White House Expects GOP Defections on Calling Witnesses in Senate Impeachment Trial

14 January 20

---

What Will It Take to Get You On Board?

We have tens of thousands of readers that check in every day, but will not join the those that contribute to keep the project going?

We have your trust, you come here. That trust is built on our loyalty to you our supporters, not to an unnamed third party. But for some reason there is a belief that someone else will magically support the project.

This is yours, don’t abuse it.

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

Update My Monthly Donation

---

If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts, CA 95611

14 January 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

IS NOT CONTRIBUTING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING? To some people holding out and not donating is a badge of honor. We have people on our list who have been there for years who simply will not contribute, no matter what. Even though they can easily afford ten dollars a month. Wondering who you are and what your mindset is? / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

White House Expects GOP Defections on Calling Witnesses in Senate Impeachment Trial

Ben Tracy and Kathryn Watson, CBS News
Excerpt: "The White House is preparing for some Republican senators to join Democrats in voting to call witnesses in President Trump's impeachment trial, which could get underway in the coming days."
READ MORE

Hands typing on a computer keyboard. (photo: hamburg_berlin/Shutterstock)

Russians Have Hacked Ukraine's Burisma
Nicole Perlroth and Matthew Rosenberg, The New York Times
Excerpt: "With President Trump facing an impeachment trial over his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter Biden, Russian military hackers have been boring into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the affair, according to security experts."
READ MORE

Migrants, part of a caravan of thousands from Central America trying to reach the United States, climb down a steep hill near the border wall into the U.S. from Tijuana, Mexico. (photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)

Trump Planning to Divert Additional $7.2 Billion in Pentagon Funds for Border Wall
Nick Miroff, The Washington Post
Miroff writes: "President Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budge."
READ MORE

William Barr. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Barr Asks Apple to Unlock iPhones of Pensacola Gunman
Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Attorney General William Barr said Monday that the December shooting that killed three US sailors on a Florida base was an act of terrorism."
READ MORE

Former representative Chris Collins. (photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Prosecutors Want Ex-Rep Chris Collins to Serve Nearly 5 Years in Prison for Insider Trading Case
Dan Mangan, CNBC
Excerpt: "Collins pleaded guilty last year to tipping off his son Cameron about a failed drug test by an Australian pharmaceuticals company whose board Collins sat on."
READ MORE

Juan Guaido. (photo: Matías Baglietto/Getty Images)

Venezuela: Desperate Juan Guaido Vows Again to Plunder teleSUR's Signal
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The self-proclaimed 'president' of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, is struggling to stay relevant these days after several failed coup attempts to overthrow the legitimate government of the Bolivarian Republic."
READ MORE

Actor Joaquin Phoenix takes part in a 'Fire Drill Fridays' protest calling attention to climate change at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, United States, January 10, 2020. (photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

"Stop the Money Pipeline": 150 Arrested at Protests Exposing Wall Street's Link to Climate Crisis
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Nearly 150 people were arrested on Capitol Hill Friday in a climate protest led by Academy Award-winning actor and activist Jane Fonda."
READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN

Update My Monthly Donation

Impeachment and the Stone Verdict Show Trump Is Surrounded by Criminals

About this website

NYMAG.COM

Impeachment and the Stone Verdict Show Trump 

Is Surrounded by Criminals

Roger Stone is guilty, Trump’s goons shook down Ukraine, and Rudy Giuliani might be next.

From the perspective of President Trump’s frustrated critics, the attempts to subject him to legal accountability have amounted to a long string of failures. Robert Mueller failed to produce a clear indictment of his dealings with Russia, and impeachment appears headed toward a partisan stalemate that will leave him in office.

But as Trump’s constant boil of rage attests, those efforts have hardly failed. The legal ring surrounding him is collectively producing a historic indictment of his endemic corruption and criminality.

