same “no quid pro quo, but…” language that Sondland used to describe his call with Trump that took place in the September 6-9 timeframe.
In Morrison’s public testimony, he once again placed the “no quid pro quo” call on September 7th:
GOLDMAN: Now a few days later, on September 7th, you spoke again to Ambassador Sondland who told you that he had just gotten off the phone with President Trump, isn’t that right?In this call, Sondland told Morrison of Trump’s demand that President Zelenskyy personally announce the Burisma/2016 investigations, and upon hearing this, Morrison said, he had a “sinking feeling.” (Morrison Depo. at 145) Morrison was concerned President Trump’s “requirements” could not be met in time for the hold on the military assistance to be lifted. As Morrison explained, although the end of the fiscal year was September 30th, “because Congress imposed a 15-day notification requirement on the State Department funds, September 7th, September 30th, that really means September 15th in order to secure a decision from the president to allow the funds to go forward.” (Morrison Testimony on Nov. 11, 2019)
MORRISON: That sounds correct, yes.
GOLDMAN: What did Ambassador Sondland tell you that President Trump said to him?
MORRISON: If I recall this conversation correctly, this was where Ambassador Sondland related that there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelenskyy had to make the statement and that he had to want to do it.
GOLDMAN: And by that point, did you understand that the statement related to the Biden and 2016 investigations?
MORRISON: I think I did, yes.
GOLDMAN: And that that was essentially a condition for the security assistance to be released?
MORRISON: I understood that that’s what Ambassador Sondland believed.
In other words, on September 7th, when Sondland was briefing Morrison about Trump’s demands for Zelenskyy to announce the investigations, there were only eight days left before the security assistance evaporated all together. Ukraine only had eight days left to provide Trump with something that would satisfy his demands.
And Morrison had another reason for knowing the precise date this call occurred – because as soon as the call was over, he went to the NSC lawyers to report it.
GOLDMAN: Did you tell Ambassador Bolton about this conversation as well?Taylor’s Testimony
MORRISON: I did, yes.
GOLDMAN: And what did he say to you?
MORRISON: He said to tell the lawyers.
GOLDMAN: And why did he say to tell the lawyers?
MORRISON: He did not explain his instruction.
GOLDMAN: But he is not going to — he doesn’t tell you to go tell the lawyers because you are running up on the eight-day deadline there, right?
MORRISON: Again, I don’t know why he directed that, but it seems reasonable and is consistent with what I was going to do anyway.
After going to the NSC lawyers to document what Sondland had told him about the “no quid pro quo” call, Morrison’s next move was to email Charge Bill Taylor with an urgent request for a call. In his testimony, Taylor described how, because this happened on a Saturday, he had to make a special trip in to the embassy in Kiev, in order to use the facilities there to make a secured call to Morrison. (Taylor Depo at. 250-252) Morrison then briefed Taylor on the call he had just had with Sondland:
Two days later, on September 7, I had a conversation with Mr. Morrison in which he described a phone conversation earlier that day between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump. Mr. Morrison said that he had a “sinking feeling” after learning about this conversation from Ambassador Sondland. According to Mr. Morrison, President Trump told Ambassador Sondland that he was not asking for a “quid pro quo.” But President Trump did insist that President Zelenskyy go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of “Biden and 2016 election interference,” and that President Zelenskyy should want to do this himself. Mr. Morrison said that he told Ambassador Bolton and the NSC lawyers of this phone call between President Trump and Ambassador Sondland. (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 12) (emphasis added)The next day, Sondland sent a group text message to both Taylor and Volker, letting them know that he’d had “multiple conversations” with both President Zelenskyy and President Trump, and wanted to brief them on the calls. Volker was not available to join the call, but Taylor was, and he spoke to Sondland at approximately 11:30am on September 8th:
Taylor testified that during his September 8th call with Sondland, Sondland briefed him on what Taylor understood to be the same phone call with President that Morrison had briefed him on the day before:
[O]n September 8, Ambassador Sondland and I spoke on the phone. He confirmed that he had talked to President Trump as I had suggested a week earlier, but that President Trump was adamant that President Zelenskyy, himself, had to “clear things up and do it in public.” President Trump said it was not a “quid pro quo.” I believe this was the same conversation between Ambassador Sondland and President Trump that Mr. Morrison had described to me on September 7.The language that Taylor says Sondland used to describe his call with Trump once again matches the language described by both Morrison and Sondland in their testimony:
