Ukraine the Icing on the Corruption

The focus of the impeachment comes from the intent of Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) to find “dirt” on Joe Biden and accuse him of threatening a prosecutor in Ukraine. Here’s the background.   

Viktor Shokin was prosecutor general of Ukraine from February 2015 to March 2016. A large consensus of Western nations pushed for his ouster because they believed he was in the center of the country’s corruption. The United States was part of the consensus to remove Shokin, and VP Biden was one of the leaders in that effort. Therefore, he threatened to withhold U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine while Shokin continued to use his position for corruption. At the same time, Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, also threatened to withdraw financial support for Ukraine unless it solved its corruption problem. In February 2016, Shokin’s deputy prosecutor, Vitaly Kaska, resigned because of cronyism and corruption in the office. Because the coalition decided that Shokin must leave office, the Ukrainian voted to remove him from office a month later.

Shokin investigated a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, while he was in office. Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was on Burisma’s board and paid $50,000 a month. The investigation was quickly closed, however, by the time that VP Biden threatened to withhold financial aid, possibly because the “investigation” was an extortion attempt of the company’s owner, Myola Zlochevsky. Biden didn’t block anyone from investigating Burisma. Shokin’s successor, Yuiy Lutsenko, also investigated Burisma before closing the case ten months later but “did not prosecute any serious criminal during his 3 years in office,” according to Ukraine expert Anders Åslund. After waiting two years, Lutsenko reopened the case after Biden’s decision to run for president and DDT’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani inviting him to New York and meeting with him in January. In April, Lutsenko admitted any implications of Biden and other U.S. Democrats were false and withdrew his claim that he had been told not to investigate a list of possible suspects. DDT lied about it and continued his false allegations. Lutsenko is now gone after new Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky asked for his removal. Wanting the Biden issue back into the news, DDT has sent associates such as Rudy Guiliani to Ukraine to push for an investigation and called Zelensky in late July, asking for the investigation to be reopened as a “favor” in the same conversation about the U.S. offers to help Ukraine against Russian aggression.

The story about DDT’s shakedown of Zelensky for renewed investigation despite lack of corruption contains two conspiracies: the work of DDT, Giuliani, AG Bill Barr, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to denigrate Biden and the coverup on the complaint of how they were carrying out the first conspiracy. The impeachment inquiry is now focused on DDT’s treachery against the United States by using Ukraine for his own person benefit. But his global pattern of defending a corrupt foreign official and using a foreign government to fight his domestic political opponents for personal gain while circumventing or removing U.S. security officials in his way are part of a pattern throughout the world.

Russia: DDT defended collaboration with Russia and get their campaign help to win the 2016 election. In July 2016, he asked Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails and said he had “no pause” in “asking a foreign government—Russia, China, anybody—to interfere, to hack … anybody in this country.” In 2017, DDT said he saw no difference between getting help from the U.S. and help from Russia. DDT frequently says that the U.S. is no better than Russia and defended Vladimir Putin’s killing dissidents by saying that the U.S. isn’t “so innocent.” He praised Putin for being “a leader, you know, unlike what we have in this country,” in a reference to President Obama. In one press conference last month, DDT declared that Putin had “outsmarted” Obama, protected Putin from intelligence reports that he interfered in the 2016 U.S. election, and denounced the intelligence agencies, calling their agents liars and hacks. DDT blamed President Obama for Putin’s annexing Crimea and tried to get Russia reinstated into the former G8.

North Korea: DDT declares that Kim Jong-Un is not testing nuclear weapons and, when proved wrong, says that he doesn’t care. Kim is still testing missiles. Imitating Kim, DDT ridicules U.S. officials and policians like Kim does, for example, repeatedly applauding Kim for calling Joe Biden a “fool of low IQ.” In June, DDT ridiculed President Obama by falsely saying that he was “begging for meetings [with meetings] constantly.” After North Korea denounced national security adviser John Bolton as a “human defect” and asked that Bolton vanish, DDT fired Bolton and defended North Korea.

Saudi Arabia: DDT continues the U.S. pattern of protecting the Saudis and expanded it by protecting crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, from U.S. intelligence that shows MBS directed the torture and dismemberment of a U.S. resident, journalist Jamal Khashoggi. After the CIA concluded that MBS was behind the killing, DDT lied when he claimed that the CIA “didn’t make a determination.” He also refused a congressional directive to issue a legally mandated report on Khashoggi’s death and refused to have the FBI look into the case, saying that “nobody so far has pointed directly a finger” at MBS. When about the CIA implication of MBS, DDT said,  MBS, DDT replied, “I just don’t want to talk about intelligence.” DDT also plans to deploy at least 200 personnel as well as missile defense and radar equipment to Saudi Arabia with more planned, despite no commitment from other nations to protect the kingdom.

China: In DDT’s trade war, he consistently blames, the U.S. and not China while punishing people in the United States with fines from tariffs. He also finds China’s Communist government superior to U.S. democracy. In talking about funding the wall, he said, “I find China, frankly, in many ways, to be far more honorable than Cryin’ Chuck and Nancy [House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)]. I really do. I think that China is actually much easier to deal with than the opposition party.” While the war weakens U.S. economy, China plans to invest in Iran’s fossil fuels to the benefit of both countries but a bad deal for the U.S. Trade between China and U.S. is shrinking on both sides with raised tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s imports. Another increase by U.S. comes on October 15.

Israel: DDT blocked two Democratic congresswomen from going to Israel by urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials to refuse them and telling him that allowing the women into Israel would look weak. Israel had originally thought that denying entry to members of Congress is offensive. He also puts Israel before the United States, especially when he said, “Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat [were] being very disloyal to Israel.” In a speech to Jewish-Americans, he called Netanyahu “your prime minister.”

Turkey: DDT consistently excuses Turkish aggression against the United States and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, a Turkish foreign agent who had blocked the arming of U.S. allies, anti-ISIS Kurds. DDT sympathized with the authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after he assaulted protesters in Washington and tried to illegally expel Turkish dissident Fethullah Gülen who Erdogan would kill. Defense Secretary James Mattis protested the abandonment of the Kurds, and DDT fired him.