Day two of the House impeachment hearings, featuring Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, may have appeared on the surface to focus on a sideshow. Yovanovitch was not directly involved in Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine for political advantage, the main charge he faces. What her testimony instead accomplished was to put the lie to Trump’s ludicrous defense that he was pursuing an anti-corruption agenda in Ukraine — that his demands that Kiev investigate his rivals were simply about cleaning the country up.

The lawyer for House Republicans asked Yovanovitch to affirm that “the president has long-standing concerns about corruption in the Ukraine.” Her response was savage: “That’s what he says.” Her testimony was devoted to proving the hypocrisy of Trump’s claim. She testified how she had worked in Ukraine to promote reform, how her efforts to do so alienated corrupt oligarchs there, and how those oligarchs then worked in tandem with Rudy Giuliani to foment a backlash against her. She explained that the fired Ukrainian prosecutor that Trump praised to Ukraine’s president in a July phone call was in fact totally corrupt.

Yovanovitch recounted that she learned of her firing while presenting an award for a Ukrainian attacked for her reform efforts, a completely fitting juxtaposition. Trump fired Yovanovitch because she stood in the way of the corruption he and his allies were promoting. To the extent corruption motivated Trump’s diplomatic posture in Ukraine, it was that he wanted to encourage more of it.

During Yovanovitch’s testimony, a federal court registered a guilty verdict on all seven counts for Trump’s adviser Roger Stone. Stone’s crimes involved lying and covering up Trump’s awareness of Democratic emails stolen by Russians. Rick Gates, Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, told investigators that he personally witnessed a July 31, 2016, phone call between Trump and Stone shortly after WikiLeaks published a tranche of stolen emails. After hanging up with Stone, Trump announced more information was on its way.

As president, Trump has enjoyed an advantage that in his days in business he could only have dreamed of: He can pardon anybody, giving him a powerful tool to induce his henchmen to avoid incriminating him. The two figures in his campaign who most directly colluded with Russia, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone, both refused to cooperate with Mueller. Whatever they know about Trump’s full collusion with Russia’s campaign hacking will remain secret, probably forever.

And yet, even if he pardons Manafort and Stone, and all his other loyalists, the plain fact will remain that his inner circle is marked by endemic criminality. In addition to his close adviser Stone, his campaign manager (Manafort), his deputy campaign manager (Gates), his lawyer (Michael Cohen), and his national security adviser (Michael Flynn) have all been convicted of felonies. Trump may have persuaded his hard-core base that all these convictions represent a fraudulent witch hunt. But outside the Trump cult, which is not by itself large enough to win the election, being surrounded by criminals is not an admired quality.

In all probability, the parade of charges is probably not over. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is reportedly being investigated for a number of alleged federal crimes, including bribing foreign officials, conspiracy, violating federal campaign-finance laws, and failing to register as a foreign agent. The Wall Street Journal reports today that federal prosecutors are investigating whether Giuliani personally stood to profit from a natural-gas shakedown run by his partners, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

Parnas and Fruman, two figures linked to the Russian mob who have been arrested, were helping Giuliani run his off-the-books diplomatic work in Ukraine. The benefit to Trump, who was not paying Giuliani anything, was getting muscle on the ground who would get the Ukrainians to understand a message regular diplomats had been too squeamish to convey directly: that Trump wanted investigations of his enemies. But at the same time they were doing this work for Trump, they were allegedly working to get themselves a taste of the proceeds from the shakedown. Parnas and Fruman were pushing Ukraine to give them some natural-gas importing business as a kind of payoff, and using their connection to Trump as clout.

If Rudy himself was involved in the gas shakedown, as the Journal story suggests, it would be an even deeper form of corruption. Trump’s lawyer and personal representative would have sent gangsters to extort Ukraine for Trump’s political gain and his own profit. The false accusations Trump has hurled against Biden are pale versions of the very real crimes Trump’s cronies have tried to carry out.

American politics has rarely been a pristine affair. Trump exploited widespread cynicism to indict the entire political Establishment in hyperbolic terms as wholly corrupt, presenting himself as a reformer from the outside. Surely nobody expected him to fulfill this promise literally. Yet the full scale of his betrayal is staggering. Trump will probably not become the first president to be impeached and removed from office, but he will go down in history as the most criminal president in American history.

