News Dump

The question is not whether Trump has committed impeachable crimes. He has. The question is whether Republicans in Congress will affirm that an American president is not above the law.
https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1197889908536426502

Now that you have seen Fiona Hill testify, you can understand why Trump never wanted her in his meetings with Putin, especially at their Helsinki summit in July 2018.

In a Friday interview on "Fox & Friends," Trump admitted to holding up military aid to pressure Ukraine's government to investigate a baseless conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 US election. In other words, he acknowledged doing the very thing he could be impeached for and has repeatedly denied. Trump referred to the conspiracy theory that Ukraine is hiding a mysterious Democratic National Committee "server" that contains incriminating evidence of Ukrainian interference and Democratic collusion. There is no evidence supporting this conspiracy theory — the former National Security Council official Fiona Hill testified this week that it was part of a Russian disinformation campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwoDReTflI

When the White House asserts ... everything was perfect ... and there are no fact witnesses being presented, they are withholding the very fact witnesses. And if they could, you would think, they would provide them to show how perfect everything was," @MajorCBS adds.
https://twitter.com/OnPointRadio/status/1197896906371784705

Senate folks trying to come up with escape hatch for Criminal Pompeo seem to have succeeded: Trump appears open to possible Mike Pompeo Senate run: "He would win in a landslide"
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/campaign-wire-election-2020/card/1574443873

Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings  | In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair. The revelations demonstrate Russia’s persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries — and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points | This time, Russian intelligence operatives deployed a network of agents to blame Ukraine for its 2016 interference. Starting at least in 2017, the operatives peddled a mixture of now-debunked conspiracy theories along with established facts to leave an impression that the government in Kyiv, not Moscow, was responsible for the hackings of Democrats and its other interference efforts in 2016, senior intelligence officials said. The Russian intelligence officers conveyed the information to prominent Russians and Ukrainians who then used a range of intermediaries, like oligarchs, businessmen and their associates, to pass the material to American political figures and even some journalists, who were likely unaware of its origin, the officials said. That muddy brew worked its way into American information ecosystems, sloshing around until parts of it reached Mr. Trump, who has also spoken with Mr. Putin about allegations of Ukrainian interference. Mr. Trump also brought up the assertions of Ukrainian meddling in his July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into whether he abused his power by asking for a public commitment to investigations he stood to gain from personally.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/ukraine-russia-interference.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/us/politics/fbi-russian-election-interference.html

Shepard Smith: "Intimidation and vilification of the press is now a global phenomenon. We don’t have to look far for evidence of that."
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/business/media/shepard-smith-fox-news.html

Worker who raised alarm before deadly New Orleans hotel collapse to be deported
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/22/new-orleans-hotel-collapse-deported-honduras

Federal judge strikes down Trump Administration's religious exemption rule that would let doctors not help LGBTQ people
https://www.newsweek.com/federal-judge-strikes-down-trump-administrations-religious-exemption-rule-that-would-let-doctors-1473419

Donald Trump promised he would fight for LGBTQ people. Instead, his administration has systematically undone recent gains in their rights and protections. Here are 31 examples.
https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/lgbtq-rights-rollback

Lindsey Graham can investigate the Bidens all he wants. He just can’t condition US military aid on Ukraine doing the same
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/11/lindsey-graham-investigating-bidens-burisma-ukraines-state-document-request.html

China is seeking to "take over" Australia's political system with an "insidious" and systematic campaign of espionage and influence-peddling, Canberra's ex-spymaster said in an interview published Friday
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1493805-20191122.htm?spTabChangeable=0

The Justice Department inspector general has found evidence that an FBI employee may have altered a document connected to court-approved surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, but has concluded that the conduct did not affect the overall validity of the surveillance application, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter. The person under scrutiny is a low-level FBI lawyer who has since been forced out of the agency, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss material that has not yet been made public. They declined to identify the lawyer.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/inspector-generals-report-on-fbis-russia-probe-to-be-delivered-dec-9/2019/11/21/6d6d789e-0c70-11ea-8397-a955cd542d00_story.html

Today is the deadline a judge gave for the State Dept. to turn over docs in response to a FOIA lawsuit from American Oversight about the recall of Marie Yovanovitch. Docs ordered to be handed over include comms between Giuliani and State officials, including Pompeo.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1197847194205904896

John Bolton Makes Mysterious Return Twitter, Tells Followers to ‘Stay Tuned’ for ‘Backstory’
https://www.thedailybeast.com/john-bolton-makes-mysterious-return-twitter-tells-followers-to-stay-tuned-for-backstory