Iran: DDT broke a successful anti-nuclear deal with no good reason, put heavy sanctions on Iran, and then cried wolf when the Iranians began to retaliate. He sent a U.S. drone just 20 miles outside Iranian airspace, photographed installations within the country, and tried to take over one of their ships in Gibralter. When he lacked support from other countries, some of them U.S. allies, he threatened to sanction them also. And he picks national security advisers who want war with Iran.

Afghanistan: The U.S. continues to kill civilians, recently 30 Afghanistan civilians resting after harvesting pine nuts. The drone strike also wounded another 40 farmers and laborers. Of the 150 people at the harvest, some are still missing. Almost 4,000 civilians were killed or wounded in the first half of 2019, a huge increase in casualties inflicted by government and US-led foreign forces. Afghanistan now has a record opium harvest, producing 90 percent of the world’s supply, which worsened since the U.S.-led invasion. Marine occupation cut back on production, but lack of foreign aid drove people back to farming poppies.

Venezuela: DDT is still trying to effect a coup in the South American country, this time by tripling aid, taking money from Honduras and Guatemala and giving it directly to DDT’s puppet Juan Guaidó. The aid is badly needed after the heavy sanctions that DDT placed on the country to oust democratically-elected President Nicholas Maduro. 

DDT’s foreign policy comes from his perception that he’s an enemy to former presidents. He demeans domestic critics by talking about U.S. inferiority, and he constantly attacks U.S. intelligence officials. His tweeted smears of people loyal to the United States are accelerating and becoming more vicious. All of DDT’s corruption has one reason–personal gain.

DDT: Week 140 – The Unraveling in One Day

Horrifying news about Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) pours out so fast that a day is like a week. Impeachment was the big news until late this afternoon when the Washington Post  reported DDT told two senior Russian officials in 2017 that he didn’t care about Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election because the United States interfered in other countries election. DDT did it in the Oval Office at the same time he revealed highly critical information about ISIS obtained from Israel, information even withheld from allies. During the same meeting he gloated about firing former FBI Director James Comey to relieve personal problems for him and told the Russians he could have “a great relationship with you guys” except for “the press.” Records about this meeting may be hidden in the same location as DDT’s July 25 telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a computer reserve for covert operations. After the whistleblower complaint, John Eisenbert, White House deputy counsel for national security affairs and a national security legal adviser, directed the Zelensky transcript be put into the highest secret classified system although there was no reason that any of these documents be treated in this way.

White House officials tried to limit DDT’s conversations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian leader Vladimir Putin and secreted the ones that were made. A transcript of DDT’s call to MBS in the aftermath of Saudi Arabia’s torture and dismemberment of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi was never circulated although it had no sensitive national security secrets. Information about these calls may be with the Zelensky transcript. 

Today, three House committees—Foreign Affairs, Intelligence, and Oversight—subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo about contacts with Ukraine. The three chairs Eliot Engel (D-NY), Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) told Pompeo refusal to comply with the subpoena would be obstruction forming an article of impeachment. They also deposed State Department officials in the next two weeks: former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (October 2), U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker (October 3), Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent (October 7), Counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl (October 8), and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland (October 10). Yesterday, DDT missed a deadline to provide information and documents about contacts with Ukraininan officlals. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R-CA) said that the investigation “will be centered” in the Intelligence Committee under Schiff.

Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, resigned his special envoy post after revelations that he connected DDT’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani with Zelensky’s right-hand man, Andriy Yermack, to investigate Joe Biden. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave Volker his job as a volunteer while he remained the head of the John McCain Institute for International Leadership at Arizona State University.

Giuliani canceled a paid appearance at a Kremlin-backed conference in Armenia next week after the media reported on his speech. Putin and other top Russian officials are expected to attend the two-day conference sponsored by Russia and Putin’s trade alliance, the Moscow-based Eurasian Economic Union.

The National Rifle Association acted as a “foreign asset” for Russia before the 2016 presidential election, according to a report from the Senate Finance Committee after an 18-month investigation. The NRA “provided the Russian nationals direct access to the Republican Party leaders at events including its Annual Winter Board Meetings and NRA Annual Meetings, and facilitated additional access to conservative organizations like the Council for National Policy, National Prayer Breakfast,” and other events. The report also described how NRA facilitated the infiltration of Russian agent Maria Butina and former Russian government official Alexander Torshin into domestic organizations and built relationships with Russian government officials including travel to Russia. NRA may have violated numerous tax laws and illegally promised access to U.S. officials in exchange for Russian business.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who bitterly fought laws to stop Russian hacking into voting systems, received $3.5 million for his Senate Leadership Fund from Len Blavatnik, business partner of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Blavatnik donated another $3.8 million to campaigns for GOP leaders and PACs.

A federal judge blocked the indefinite detention of migrant families, declaring it inconsistent with the 1997 Flores court settlement governing migrant children in U.S. custody.

The first House Republican is supporting an impeachment inquiry. Nevada’s Mark Amodei said that he wants the House to “put it through the process and see what happens.” That brings the total to 238—all others Democrats except for former Republican Justin Amash from Wisconsin who changed affiliation to independent this year. Five days ago, only 135 House members supported an impeachment inquiry. Only nine House Democrats are still opposed after Hawaii’s Tulsi Gabbard, presidential candidate, caved.

Impeachment has consumed the media this week, the polls in favor are rising. Today’s Hill-HarrisX survey showed that support for proceedings have gone up 12 points in three months to 47 percent. The increasement is across both parties and within independents. A PBS-Marist poll puts impeachment support even higher at 49 percent, compared to 46 percent opposition.  

Even Russia is laughing at DDT about his extorting Ukraine to get him elected by investigating Joe Biden.

The Ukraine whistleblower scandal may have to compete with another one: according to a court filing, an IRS employee accused DDT of trying to interfere with the mandatory presidential audit system. House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) wrote Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin about credible allegations of “evidence of possible conduct”—potential “inappropriate efforts to influence” the program.