Ambassador Sondland also said that he had talked to President Zelenskyy and Mr. Yermak and had told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelenskyy did not “clear things up” in public, we would be at a “stalemate.” I understood a “stalemate” to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance. Ambassador Sondland said that this conversation concluded with President Zelenskyy agreeing to make a public statement in an interview on CNN. (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 16)(emphasis added)Taylor was able to precisely date his phone calls with Morrison and Sondland – which took place on September 7th and 8th respectively – based on his own contemporaneous notes about the call, as well as the text messages records from Volker:
Shortly after that call with Ambassador Sondland, I expressed my strong reservations in a text message to Ambassador Sondland, stating that my “nightmare is they [the Ukrainians] give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (And I quit.).” I was serious. (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 16) (emphasis added)The text message Taylor described was sent on September 8th, at 12:37pm:
Based on the testimony of both Morrison and Sondland, as well as the corresponding text records, Sondland’s “no quid pro quo” call with Trump had already happened on September 7th. Indeed, it also explains why Sondland’s text message in reply to Taylor on Sept. 9 began, “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind.” It was a reference to their phone conversation the day before, when Sondland debriefed Taylor about his call with the President.
III. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Was in Response to Negotiations That Occurred in Warsaw, Not Bill Taylor’s Text
In addition to Sondland giving incorrect testimony about the date of the “no quid pro quo” call, Sondland was also incorrect about what had prompted the call in the first place. His September 9th text exchange with Bill Taylor could not have been what caused him to call President Trump, because that call had happened at least two days before the text. Instead, Sondland had called Trump in order to confirm whether a proposed modification to the quid pro quo arrangement would be acceptable to Trump.
The proposed modification to the quid pro quo arrangement had been worked out the week before, during the American delegation’s trip to Warsaw. Originally, this trip had been intended to include a bilateral meeting between President Trump and President Zelenskyy, but Trump had canceled at the last minute, citing his need to monitor an incoming hurricane. Vice President Pence was sent in his place, and on September 1st, Pence and Zelenskyy met at the Warsaw Marriott. Both Sondland and Morrison were in attendance.
After the bilateral meeting concluded, several officials from both sides stayed behind, including Sondland and Zelenskyy’s senior adviser Andriy Yermak. Morrison observed Sondland and Yermak speaking to one another, and immediately after, Morrison testified, Sondland came over to brief him on the conversation:
I recall Ambassador Sondland telling me that what he conveyed to the Ukrainian Presidential advisor, Mr. Yermak, was that the Prosecutor General would be sufficient to make the statement to obtain release of the aid. (Morrison Depo. at 182, 272)Concerned, Morrison immediately placed a call to Charge Taylor to brief him on Sondland’s conversation with Yermak.[3] As Taylor explained in his opening statement before his public testimony,
During this [September 1] phone call with Mr. Morrison, he described a conversation Ambassador Sondland had with Mr. Yermak in Warsaw. Ambassador Sondland told Mr. Yermak that the security assistance money would not come until President Zelenskyy committed to pursue the Burisma investigation. I was alarmed by what Mr. Morrison told me about the Sondland-Yermak conversation. I understand that Mr. Morrison testified at his deposition that Ambassador Sondland proposed that it might be sufficient for the Ukrainian Prosecutor General to commit to pursue the investigation, as opposed to President Zelenskyy. But this was the first time I had heard that the security assistance—not just the White House meeting—was conditioned on the investigations. (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 101-11)As described in Taylor’s testimony, following his call with Morrison, Taylor sent a text message to Sondland:
Very concerned, on that same day—September 1—I sent Ambassador Sondland a text message asking if “we [are] now saying that security assistance and [a] WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?”The text messages from Volker show that the exchange Taylor described took place after 12pm Eastern time[4] on September 1st:
Ambassador Sondland responded asking me to call him, which I did. During that phone call, Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelenskyy to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 11)
It was this September 1st conversation with Andriy Yermak that led to ’the “no quid pro quo” call, because the “no quid pro quo” call was a discussion about whether Trump was willing to accept what Sondland had offered to Yermak: that it be the chief prosecutor, and not Zelenskyy, who announced the Biden and 2016 investigations.