GET THE LATEST FROM JONATHAN CHAIT IN YOUR INBOX.

LINK

How a Tweet from Trump Scrambled the GOP’s Impeachment Strategy

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) went even further. He told New York “I think it really opens another article of impeachment for the president because what you have is a pattern of intimidating witnesses.”

In contrast, Republicans shrugged her off. Trump ally Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) told reporters, “I don’t know if [the tweet] was an attack on the witness. It was a characterization of her resume.”

LINK

Roger Stone Trial: Gates Testimony Contrasts With Trump’s Answers To Mueller | The Last Word | MSNBC

Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner and Vox Senior Politics Reporter Andrew Prokop join Ari Melber to discuss the latest developments in the Roger Stone case and what it’s revealing about the Trump campaign and Russian interference in 2016. Aired on 11/12/19.

Stone Trial Reveals Trump Likely Lied to Mueller

This will surprise you that tRump may have LIED!

About this website

MOTHERJONES.COM

Stone trial reveals Trump likely lied to Mueller

New bombshells at the trial of Trump's longtime adviser.

President Donald Trump likely lied to special counsel Robert Mueller about conversations he had in 2016 regarding WikiLeaks’ plans to release information stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers. That’s the big takeaway from dramatic courtroom testimony that occurred Tuesday in the trial of Roger Stone.

The revelations came from Rick Gates, a former Trump campaign aid who took the stand as federal prosecutors wrapped up their case against Stone, the longtime Trump adviser who was charged with lying to Congress about his efforts to interact with WikiLeaks in 2016. In court, Gates described a July 31, 2016, phone call he witnessed while in car with Trump headed to LaGuardia Airport—nine days after WikiLeaks had dumped tens of thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. Gates said he could not hear what Stone was saying, but saw Stone’s number on Trump’s caller ID and recognized Stone’s voice. After the call, Trump “indicated that more information would be coming” out, Gates testified.

Gates’ testimony contradicts Stone’s claim to the House Intelligence Committee that he did not communicate with anyone on the Trump campaign about information he claimed to have gathered regarding WikiLeaks’ plans to release hacked Democratic information. But more significantly, it calls into question Trump’s assertions to Mueller’s team. In written responses to the prosecutors last year, Trump stated, “I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with [Stone], nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign.” Trump also told Mueller: “I do not recall being told during the campaign that Roger Stone or anyone associated with my campaign had discussions with any of the entities named in the question [including WikiLeaks] regarding the content or timing of release of hacked emails.”

Gates’ testimony suggests Trump was in direct communication with Stone about WikiLeaks. Gates’ statements to the court also indicate that Trump received updates on what Stone was telling other campaign officials about WikiLeaks. His testimony depicted Trump and his campaign as trying to use Stone as something of a go-between with WikiLeaks to obtain inside information they presumably could exploit. (Throughout the campaign, Trump and his aides repeatedly denied Russia was attacking the election, but Mueller’s final report did note the campaign attempted to take advantage of this attack.)  

Gates revealed on Tuesday that Stone began telling Trump campaign officials early in the campaign that WikiLeaks was preparing to release material damaging to Hillary Clinton. Gates said Stone told him in April that information would be coming out via WikiLeaks. That was long before the Democratic National Committee announced on June 14 that it had been hacked by Russia.

Gates testified that after the DNC announcement, Stone contacted him, saying the matter was urgent. Stone reported to Gates that “more information would be coming out of the DNC hack,” according to Gates, and Stone asked Gates to give him contact information for Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and another campaign aide so he could brief them on the hack. (This was several days after Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Paul Manafort, then the campaign chair, had met with a Russian emissary whom they were told was bringing them dirt on Clinton as part of a Kremlin scheme to assist the Trump campaign. They later claimed the meeting had not yielded any ammo they could use against Clinton.)

LINK

Garrison Keillor | Hors d'Oeuvres! Hors d'Oeuvres in the House!