A disaster for DDT is his losing control of the press with its continuing outpouring of damaging information toward him. His new press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, snarks mostly in writing, and no press conference has been held in the White House for over 200 days. He’s even losing the highly polarized Fox network where hosts attack others for demanding the truth on their shows. Fighting back against Shep Smith, Tucker Carlson tried to protect Joe diGenova, who DDT once considered hiring for his lawyer, after deGenova denied the federal election law cited above. Gabriel Sherman writes:

“A Trump identity crisis at Fox as Hannity frets, Lachlan Murdoch prepares for a post-Trump future, Paul Ryan whispers in Rupert’s ear, and Shep Smith and Tucker Carlson trade blows.”

For years, Fox controlled the message for the far-right audience, but Roger Ailes is gone and Rupert Murdoch is replaced by his son Lachlan. Months ago, DDT began bashing Fox, largely for its polls showing him under water, and Sean Hannity said that the whistle-blower’s allegations are “really bad.” Hannity supported CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, brother of New York’s Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, after DDT called Chris “nuts” and showed a “total loss of control” in a heated argument at a bar. For four years, Fox avoided reporting on DDT’s negative side, but impeachment has created a “management bedlam” that “no one knows how to cover,” according to a Fox staffer. Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott and president Jay Wallace threatened to take Smith off the air if he attacks Carlson again. Former House speaker Paul Ryan, now on the Fox board, advised Lachlan Murdock to break with DDT, but others say that Fox must be loyal to DDT’s supporters.

Fox’s Chris Wallace said that the “spinning” from DDT’s defenders is “deeply misleading.” He didn’t directly name his Fox colleagues but laid out the case that the whistleblower complaint has been credible, disagreeing with the attempts of his host, Sandra Smith, to use DDT’s talking points. Stopping Smith’s reference to DDT’s quote that the whistleblower’s informants were “close to spies,” Wallace said:

“That is very, deeply troubling. These are people inside an administration that are saying that something was going on that they were very, deeply troubled by. To call them spies and to suggest that perhaps we should deal with them the way we’ve dealt with other people, with treason, which is in effect to execute them, really seems to be to strike at the very heart of what whistleblowers are all about.”

To Shep Smith, Wallace said:

“I always think reverse the situation. Whistleblowers who claim that Hillary Clinton had acted improperly during Benghazi. How would we have felt if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama had accused them of treason? I think you have to consider it that way.”

Juan Williams joined the fray when he took umbrage with co-hosts on The Five who repeated DDT’s talking points.

DDT has already started a break with Fox by promoting farther-right OANN where people can find shows by such past politicians as Sarah Palin and gushing about its coverage. OANN is known for promoting conspiracy theories, and one of its “journalists” also writes for Russia’s Sputnik. Media Matters reports that “the network has a history of race-baiting and presenting anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-abortion reporting.”

The news won’t stop: some lawmakers plan to meet during the next two weeks despite a scheduled congressional recess.

DDT Joins Netanyahu, Johnson under Fire

Dictator Donald Trump calls himself a dealmaker, but his offers look like a “mob shakedown,” to use the words of Sen. Chuck Schumer (R-NY). In his hatred for President Obama, he tore up U.S. deals with foreign governments on climate, denuclearization, trade, etc. DDT’s lackluster speech before the UN repeated in almost monotone his position of “America First,” rejecting any cooperation with slowing down the climate crisis or negotiating with any democratic countries throughout the world. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez lamented that the U.S. had put into question the positive “international agreement reached with the Iranian regime … for the peace and security of the world” and that DDT had declared his former EU allies as national security threats to put tariffs on their exports. DDT has succeeded in standing alone: Sánchez echoed German and French leaders to move away from the U.S. superpower, intensified by “the new position of this U.S. administration.”  

While DDT pushes his isolationist position, he wants the world to join him against Iran to stop countries from circumventing his harsh sanctions. By endorsing “patriotism over globalism,” he rejects any international law supporting the ideals of democracy and human rights, claiming that nationalism and sovereign rights are the best practice. While DDT presented himself as the leader of “religious freedom,” he rejects any religion except fundamentalist Christianity. He described only Iran and China as his enemies, but human rights are much worse in his personal allies of Saudi Arabia, Russia, North Korea, and Egypt. Even the State Department admits that Saudia Arabia has no freedom of religion, but DDT wants the Saudi money. Because the focus of the UN summit was Climate Action, he spent only 14 minutes sullenly viewing the proceedings (above). 

Today, however, was largely focused on DDT’s telephone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the whistleblower complaint about the possibility that DDT violated a number of laws. DDT told Zelensky that the U.S. had been “very, very good” to Ukraine before he asked Zelensky to work with AG Bill Barr and lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to “look into” Joe Biden, DDT’s political opponent. Following Zelensky’s comment about buying Javelins from the U.S., DDT asked Zelensky “to do us a favor though.” After Zelensky expressed willingness to make an investigation, DDT offered to invite him to the White House, something that he had refused to do since Zelensky’s election in May.  

DDT’s also asked Zelensky to look into the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike that investigated Russia’s cyberattacks on the DNC with DDT’s assumption that someone in the Ukraine has a non-existent “missing” server from the DNC that can exonerate Russia’s involvement. DDT also claimed that Hillary Clinton’s emails might be located in Ukraine.

Pretending that the call is about stopping corruption in Ukraine before DDT releases funding appropriated by Congress for Ukraine to fight Russian aggression, DDT ignored a letter sent to four congressional committees in May of this year. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood “certified that the Government of Ukraine has taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purposes of decreasing corruption [and] increasing accountability.” Instead, DDT’s reference to “corruption” is only domestic, focused at a campaign opponent.