Obama tells anxious Democrats to 'chill out about the candidates' and avoid putting them through 'purity tests'. "Everybody needs to chill out about the candidates but gin up about the prospect of rallying behind whoever emerges from this process,"
https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-tells-anxious-democratic-donors-chill-out-about-the-candidates-2019-11

Middle-class Americans getting crushed by rising health insurance costs
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/middle-class-americans-crushed-rising-health-insurance-costs/story?id=67131097

Trump Jr. thanked the ‘Deplorables’ for making him a bestseller. The RNC bought his book in bulk.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/21/trump-jr-thanked-deplorables-making-him-bestseller-rnc-bought-his-book-bulk/

U.S. Navy Presses On With Board Review Of SEAL Eddie Gallagher Despite Trump's Tweet
https://www.npr.org/2019/11/21/781855883/u-s-navy-presses-on-with-board-review-of-seal-eddie-gallagher-despite-trumps-twe

Maryland AG claims Trump violated Emoluments Clause on golf trip where Secret Service agents spent $28,800 at club | Frosh, along with District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine, sued Trump in 2017 for violations of the Emoluments Clause, which states that a president cannot receive money from foreign governments or affiliated entities without Congressional consent.
https://www.newsweek.com/maryland-ag-claims-trump-violated-emoluments-clause-golf-trip-where-secret-service-agents-spent-1473414

A Hong Kong court temporarily reinstated a ban on wearing face masks that targeted antigovernment protesters, after an earlier ruling found the law unconstitutional
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/world/asia/hong-kong-mask-ban-protests-election.html

Trump openly admitted on live TV to doing the thing he's accused of in the impeachment inquiry
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-admits-to-ukraine-military-aid-quid-pro-quo-tv-2019-11

Trump on YOVANOVITCH “This ambassador that everybody says is so wonderful, she wouldn't hang my picture in the embassy, okay? She's in charge of the embassy. She wouldn't hang it. It took, like, a year and 1/2 or 2 years for her to get the picture up.“ Video from March ‘19
https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1197892643306508290

The attacks on Vindman are getting increasingly ugly even from what we think of as mainstream Republicans. This isn’t some fringe far right account it’s a U.S. senator:
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1197936146707361795

Trump Just Repeated the Russian Conspiracy Theory Republicans Deny He Believes
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/11/trump-russian-conspiracy-theory-fox-friends-fiona-hill-crowdstrike-ukraine.html

Rep. Eric Swalwell calls out Rep. Devin Nunes' Lev Parnas connection
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4832774/user-clip-rep-eric-swalwell-calls-rep-devin-nunes-lev-parnas-connection

The Obama Foundation
https://twitter.com/ObamaFoundation

FACT: President @realDonaldTrump spends 53 minutes on a phone call with Fox and Friends this morning. FACT: That's about 52 minutes longer than he's spent in the Brady Briefing room since his administration began.
https://twitter.com/BrianKarem/status/1197964759842328577

On the day Fiona Hill asked the House not to “promote politically driven falsehoods,” ex-Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko, who’s been pushing the story that his country interfered in the 2016 US presidential election turned up at, the Trump Hotel DC.
https://1100pennsylvania.substack.com/p/ukraine-collusion-source-pops-up

Coal Knew, Too: A newly unearthed journal from 1966 shows the coal industry, like the oil industry, was long aware of the threat of climate change.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/coal-industry-climate-change_n_5dd6bbebe4b0e29d7280984f

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/us/politics/william-taylor-opening-statement-impeachment.html

YEP: So no time for a review of a potentially game-changing fumble tonight. But I'm sure on Sunday we'll get a six-minute stoppage in some game so they can review whether someone stepped out of bounds on a four-yard gain in the middle of the second quarter.
https://twitter.com/MichaelDavSmith/status/1197731441423073281

Through 11 games, Brandon Ingram already has more 25 Point games (8) than he did the whole of last season (7)

Last night, Brook Lopez who is 7 feet tall, did not catch a single rebound in 30 minutes he played.

Controversial ending to Suns vs Pelicans: Suns purposely foul. Refs are late to call it and refuse to add time to the clock. Holiday misses both free throws and the Suns are screwed out of a chance to tie the game

Melo is 5-8 from 3PT in his first 2 games. Yet he still decided to attempt 21 2-pointers, making only 23.8% of them.