As Morrison testified regarding the September 1st discussions in Warsaw:
My recollection is that Ambassador Sondland’s proposal to Mr. Yermak was that it could be sufficient if the new Ukrainian Prosecutor General, not President Zelenskyy, would commit to pursue the Burisma investigation. (Morrison Depo. at 15)And as Taylor testified:
[Sondland] walked across the space and he briefed me on what he said he had said to Mr. Yermak. … He told me that in his — that what he communicated was that he believed the — what could help them move the aid was if the Prosecutor General would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation. (Morrison Depo. at 134) (emphasis added)
Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling Ukrainian officials that only a White House meeting with President Zelenskyy was dependent on a public announcement of investigations—in fact, Ambassador Sondland said, “everything” was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelenskyy “in a public box” by making a public statement about ordering such investigations. In the same September 1 call, I told Ambassador Sondland that President Trump should have more respect for another head of state and that what he described was not in the interest of either President Trump or President Zelenskyy. At that point I asked Ambassador Sondland to push back on President Trump’s demand. Ambassador Sondland pledged to try. We also discussed the possibility that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General, rather than President Zelenskyy, would make a statement about investigations, potentially in coordination with Attorney General Barr’s probe into the investigation of interference in the 2016 elections. (Opening Statement of Taylor, Oct. 22, 2019, at 11)Sondland, for his part, initially failed to recall altogether that he’d spoken with Andriy Yermak in Warsaw about any investigations, and denied that any quid pro quo arrangements had been discussed. However, on November 4th, after learning of what Morrison and Taylor had testified to regarding his conversation with Yermak in Warsaw, Sondland amended his testimony. In his amendment, Sondland stated that he “now recall[ed]” his September 1st conversation with Yermak, and that he and Yermak had discussed whether the public announcement of the investigations needed to come from President Zelenskyy himself, or if it would be acceptable for the announcement to instead be made by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General:
These discussions about whether it would be acceptable for the Prosecutor General to make the announcement – and not President Zelenskyy – were an attempt to find a compromise solution to Trump’s demands. Having Ukraine’s chief prosecutor make the announcement would at least minimize the damage, by helping to maintain the appearance of a regularly instituted investigation, rather than a politically motivated scheme. In contrast, if President Zelenskyy were to make the announcement himself, any illusion that this was an independent prosecutorial decision would have been dispelled. Worse yet, it would compromise Zelenskyy in the process, undermining his independence as Ukraine’s president. Thus, in Warsaw, the American and Ukrainians officials had discussed whether the Prosecutor General might be an acceptable substitute, and left it to Sondland to determine if it would be acceptable to President Trump.
And that brings us to the September 7th call between Sondland and President Trump, when Sondland called Trump to ask “one open-ended question: What do you want from Ukraine?” (Sondland Depo. at 106) Sondland did not make this call because of anything Taylor had texted him; rather, Sondland was apparently calling to ask President Trump if the solution that had been negotiated in Warsaw, in which the Prosecutor General made the announcement, would be acceptable to him.