Today’s events after DDT released his version of the Zelensky telephone call:

• Following yesterday’s unanimous Senate vote for DDT to release the whistleblower complaint, 421 House members voted in favor of the resolution. Two Republicans—Louis  Gohmert (TX) and Thomas Massie (KY)—voted present.
• DDT released the complaint to both House and Senate Intelligence Committees. It includes not only concerns about DDT’s covert extortion on the telephone call but also the way that the White House mishandled records of the communications. According to the whistleblower, other witnesses exist.
• Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) failed to pass a resolution denouncing an impeachment inquiry by a vote of 231 Democrats and one Independent opposed against the 193 GOP members in favor.
• Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, called on Barr to recuse himself from DOJ involvement in the Ukraine scandal because DDT “dragged the Attorney General into this mess.”
• The White House accidentally emailed talking points to defend DDT to Democratic members of Congress and their staff their talking points to defend DDT. Once the mistake was discovered, the White House asked Democrats to return the email.
• DDT concluded his day with another rambling, largely monotone speech that repeated his “witch hunt” claim from the Mueller investigation.
• At the end of DDT’s press conference with Zelensky, he said that Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), elected by the membership until January 2021, is no longer the Speaker of the House and claimed that she isn’t “interested in guns and gun protection and gun safety.” The House has passed three major gun safety bills that GOP Majority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) refuses to allow on the Senate floor.
• Zelensky didn’t know that his side of the conversation would be made public.
• DDT called Zelensky last April to work with Giuliani on investigations.
• The whistleblower complaint has been declassified and available for the public, probably tomorrow.
• Tomorrow, Congressional members will see the complete report from the Inspector General with corroborating information.

Sources reported that Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, in the job for fewer than six weeks, threatened to quit if DDT forces him to stonewall Congress during tomorrow’s testimony regarding a whistleblower complaint about DDT. Maguire got the job after DDT refused to allow DNI’s deputy director, Sue Gordon, into the senior position. As a Michigan congressman, Maguire leaked sensitive information like a sieve. [Note: both Maguire and DDT denied that Maguire offered to resign.] Maguire is scheduled to appear before both House and Senate Intelligence Committees tomorrow.

With beauty in the eye of the beholder, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) followed DDT’s talking points and scoffed at the accusation that the released transcript of DDT’s conversation with Zelensky was extortion and called it a “nothing burger.” On the other hand, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) called the memo “very troubling.” Instead of being a verbatim transcript of the 30-minute telephone call from a recording, the selective five-page summary that DDT released supposedly comes from notes and memories of officials in the Situation Room, and a cautionary note explains that a number of factors “can affect the accuracy of the record.” Readers can look at the summary and make their own decisions about the content.

David Nakamura wrote that DDT went from “America First” to a “me first”:

“At a gathering of world leaders in New York this week, President Trump decamped to one of his own properties, complained that the Nobel Peace Prize is rigged against him, feuded with a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist—and, on Wednesday, defended himself against the disclosure that he had asked a foreign leader to investigate a political rival…

“Trump repeatedly trashed Biden, suggesting it was the former vice president who had inappropriately pressured Ukrainian officials to help his son’s business dealings—despite evidence to the contrary.

“Meeting with Zelensky on Wednesday, Trump also faulted former president Barack Obama for allowing Russian-backed forces to invade and occupy the Crimea region of Ukraine. A day earlier, in his 37-minute address to world leaders in the United Nations’ distinctive green-marbled chambers, Trump made no mention of Russia’s malign behavior, including Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“’What we’re seeing in the [Ukraine] transcript is that he is clearly putting his own interests over the interests of the United States,’ said John Bellinger III, who served as a lawyer on the National Security Council under President George W. Bush. ‘There are so many things he could have talked about, such as Russian interference in Ukraine, but all Trump wants to talk about is investigating a political rival.’

“As [Zelensky] pressed him to visit the country, Trump reflected on his time as the owner of the Miss Universe pageant. ‘We had a winner from Ukraine,’ Trump said, ‘and we got to know the country very well in a lot of different ways.’”

The House needs to investigate DDT’s behavior because Barr refuses to do so from the DOJ.

In other parts of the world:

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 28 days to form a governing coalition of 61 parliament members. Netanyahu has only 55 at this time, and the question is whether he can pick up six from the other 65 who may be dug in against him. Without a position as prime minister, Netanyahu can be prosecuted for bribery, fraud, and corruption.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson was in New York City when the UK Supreme Court unanimously ruled that his suspension of Parliament until October 14 was illegal because his action frustrated its ability to “carry out its constitutional functions.” Parliament is back and furious because Johnson won’t follow the law to find a deal before the UK leaves the European Union. Johnson’s opposition immediately called on him to quit, but he promised that the UK will not be a part of the EU after Halloween. The court’s ruling shows that the executive does not have unfettered power. Last week, the EU rejected three proposals for alternative arrangements to Brexit, and it will consider a fourth this week.

Three world leaders: Israel’s Netanyahu is terrified, UK’s Johnson is bullying, and U.S.’s DDT is deflated.

Ukraine: DDT’s Road to Impeachment

A new Nixon era has been introduced: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that six committees will begin a formal impeachment inquiry of Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) in response to allegations that he tried to enlist a foreign power for his own political gain. The impeachment committee process against Nixon, lasting almost eight months, was completed over 25 years ago at the end of July with recommendations for articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress. Nixon resigned less than two weeks later.

Pelosi directed the chairs of the committees investigating DDT to send their best cases for DDT’s impeachable offenses to the Judiciary Committee to lay the groundwork for articles of impeachment. That committee’s investigation already focused on Robert Mueller’s findings and DDT’s personal profits from state and foreign governments’ spending. An inquiry is the first step to a vote to charge DDT with high crimes and misdemeanors. Before Pelosi’s announcement, 149 House Democrats and one Independent, formerly a Republican, called for DDT’s impeachment; the number has increased since then.

Pelosi said:

“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed dishonorable facts of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections…

“The actions taken to date by the president have seriously violated the Constitution. The president must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”

The impeachment impetus came from allegations that DDT violated the law in his refusal to release a whistleblower’s complaint about DDT’s “promises” to a foreign country and his pressure on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden for corruption while withholding almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine to fight Russian aggression.

The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee entered the fray by inviting the whistleblower to a closed session by Friday and interviewing the intelligence inspector general who wanted to release the complaint to Congress as required by law. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) unexpectedly permitted a vote on Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) consent resolution to release the complaint to the Intelligence Committee that unanimously passed.