Charles Barkley: “I’m never going to agree on ‘Load Management’. It always worked when the greatest players who ever played the game played as much as possible, and they had bad shoes and didn’t have the best doctors in the world like they do today. They also don’t fly commercial like we did. In my first two years in the NBA I’d be in coach with some old lady laying on my damn shoulder for three hours, and then have to guard Hakeem Olajuwon or Karl Malone. I didn’t fly first class until my third year in the league. The thing that bothers people is when guys are resting healthy. Guys are making 30 and 40 million dollars a year. If Doctor J, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem, Bill Russell and those guys could play every night in crappy shoes, fly commercial, and make $100,000 a year, a guy making $40-$50 million a year don’t need ‘Load Management’. These guys don’t have any loyalty to a team or a city and it’s why ratings are down.” (Full Segment Above)
https://foxsportsradio.iheart.com/content/2019-11-20-charles-barkley-says-modern-nba-players-dont-need-load-management/

Full play at the end of Colts/Texans, where it appears that Watson fumbles
https://streamable.com/skpqz

Reminder: Trump openly admitted on live TV to doing the thing he's accused of in the impeachment inquiry
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-admits-to-ukraine-military-aid-quid-pro-quo-tv-2019-11

I was on the Judiciary Committee that impeached Bill Clinton. The matters before us now are far more serious than those matters were. Without a doubt, if Barack Obama had done the things revealed in the testimony in the current inquiry, we Republicans would have impeached him.

The importance of Trump talking about Crowdstrike today is him trying to show he believes Ukraine framed Russia, which is his defense against corruption charge and predicate for pursuing past, ongoing & future probes. If he didn’t buy the fiction, he was just seeking personal gain.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/us/politics/ukraine-russia-interference.html

Russian propaganda conspiracies are metastasizing. Someone sent me this, which purports to show that Adam Schiff’s basic investments show he is a beneficiary of imaginary Burisma payments. The underlying link is to a disinformation campaign.
https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1197976866524737542

(Speaking about Graham) "I am disappointed, and quite frankly I'm angered, by the fact -- he knows me; he knows my son; he knows there's nothing to this," Biden said. "Trump is now essentially holding power over him that even the Ukrainians wouldn't yield to.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/22/politics/joe-biden-don-lemon-cnntv/index.html

Biden has been making case he can work with Republicans. Graham has been guy that Democrats seek out to work with when they control agenda. How's that going to work if Biden and Graham win their races next year?

A Chinese spy has risked his life to defect to Australia and is now offering a trove of unprecedented inside intelligence on how China conducts its interference operations abroad. Wang “William” Liqiang is the first Chinese operative to ever blow his cover. He has revealed the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong, as well as providing details of how they fund and conduct political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/defecting-chinese-spy-offers-information-trove-to-australian-government-20191122-p53d1l.html
https://www.theage.com.au/national/peter-hartcher-on-china-s-infiltration-of-australia-20191118-p53bly.html

A former CIA case officer was sentenced Friday to 19 years in prison for conspiring to provide American intelligence secrets to the Chinese government, in an espionage case that some current and former officials say dealt a devastating blow to U.S. intelligence operations. Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 55, served 13 years as a Central Intelligence Agency case officer in several locations overseas, including China, where prosecutors said he had firsthand knowledge of some of the agency's most sensitive secrets, including the names of covert CIA officers and clandestine human sources in China.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/former-cia-officer-sentenced-19-years-conspiring-chinese-spies-n1089341

A federal judge has ordered the government of Iran to pay Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian and his family about $180 million in damages for his 18 month detention.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/us-lawsuit-by-post-journalist-seeks-1-billion-in-damages-from-iran-to-deter-taking-of-hostages/2019/01/08/fbe40466-12d0-11e9-803c-4ef28312c8b9_story.html

Senators briefed that CrowdStrike theory is Russian-backed disinformation campaign. Also, currently the GOP NRCC employs . . . Crowdstrike....
https://www.axios.com/ukraine-election-meddling-briefing-conspiracy-russia-971db9ae-4024-40b9-a04c-aba6029b39ee.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-cybersecurity-202/2019/11/04/the-cybersecurity-202-gop-house-campaign-arm-uses-crowdstrike-despite-trump-conspiracy-theories/5dbf22d488e0fa10ffd20b34/

House Intel to spend next week drafting report, serving as basis of articles of impeachment that House Judiciary expected to consider in early December before House may vote by Christmas. Still discussions internally about how to structure articles -- esp obstruction of justice
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1198011643642335232

Sen. Lindsey Graham on Joe Biden: "If you can't admire Joe Biden as a person then probably you've got a problem, you need to do some self-evaluation....He is as good a man as G/d ever created."
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1197837291554775040

Remember that Trump only wanted an investigation launched, not actually investigated. They know nothing will be found. It's just ongoing talking points for Fox News.