It was not. President Trump rejected the substitution of the Prosecutor General, and demanded that President Zelenskyy himself make the announcement. As Morrison testified in his closed-door deposition,
[T]his was a conversation where Gordon related that both — the President said there was not a quid pro quo, but he further stated that President Zelenskyy should want to go to the microphone and announce personally – so it wouldn’t be enough for the Prosecutor General, he wanted to announce personally, Zelenskyy personally, that he would open the investigations. (Morrison Depo. at 144-145) (emphasis added)Taylor’s testimony on this point is consistent with Morrison’s:
THE CHAIRMAN: And then it was subsequently on the phone where he came back to you, Ambassador Sondland that is, and said, no, the Prosecutor General is not going to be sufficient, President Zelenskyy has to commit to that, right?
MORRISON: Yes, sir. He related the President told him there was no quid pro quo, but President Zelenskyy had to do it and he should want to do it. (Morrison Depo. at 229) (emphasis added)
Ambassador Sondland also said that he had talked to President Zelenskyy and Mr. Yermak and had told them that, although this was not a quid pro quo, if President Zelenskyy did not “clear things up” in public, we would be at a “stalemate.” I understood a “stalemate” to mean that Ukraine would not receive the much-needed military assistance. Ambassador Sondland said that this conversation concluded with President Zelenskyy agreeing to make a public statement in an interview on CNN. (Taylor’s Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 12) (emphasis added)Taylor further testified that, in that same September 8th call, Sondland had also briefed him on his call with President Zelenskyy, and, Sondland said, President Zelenskyy had agreed to President Trump’s demands. Zelenskyy was going to go on CNN, and personally announce the investigations.
IV. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Was In Fact a Demand for Quid Pro Quo
Whether due to a faulty memory, or due to intentional deceit, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most critical part of the conversation: President Trump’s rejection of the compromise offer for the Prosecutor General to announce the investigations, and his demand that Zelenskyy himself do it. The “no quid pro quo” call was, in reality, a “here is the specific quid pro quo I want” call. And, by erroneously placing the call on September 9th, Sondland helped obscure these omissions from his testimony, by divorcing the call from its actual context in the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine over what form of quid pro quo would be acceptable. More importantly, it also gave the appearance that the call Sondland was describing was somehow different from the call that was described by two other witnesses – both of whom testified that the call included an explicit demand by Trump for a quid pro quo.
When Sondland briefed Morrison and Taylor on the “no quid pro quo” call on September 7th and 8th, he included details that caused both Morrison and Taylor to be alarmed, as was John Bolton when he was informed of it. For instance, Sondland’s description of his conversation with Trump had caused Morrison to become “pessimistic” that President Trump’s demands could be met in time for the aid to be release. (Morrison Depo. at 145) Morrison testified that when he learned of what President Trump said on the call with Sondland, he had a “sinking feeling,” because he “did not think it was a good idea for the Ukrainian President to [ ] involve himself in our politics.” (Id.) And when Sondland briefed Taylor on his call with President Trump, Sondland made plain his own understanding that the President’s demands were transactional in nature – that what Trump was asking for was a quid pro quo. As Taylor testified, Sondland explained to him that the reason President Trump was “a businessman,” and “[w]hen a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, [ ] the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.” (Taylor Depo. at 40) Taylor understood “the check” in this analogy to be the military assistance. (Id. at 146)
And yet, when Sondland appeared before Congress to testify about this same exact same phone call with President Trump, he could no longer recall any of the content of their conversation that had caused such alarm for Morrison, Taylor, and Bolton.
Still, as much as these omissions from Sondland’s testimony may have benefited President Trump, ’the differences between Sondland’s testimony and the testimony of the other witnesses are cosmetic. In substance, Sondland does not dispute the accuracy of the testimony given by the other witnesses.
For instance, Sondland does recall having a conversation with someone in which he was told what quid pro quo Trump required from Ukraine. The only problem is that Sondland has said he cannot recall if he had this conversation with President Trump, or with President Trump’s attorney:
GOLDMAN: On September 8, you then had a conversation directly with Ambassador Taylor about this same phone call where Ambassador Taylor said that you confirmed that you spoke to President Trump as he had suggested earlier to you and that President Trump was adamant that President Zelenskyy himself, meaning not the prosecutor general, had to, quote, “clear things up and do it in public,” unquote. Do you recall – you don’t have any reason to think that Ambassador Taylor’s testimony based on his contemporaneous notes was [in]correct?Sondland repeated this claim multiple times in his public testimony: that he remembered having a conversation about “whether or not the prosecutor could make the statement or Zelenskyy could make the statement,” but that “I don’t recall who told me – whether it was Volker, whether it was Giuliani, or whether it was President Trump – it’s got to be Zelenskyy, it can’t be the prosecutor. … Whoever I got that information from, I relayed to I believe [ ] Ambassador Taylor and to Mr. Morrison.”