VP Mike Pence’s complicity in DDT’s apparent extortion and bribery plot comes from the transcript of his press conference in Poland when Pence said that he had talked to Zelensky about DDT’s “financial support in great detail.” Pence added that DDT “had me make clear, we have great concerns about issues of corruption.” Over three weeks ago, Pence spread the same story that DDT and Rudy Giuliani are trying to promote.

DDT’s shifts about Ukraine keep dribbling out: 

• DDT said he didn’t talk to Zelensky about Joe Biden.
• DDT said he talked to Zelensky about corruption but not Biden.
• DDT said he “might” have talked about Biden in the “beautiful conversation with Zelensky”
• DDT said that he talked about the $250 million military aid in the conversation but didn’t connect it to Biden.
• DDT forgot to mention that he gave Ukraine an extra $140 million after talking with Zelensky about investigating Biden; that information came from Zelensky’s announcement. 
• DDT said, “Who wouldn’t speak to your son? Of course, you spoke to your son.” [Evidently DDT talked to his son about the June 2016 meeting with Russia to get dirt on political opponent Hillary Clinton.] 
• DDT said he connected the money designated for Ukraine to the talk about corruption: “Why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?”
• DDT said he didn’t pressure Zelensky to investigate in exchange for the money, but that if “a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did, if a Republican ever said what Joe Biden said, they’d be getting the electric chair right now.” [Actually, an investigation exonerated Biden of any wrongdoing, but DDT isn’t as lucky. DDT typically projects his behavior and crimes onto others. DDT’s only concern with “corruption” in Ukraine has been about Joe Biden.]
• DDT told budget officials to block military aid for Ukraine three days before his telephone conversation with Zelensky and ordered officials to tell lawmakers that the delays were an “interagency process” with no additional information.
• DDT said he didn’t tell anyone to withhold the funding to help Ukraine fight Russian aggression. (He did.)
• DDT said he did withhold the funding but because NATO countries didn’t give Ukraine money. (They already are.)
• DDT said he might give the telephone call transcript to a “respected source” so “everyone will say” his conversation with Zelensky was perfectly fine, much like Nixon’s offer to give his audio recording to a hard-of-hearing conservative senator for a summary.
• DDT said that he will release the full transcript to the public tomorrow.

A timeline of the events in this debacle.

After Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) met with Zelensky in early September, he reported that Ukraine’s president“directly” expressed concerns that “the aid that was being cut off to Ukraine by the president was a consequence” of his unwillingness to launch an investigation into the Bidens. Murphy said that any demand from a U.S. president provides “an implicit threat” with “consequences.”

In mid-August, lawmakers discovered that acting chief of staff and budget director Mick Mulvaney took control of the Ukrainian aid from the Defense and State departments in a possibly illegal action that blocked money authorized by Congress. At the same time, the whistleblower filed a complaint about DDT and Ukraine to Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is covering for DDT, avoiding answers about the telephone call with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press and with Jake Tapper about the difference between business dealings for Biden’s son and DDT’s family. Mnuchin said that following federal law in releasing the whistleblower complaint to Congress would “set a terrible precedent” with the current administration.

DDT’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who claimed he was looking for “dirt on Biden,” claimed that the State Department sent him to talk to Zelensky’s right-hand man, Andriy Yermack. In doing so, he might avoid prosecution under the Logan Act which criminalizes a private citizen’s attempt to intervene without authorization in disputes or controversies between the U.S. and foreign governments. His statements leave him open to prosecution for bribery and extortion conspiracy because he has no immunity. The Hobbs Act defines extortion as “obtaining property from another, with his consent, under color of official right,” according to Barbara McQuade. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act criminalizes the act of a U.S. citizen to corruptly offer “anything of value” to a foreign official to retain business or influence an official decision. Giuliani clearly acts on the part of DDT to persuade Ukraine to “investigate” a political opponent, illegal under federal law that blocks a person from soliciting, accept, or receiving a “contribution or donation of money or other thing of value” from a foreign national in connection to a U.S. election and prohibits a foreign national from the same act. Damaging information fits the definition of a “thing of value.”

Giuliani’s stories change as swiftly as those from DDT:

• Last week, Giuliani said, “I did what I did on my own, and then I told [Trump] about it afterwards. Because I’m his lawyer.”
• Over the weekend, Giuliani told the Washington Post, about DDT, “I don’t do anything that involves my client without speaking with my client.”
• Monday, Giuliani told Sean Hannity, about his meeting with Yermack, “I wasn’t operating on my own. I was operating at the request of the State Department.”

Giuliani is left hanging out to dry. DDT asked Zelensky eight times to talk to Giuliani, and the State Department said that that it didn’t ask him for help:

“Mr. Giuliani is a private citizen and acts in a personal capacity as a lawyer for President Trump. He does not speak on behalf of the U.S. Government.”

On Sunday, however, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he approved of Giuliani “inserting himself in foreign affairs” and pressing Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, possibly encouraging Giuliani to break the law.

Because the law does not designate what to do if the DNI violates the law by not releasing the complaint, experts think that the IG, who wants to provide Congress with the complaint, is in charge of delivering the complaint. Jesselyn Radack, a national security lawyer, said that “the DNI cannot countermand the inspector general’s determination.” The DNI, however, consulted the DOJ, another violation of the law, whose opinions are “considered to be binding.” Employees of the executive branch can’t be prosecuted for not doing what the White House demands, but they can be fired, according to a former DOJ official.

Repubicans argue that they don’t know the facts but that DDT’s actions with Ukraine aren’t wrong because the people who want to know the facts are speculating. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) claimed that DDT didn’t talk to Zelensky about Joe Biden—after DDT said that he talked to Zelensky about Biden. The media has the same confusion about how to defend DDT after he admits to extortion by saying “So what if I did?” Republicans and DDT have spread around the blame—Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Ukraine, the whistleblower, the media—or just saying that DDT did nothing wrong by trying to blackmail Ukraine. It’s all part of the coverup pattern for DDT’s sole concerns, his reelection in 2020.

Failing to stop Pelosi’s impeachment plan by offering to release the transcript of the Zelensky telephone call, DDT called the Speaker to “work something out” with “this whistleblower complaint.” She said, “Tell our people to obey the law.” He should have listened to aides who told him not to call Zelensky.