But the fact that Graham is launching an investigation into Biden tells the rest of us out here in the world that something is terrifyingly wrong with Republicans and all their supporters as well as all the people who don't vote Republican but refuse to vote Democrat knowing that Republicans will then win.

Do y’all ever sit back and think about how much @HillaryClinton was actually right about?
https://twitter.com/bakari_sellers/status/1197600761515008001

It's funny how Hillary never mentioned Tulsi by name but absolutely everyone knew who she was talking about.
Including Tulsi who acknowledged herself as the asset unprompted.

Senator Cory Booker | Fifth Democratic Debate Closing Statement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4p3M233F_E

As Fiona Hill made clear, they are "conspiracy theories". They're not theories at all. They're Russian intelligence fabrications. Trump and his GOP allies parrot them to help themselves while hurting the United States as a whole.

Hi Tennessee friends. This is your junior senator. This is not how we treat decorated members of the military in our part of the country. Please flood her with calls demanding that she issue a full, public apology to Lt. Col. Vindman and hold her accountable.
https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1197910955650359298
https://twitter.com/MarshaBlackburn/status/1197875810256007170

Trump Said U.S. Is 'Getting Raped' By NATO, Has Pushed To Exit Alliance According To White House Insider
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-said-u-s-getting-raped-nato-exit-alliance-white-house-insider-1473434

Obama says he's open to higher taxes on the wealthy, saying 'I've got a lot of room to pay more taxes'
https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-open-higher-taxes-on-wealthy-room-pay-more-himself-2019-11

“I will not apologize for deportation if the person committed a felony,” Biden told the protesters, as his staff tried to clear a path through protesters and Biden supporters jockeying for selfies, to remove the former vice president from the crowd. “I will apologize for deportations if in fact they deported because, in fact, they were engaged in a misdemeanor and or their family was separated.”

Doug Ford Says He's 'So Proud' Of Green Energy Cancellations That Cost $231M: Ontario Premier Ford says $231M to cancel green energy contracts is not a waste of taxpayers’ money. One of the projects had been in development for 10 years when it was cancelled. 9 wind turbines are now being dismantled.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/doug-ford-so-proud-green-energy-contracts_ca_5dd6bb50e4b010f3f1d44fa1

Founders of Fusion GPS: "Mr. Giuliani is still investigating the lies he hopes will save a deeply corrupt presidency. That should chill all Americans." ||| They wanted to take down Biden. But they also wanted to absolve Moscow of election meddling.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/sunday/trump-ukraine-russia.html

Republicans and all their supporters are absolutely awake. They want this, and they've been driving towards this for decades. This is their moment when all their work has paid off. It's disgusting, but it's true. I simply do not understand how on earth people think they're gonna "wake up" and do the right thing. Even if they wanted to abandon this course, which they absolutely do not, they can't. It's gone on too long and they're in too deep to come out unscathed, so their only choice in their mind is either double down and dig in, or retire. But make no mistake, this is exactly what they've always wanted. They are going to burn this place to the ground and smile while they do it. It's on us to do something about it now, no one is coming to save us.

The use of Camp David for partisan political activity is an impeachable offense and a crime: Trump opens up Camp David as an ‘adult playground’ to woo GOP lawmakers during impeachment | "An employee may not use the official time of another employee for anything other than official business. The use of any government property, including computers and the Internet, for any partisan political activities is always prohibited."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-opens-up-camp-david-as-an-adult-playground-to-woo-gop-lawmakers-during-impeachment/2019/11/22/ec6e7810-0c6f-11ea-8397-a955cd542d00_story.html
https://www.justice.gov/jmd/misuse-position-and-government-resources

CEO of Ukraine State Gas Firm Preparing to Testify in Giuliani Probe | The CEO of Ukraine’s state gas company, Naftogaz, is ready to give evidence in a U.S. federal investigation that is reportedly probing the business dealings of Rudy Giuliani, the CEO said in an exclusive interview on Friday. “I will with a high likelihood be invited to testify in this case,” Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolyev told TIME, citing his lawyers and contacts in the U.S. “If I am called, I would be willing to come and testify,” Kobolyev added.
https://time.com/5737518/ukraine-naftogaz-ceo-preparing-giuliani-probe-testimony/