SONDLAND: I don’t know if I got that from President Trump or if I got it from Giuliani. That’s the part I’m not clear on.
GOLDMAN: Well, Ambassador Taylor’s quite clear that you said President Trump. Mr. Morrison is also quite clear that you said President Trump. You don’t have any reason to dispute their very specific recollections, do you?
SONDLAND: No. If they have notes and they recall that, I don’t have any reason to dispute it. I just personally can’t remember where I got it from.
So Sondland does remember a phone call in which someone told him about the quid pro quo that Trump was demanding – Sondland just ’can’t remember if it was President Trump that he had this conversation with. (Though whether the conversation was with Giuliani or President Trump makes little difference, since Sondland testified that he understood Giuliani was conveying the President’s conditions.)
But Morrison and Taylor both confirmed, in their testimonies, that it was President Trump. And Sondland has agreed that he has no reason to doubt the version of events described by Morrison and Taylor:
GOLDMAN: Now, you had a conversation on September 7 according to both Ambassador Taylor and Tim Morrison with Tim Morrison where you told Mr. Morrison that President Trump told you that he was not asking for a quid pro quo but that he did insist that President Zelenskyy go to a microphone and say that he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference, and that President Zelenskyy should want to do this himself. You don’t have any reason to dispute both Ambassador Taylor’s and Mr. Morrison’s testimony about that conversation, do you?Finally, it’s worth noting that Sondland’s phone call with President Trump is not the only presidential phone call that Sondland now has difficulty remembering. When Sondland and Taylor spoke on September 8th, it wasn’t just Sondland’s call with President Trump that Sondland needed to tell Taylor about – Sondland also needed to update him on his calls with President Zelenskyy.
SONDLAND: No.
In fact, according to Sondland’s text message to Taylor, there had been “multiple convos” with Trump and Zelenskyy that he needed to brief Taylor on:
Sondland has never testified about the substance of his conversations with President Zelenskyy on September 7th and/or 8th. In his private deposition, when shown this text exchange and asked about the referenced calls, Sondland responded, “Yeah. I don’t recall… I don’t recall the – I don’t recall the conversations. … I don’t – I don’t recall the conversations. I’d need more refreshment to recall the conversations.” (Sondland Depo. at 351)
But on September 8th, Sondland still recalled these conversations, and he briefed Taylor on them. And according to Taylor, Sondland told him his conversation with President Zelenskyy had “concluded with President Zelenskyy agreeing to make a public statement in an interview with CNN.” (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 12) Taylor testified that this was “the first time” he had had heard about Zelenskyy giving a CNN interview. (Taylor Depo. at 207)
In other words: on September 7th-8th, Sondland spoke to both President Trump and President Zelenskyy. In his call with President Trump, Sondland was told that Trump required Zelenskyy “to go to the microphone and announce personally that he would open the investigations.” (Morrison Depo. at 144-145) And in his call with President Zelenskyy, Sondland secured an agreement from Zelenskyy that he would “do a CNN interview” in which he “would make a statement regarding investigations.” (Taylor Opening Statement, Oct. 22, 2019, at 12) (see also Kent Depo. at 330-31, 333; Holmes Opening Statement, Nov. 21, at 10-11)[5]
Sondland may no longer have any memory of what occurred on the September 7th-8th phone calls, but the sequence of events depicted by the text exchanges and Taylor’s testimony is clear: Trump told Sondland his demands for Zelenskyy; Sondland conveyed to Zelenskyy what Trump demanded; and Zelenskyy then agreed “to go to the microphone and announce personally that he would open the investigations.”