Chaos from Israel, Iran

Last week, I was biting my fingernails until I heard the results of Tuesday’s Israeli election to see if the corrupt far-right, ultra-Orthodox prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu would lose his power over the country. If he does, that’s the third country moving from far-right positions.

Italy was the first to go in the past few months when it ousted far-right Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini with a coalition between the pro-European Democratic Party and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement. Salvini failed to take over for Giuseppe Conte, the independent prime minister who resigned. The interior ministry will be run by migration specialist Luciana Lamorgese who wants to solve the humanitarian crisis caused for the former government. The new coalition is fragile, but it’s a start.

The UK parliament turned against new far-right prime minister, Boris Johnson, who failed to get enough votes for his position to walk out on the European Union with no deal in place. A Supreme Court decision this week will help determine UK’s direction about Brexit. The background is here. 

Almost a week after Israel’s election, a leader still hasn’t been finalized, and Netanyahu failed to coalesce rival rightwing parties the second election within six months. Instead of voting for a person, Israel votes for parties that then select a prime minister. As of yesterday, Netanyahu was behind a coalition supporting Benny Gantz because most of the Arab Palestinians, one-fifth of Israel’s citizens and 13 votes in parliament, picked Gantz as the lesser of two evils. President Reuven Rivlin will select the new prime minister.

Rivlin attempted to unify the government by calling Gantz and Netanyahu to a meeting lasting almost two hours. The two opponents will meet again tomorrow. For Arabs, supporting Ganz has been difficult because he led Israeli forces to devastate large parts of the Palestinian enclave and kill 2,000 people, mostly civilians. Three Arab parliamentarians called him a “war criminal” and backed out of his support, but for the remainder Netanyahu is a worse choice. Rivlin’s choice at forming a government has 28 days plus a 14-day extension to get coalition agreements. Failure means another 28 days before the parliament members recommend a third potential candidate with a majority vote who has 14 days to form a government.

Arabs have good reason to reject Netanyahu. Last summer, he declared that they were to officially be second-class citizens when he said, “According to the basic nationality law we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people—and only it.” In his reelection campaign, Netanyahu promised to illegally annex parts of the West Bank belonging to Jordan before he presents a “peace plan.”. He also posted a huge gold “Trump Heights” sign in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights that belongs to Syria. On his official FB chatbot, suspended as a “violation of hate,” Netanyahu posted that Arab politicians “want to annihilate us all.”

Netanyahu is desperate for a win; otherwise he faces prosecution in three criminal cases involving fraud, bribery and breach of trust. He conspired to curb the circulation of a daily newspaper owned by supporter Sheldon Adelson for better coverage in Yediot Ahronot, a rival paper critical of Netanyahu. In another accusation, Netanyahu, fixed the regulation of huge telecom Bezeq to get favors from Walla, a news website owned by Bezeq’s then-majority shareholder, Shaul Elovitch, who also faces charges. Elovitch told Walla to go easy on Netanyahu and his wife Sara to get a merger that raised antitrust concerns. These are details of Netanyahu’s involvement in these issues.

Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) has provided the script for Netanyahu’s rhetoric. Corruption charges are a “witch hunt” in the “leftist media,” and Netanyahu calls himself “the most maligned person in the history of Israeli media.” On a billboard of critical journalists’ images, he posted, “They will not decide. You decide.” He has interviews only on one far-right outlet, and communicates through social media. He called for a boycott of a network and accused those involved in the network of “a terror attack against democracy.”

After Netanyahu appeared to lose the election, Israel’s stock markets rose in celebration. Netanyahu canceled his meeting with DDT and his speech at the UN this week, not appearing at its main debate for only the second time in ten years. DDT is also distancing himself from his former BFF saying, “Our relationship is with the state of Israel.”

Israel is privy to U.S. classified information through cellphone surveillance devices placed by the country’s agents near White House “sensitive locations” to spy on DDT, his top aides, and his closest associates. DDT, who called for a congressional investigation into President Obama’s non-existent surveillance of him, didn’t indicate any distress about Israel’s real surveillance.

Another country is causing ulcers as the world waits to see what will happen with Iran. Since drones from an unspecified location by an unspecified group hit Saudi Arabian oil fields on September 13, the U.S. has consistently said that Iran is responsible for the attack claimed by the Yemeni Houthis. Countries such as Japan disagree, and even Saudi Arabia has not identified the location where the attacking drones was launched. DDT claims he waits for direction from the Saudi, following orders from the country that tortured and dismembered a U.S. journalist instead of the constitutional requirement that Congress is in control of declaring war. DDT says that the U.S. doesn’t need Saudi oil but wants to “help our allies,” a turnaround from five years ago when he said that the Saudis “should fight their own wars.”

Whether DDT will talk to Iran or bomb them depends on the hour, but he increased sanctions twice since the attack, including on Iran’s central bank.  His attitude reflects how much money he can get from them for his personal business.

A basis for DDT’s decision about attacks on Iran is most likely the price of crude oil. When he made war noises, the price per barrel went up almost 40 percent, only to come back down when he calmed down. Global markets set oil prices, and an invasion in the Middle East could double prices as it did when the U.S. dived into the Iraq-Kuwait conflict. In 1973, prices quadrupled after OPEC declared an oil embargo because of U.S. support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. DDT’s 2020 campaign could be damaged by increases in oil prices, a war that no one wants, and the fear of a recession, already on the horizon. Six of the last eight recessions came after a spike in oil prices, including the most recent one in 2007.  High oil prices cause inflation and hurt economic growth, directly affect prices for goods made with oil and indirectly affecting costs from transportation and heating for consumers. Other goods are sold because people have a finite amount of money.

Whether DDT will talk to Iran or bomb them depends on the hour, but he increased sanctions twice since the attack, including on Iran’s central bank. His attitude reflects how much money he can get from them for his personal business. He claims that the U.S. needs the Saudis to bring them job, and every time he talks about the opportunities he adds thousands to his mythical number. What he really wants, however, is money in his own pocket from the Saudis pouring cash into DDT’s U.S. hotels and Scottish resort. His big problem is that hawks and hardliners want war, and he’s already bombed Yemen to please Saudi Arabia, contributing to a horrific humanitarian crisis with 3.3 million of Yemenis displaced and another 14 million desperately needing food, medicine, etc.