17 September 19

---

This Is Not a "Free Website." Here's What It Is ...

RSN is a project with a purpose. We are doing this to effect change. Every single person at this organization is dedicated to putting an end to the corruption that has become our country. We did not get here on a magic carpet, we took the bus. What we see lacking in America's fourth estate today is moral honesty. You know when you come to RSN that you will get the straight story, and the backstory.

Think it's not important? Watch any of the political analysis shows on TV. What in the world are they talking about? It's astounding, it's like they are all lobotomized, it's excruciating. Who is going to really challenge this nonsense? We do, every day.

When you contribute, that's what you are contributing to. That's what you get for your money.

If you hang out ... chip in.

We love you,

Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

Update My Monthly Donation

---

If you would prefer to send a check:
Reader Supported News
PO Box 2043
Citrus Hts
CA 95611

16 September 19

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

URGENT APPEAL FOR IMMEDIATE ASSISTANCE: Donations are far behind for September. We are reaching out for immediate assistance on donations to finish this drive and cover expenses. RSN never wavers in its determination to keep you informed and provide you the tools you need to make a difference. Please stand with Reader Supported News now. In Peace and Solidarity. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

Garrison Keillor | Hors d'Oeuvres! Hors d'Oeuvres in the House!

Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website
Keillor writes: "The beauty of Brexit for an American is that it gives us a glance at the debate in the House of Commons, an actual spirited debate, something unknown in our Congress."
READ MORE

Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (photo: AP)

ALSO SEE: Senator Told FBI Last Fall of New Information
About Kavanaugh

Elizabeth Warren Joins Harris, Castro in Calling for Kavanaugh's Impeachment
Daniel Politi, Slate
Politi writes: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren became the most prominent Democratic presidential hopeful to join the calls for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached following new allegations of sexual misconduct against him."
READ MORE

FBI agents. (photo: Joshua Lott/Getty Images)

Russia Carried Out 'Stunning' Hack of Encrypted FBI Communications
Zach Dorfman, Jenna McLaughlin and Sean D. Naylor, Yahoo! News
Excerpt: "American officials discovered that the Russians had dramatically improved their ability to decrypt certain types of secure communications and had successfully tracked devices used by elite FBI surveillance teams."
READ MORE

CBP. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)

There Are Exactly Two Things Border Patrol Agents Should Be Doing Right Now
Paul Blest, Splinter
Blest writes: "Apparently, throwing people into cages for the crime of being in the United States isn't so great for morale."
READ MORE

United Auto Workers vice president Terry Dittes in Detroit announces a nationwide strike against General Motors. (photo: Rebecca Cook/Reuters)

Nearly 50,000 General Motors Employees Go on Strike After Union Talks Break Down
Deanna Paul, Alex Horton and Rachel Siegel, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "About 49,000 General Motors employees walked off the job at midnight Monday after negotiations between their union and the Detroit car giant unraveled over wages, health care, job security and other issues."
READ MORE

Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets on the last day of the #NoMoreTrump campaign to reject the unilateral measures against the country. (photo: Venezuelan Ministry of Communication)

Venezuela: #NoMoreTrump Campaign Ends With 13 Million Signatures Expected
teleSUR
Excerpt: "The Venezuelan government wrapped up the international #NoMoreTrump campaign Sunday as thousands gathered in the Bolivar plazas, communities and neighborhoods of the country to sign the petition calling on the United States to lift the unilateral blockade."
READ MORE

Marina Korneeva, a pharmacist, on her daily commute from her job in Marinka to Kurakhovo, where she lives in a facility for internally displaced people. The army has been using her home as an improvised morgue. (photo: Anastasia Taylor-Lind)

Where There Are Fish in the Tap Water and Women's Uteruses Fall Out
Alisa Sopova, The New York Times
Sopova writes: "The last time Marina Korneeva heard about her home in Marinka, a small town in eastern Ukraine, it had been requisitioned by the army and was being used as an improvised morgue."
READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN

Update My Monthly Donation