V. The White House Has Contemporaneous Written Records of the “No Quid Pro Quo” Call
As much as President Trump and the House Republicans like to claim that this is all a matter of “hearsay” or “second-hand information,” and that the true contents of President Trump’s communications with Sondland can be dismissed as some kind of unknowable he said/they said, the evidence of the “quid pro quo” call is not limited to witness testimony.
In fact, there does exist a detailed, contemporaneous record of what exactly Sondland said on that call with Trump. Because on September 7th, after his call with Sondland, Morrison immediately went to the NSC lawyers to report what had happened, because “[he] was concerned about what Ambassador Sondland was saying were requirements” for the release of the security assistance. (Morrison Depo. at 145) That is, Morrison went to the NSC lawyers to report Sondland’s claim that President Trump was involved in making an explicit quid pro quo demand to Ukraine.
In his deposition testimony, Morrison framed his repeated visits to the NSC lawyers as an effort to “protect” the President. “I wanted to make sure, in going to the lawyers,” Morrison said, “that there was a record of what Ambassador Sondland was doing, to protect the President.” (Morrison Depo. at 184) Morrison explained that he felt the need to document Sondland’s September 7th call with the NSC lawyers because Sondland had represented to him that President Trump was behind the quid pro quo scheme: “[P]art of what I’m trying to do here in talking to the lawyers is making sure they’re aware of what Mr. Sondland is doing. And he’s saying the President is aware, but I’m still not entirely certain that he is.” (Morrison Depo. at 224) (emphasis added)Of course, as Morrison later acknowledged under questioning from Chairman Schiff, it was also possible that Sondland was telling the truth about his conversations with President Trump. In which case, rather than serving to protect the President, Morrison’s efforts to document these calls would have the opposite result:
THE CHAIRMAN: But did you understand also at the time you took this action that if, in fact, Ambassador Sondland was acting at the direction of the President, you were also creating a paper trail incriminating the President?When Morrison first heard about the “no quid pro quo” call on September 7th, he recognized immediately what House Republicans have yet to realize: the “no quid pro quo” call does not exonerate Trump, it incriminates him.
MORRISON: Well, sir, you could make that argument, yes. (Morrison Depo. at 228)
– – – – – – – – – –
[1] Based on other text exchanges for which the exact time is known, Volker’s texts appear to have been recorded on Eastern time. If that is the case, then Sondland and Trump must have connected between approximately 1am, when Taylor sent the text, and approximately 5am, just before Sondland’s response to Taylor at 5:19am. It is hard to understand why Sondland would have thought he needed to call the White House at a time when most people – including presumably the president – would be sleeping, in order to ask a non-emergency question of: “What do you want from Ukraine?” Additionally, as the Washington Post reported, the White House has no record of the call. The Post also reported that “impeachment investigators believe the messages were logged in Eastern time, according to people familiar with the inquiry.”
[2] Morrison is clear that this call happened on September 7th, and Sondland does not dispute that Morrison is describing that the “no quid pro quo” call that Sondland testified took place on September 9th. (Sondland Testimony on Nov. 20, 2019)
[3] Additionally, after returning from Warsaw, Morrison went to the NSC lawyers to report Sondland’s conversation with Yermak.
[4] Based on the reported meeting times for the bilateral between Zelenskyy and Pence, these texts were recorded in Eastern time.
[5] This interview was scheduled for September 13th, on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, and a renewed effort occurred for a statement in a CNN interview later in September, but neither ultimately took place.
Photo image: Gordon Sondland (L), the U.S ambassador to the European Union, confers with his attorney Bob Luskin (L) while testifying before the House Intelligence Committee November 20, 2019 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Filed under:
About the Author(s)
Susan Simpson
Susan Simpson is a host of the Undisclosed and 45th podcasts, and of counsel to Clinton Peed PLLC in Washington, DC. Follow her on Twitter (@TheViewFromLL2 ).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)