DDT may find little foreign support for a war against Iran. The United Arab Emirates has already backed off the Saudis’ war in Yemen, the Egyptian president faces new protests against his faltering economy and repression, and Israel has no leader. Even the Saudis are lukewarm about a fight with the Iranians. DDT has proved himself to be an on-again-off-again follower of the last person he talks to, well demonstrated when he called off a strike against Iran last June just ten minutes—according to him—before the final order without talking to his advisers.

Iran wants new talks on the nuclear agreement, and DDT refuses to negotiate. Talks also can’t resume while the U.S. has crippling sanctions on Iran, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani wants to block DDT from sending more U.S. troops into the Gulf. DDT has isolated the U.S., and other countries such as China are moving in to take advantage of Iranian resources. Tomorrow, he plans to give a speech at the UN to get support against Iran, and leaders of three EU countries—France, Germany, and UK—now say that Iran was responsible for the attack. Yet DDT’s disregard for global involvement does not bode well in an organization where people are more interested in diplomacy and denuclearization instead of buffoonery.

Evangelicals Killing Christianity in U.S

Christian evangelicals were largely responsible for electing Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) in 2016, but their politics are driving people away from organized religion, according to a recent analysis in fivethirtyeight.com. Michele Margolis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of From Politics to the Pews: How Partisanship and the Political Environment Shape Religious Identity, said:

“Politics can drive whether you identify with a faith, how strongly you identify with that faith, and how religious you are. And some people on the left are falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.”

In the early 1990s, less than ten percent of people in the U.S. lacked a formal religious affiliation, with liberals having about the same percentage as the general public. Twenty-five years later, almost 25 percent have no affiliation with a religion, and 40 percent of liberals are part of that group. The share of conservatives and moderates with no religion is also rising. By now, most people’s ideology matches their religious identity. The more liberal the person, the less likely to belong to a faith, and vice versa. 

Many religiously unaffiliated still believe in God, but the percentage of liberals who never attend religious services has tripled. Those in the U.S. who say that God exists fell from 53 percent in 1991 to 36 percent in 2018.

In the past, politics weren’t connected to loss of faith; reasons were a church scandal or the feeling that a religion’s hierarchies or rules were antiquated, restrictive, or irrelevant. Searches into the connection between politics and faith were carefully done because the view that politics can shape religious beliefs can be offensive. Two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, did look beyond conventional demographic and generational shifts to find reasons for changes of falling religious affiliation in the mid-1990s, particularly among liberals. Published in 2002, their results offer the theory that some left-leaning people walked away from religion because of the Christian right’s extensive participation in politics, especially when the white evangelical Protestants became controlling in focusing the GOP platform on sexual morality such as opposition to marriage equality and abortion. 

Exploring that theory, prominent political researchers discovered that people leaving a religious affiliation kept their political identities instead of a growing secular attitude moving them toward the left. One study showed that just reading a news story about a Republican who spoke in a church might cause Democrats to claim they were nonreligious in “an allergic reaction to the mixture of Republican politics and religion,” according to David Campbell, a co-author of the study and political scientist at the University of Notre Dame. The numbers began to increase, and liberals are unlikely to return.

Surveys by the Pew Research Center show that the percentage of liberals who believe that churches and religious organizations positively contribute to society dropped from 49 percent in 2010 to only 33 percent. Only 11 percent of very liberal people say that being Christian is important to what it means to be American, compared to 69 percent of people who identify as very conservative. Liberals are unlikely to return to organized religion as long as conservatives push their fundamentalist religious beliefs into politics.

Surveys also show that secular liberals are more likely than moderates or conservatives to have spouses who aren’t religious. These couples don’t create a structured religion for their children, and the youngest liberals who have always lived in a political Christian right world are the most secular. The fundamentalist Christian power in politics undermines trust in both religion and Christian power in government, making politics more and more divisive.

Evangelical Christian hypocrisy is a strong reason for turning away from religion, and an eight-month investigation into DDT’s supporter Jerry Falwell, Jr., president of Liberty University, reveals him a poster boy for the conservative religion’s double standard that can lead people to leave religious affiliation. University officials described Falwell’s abuse of school’s funds, for example his gift of $1.8 million to Miami poolboy, Giancarlo Granda, for an LGBTQ-friendly Miami Beach hotel. Falwell also sold university property to his young handsome personal trainer Benjamin Crosswhite, providing him the money to buy the property which the university rented back from him. Colleagues have described more deals.

Under Falwell’s direction, the school made big loans to his friends not in the university’s financial interests. Prototype Tourism LLC, a tourism company founded by Josh Oppenheimer, got $200,000 but had trouble paying back the loan. Family friend Robert Moon, who founded Construction Management Associates, Inc., got $750,000 before the university awarded him $130 million in construction contracts at the school with no other bids and sold him university property. In 2012, Falwell turned management of several university properties over to the company that his son, Trey Falwell, formed and that listed its address as that of Jerry Falwell’s and his wife’s home.

A senior university official said:

“We’re not educating; we’re buying real estate every year and taking students’ money to do it.”

Other accusations include photographs of Falwell and his son Trey at the WALL nightclub in Miami Beach while they were drinking alcohol and dancing. Falwell’s university punishes students for drinking alcohol and co-ed dancing. Falwell hired “IT guy” John Gauger to reduce the pictures’ prominence in Google searches. Claims include sending and texting racy photos of his wife to male subordinates and “accidentally” emailing a picture of his wife in a French maid outfit to multiple people. Falwell was overheard hiring DDT’s former fixer Michael Cohen to fix blackmail for the photographs, possibly by his pool boy, in a recording of Cohen with Tom Arnold.  

Falwell makes colleagues uncomfortably by incessantly talking about his sex life at work. He called one of his students “emotionally imbalanced and physically retarded” and described the campus police chief “a half-wit and easy to manipulate.” About his former associate athletics director, Falwell wrote, “Only get Kevin involved in something if you want it not to work.”

Liberty officials fear retribution from Falwell and his wife. One school employee said:

“It’s a dictatorship. Nobody craps at the university without Jerry’s approval.”

A high-ranking university official, one of the over two dozen officials who spoke out, said:

“We’re talking about the difference between right and wrong. Not even ‘being a Christian,’ but being a good person, versus people who manipulate the system.”

While not denying the content of the embarrassing emails, Falwell claims that his embarrassing emails were stolen from Liberty University in a “criminal conspiracy” that makes him the target of an “attempted coup.” The FBI doesn’t comment, but cybercrime expert Nick Ackerman called Falwell’s claim “totally insane.”

Falwell is also a prime example of a politically powerful evangelical Christian who’s in the religion business to make money. He slammed David Platt, an evangelical Virginia pastor who apologized for welcoming DDT to his church by saying:  

 “I only want to lead us with God’s Word in a way that transcends political party and position, heals the hurts of racial division and injustice, and honors every man and woman made in the image of God.”

Falwell said that “pastors like [David Platt] need to grow a pair.” He responded to critics by bragging about how much money he made for Liberty University. A former university official called Falwell’s “washing his hands of any responsibility for spiritual life at the university—that was frankly a pretty Trumpian line of commentary.”

John Stoehr, political scientist and journalist, describes white evangelical Christians as sadists for the pleasure they derive from human suffering who they consider as “others.” People of color and members of the LGBTQ community deserve pain, humiliation, and physical abuse because of “divine justice.” Stoehr writes:

“[Sadists] are cruel because being cruel to people deserving cruelty feels good.”

For example, Christian leader Mark Taylor claimed that “patriots” will drag dead high-profile Democratic politicians through the streets if DDT doesn’t mass-arrest them by January.  White evangelicals don’t recognize political legitimacy in “others” because they don’t see them as equal. According to the evangelical Christian “moral compass,” “others” are to be used or abused, cheated and defeated because they aren’t equal.

Led by DDT, most U.S. evangelicals ignore the climate crisis destroying the planet for their descendants. World leaders including UK’s Boris Johnson, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and India’s Narendra Modi are coming to New York City for the UN climate action summit on September 23, but DDT won’t be present. Instead, he booked a room at the UN headquarters to give a speech about religious freedom, hoping to distract from the 60 speeches giving concrete plans to slow the climate crisis around the world. While over 4 million children and adults marched in 163 countries to save the planet, DDT praised Australia for digging coal.

Hypocrisy, Christian control, sadism, and DDT—these are reasons to leave organized religion.

Pieces from DDT’s 139th Week

The media has been consumed for the past week about a potential exchange from Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) of $250 military aid to Ukraine for an investigation into DDT’s possible opponent Joe Biden and the Middle East tension from attacks by unknown enemies on the Saudi Arabian oil fields. That wasn’t all.

DDT found a white man to sit around and watch him work, his criteria for a new national security adviser. According to the NYT, Robert O’Brien is known as “an affable, ingratiating personality that has earned him allies throughout the Trump administration, notably including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, both of whom supported his appointment.” NYT also described him as a pleasant John Bolton, because O’Brien’s similar ideology to his predecessor. Like many other people who DDT hires, he has few qualifications for the job other than his lavish praise for DDT. As “hostage negotiator,” O’Brien persuaded Sweden to release rapper A$AP Rocky from jail for a street brawl to improve DDT’s ratings among blacks. The former adviser for Mitt Romney, Scott Walker, and Ted Cruz—all losing their candidacies—now has the job to solve DDT-created disasters in Iran, China, North Korea, and Afghanistan. DDT clearly said that the new adviser won’t be making any decisions because DDT is in charge. Congress is considering a law requiring confirmation for this position that DDT can freely vacate and fill. Meanwhile Bolton is now speaking out against DDT’s policies.

This spring, DHS dumped a dozen high-level officials after he fired John Mitnick, the agency’s fifth general counsel. In his job, Mitnick supervised 2,500 lawyers at the agency, pushed back against policies putting the DHS in a legally dubious position, and stopped DDT from releasing migrants in sanctuary cities in retaliation for their laws.

Two vegan Democratic presidential candidates, Cory Booker and Tulsi Gabbard, are safe from DDT’s reduction of food safety inspectors in pork plants by 40 percent. USDA will use a small number of industry employees with no training for “inspection” and eliminate line speed limits, promoting less cleanliness in both prep and inspection. Peer reviews show that studies used as justification for faulty position that faster line speeds are safer, hidden from the public, are flawed, but the USDA moves ahead because of packing house requests despite 80,000 opposing comments from the public. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published over a century ago, describes the unsanitary conditions then and perhaps now. USDA’s IG is investigating the faulty data, lack of transparencies, and other rule irregularities.

In an effort to politically influence the U.S. Supreme Court, 53 Republican Senators signed a letter declaring that Democrats pose “a direct, immediate threat to the independence of the judiciary.” The proposed case has already been settled after New York City repealed a NRA-opposed statute almost a decade ago, proving that the lawsuit is only political. Republicans are still not happy after confirming 150 ultra-conservative judges and two Supreme Court justices, one of the positions blocked for almost a year so that a Republican president could nominate one.

Another Republican action is endangering the lives of U.S. military members, according to the Pentagon. DDT’s moved $3.6 billion to build a border fence through the National Emergencies Act from the military budget designated to solve life-threatening situations such as asbestos in living quarters for troops and their families and storage facilities for ammunition that aren’t fire-resistant or capable of handling explosions. The Pentagon reports that the loss of the funds hurts “military readiness” and damages national security. The lack of funding for a new boiler at Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska could be force an evacuation and leave the base frozen and damaged. The main gate at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey is current subject to “hostile penetration … and an increased terrorist threat.” DDT unfunded plans “to deter Russian aggression,” according to an Air Force report. The National Guard training base at Camp Santiago, destroyed when Hurricane Maria went through Puerto Rico two years ago, won’t be rebuilt. Most congressional GOP members refused to stop DDT from taking the money from real military emergencies.

DDT found another black journalist to libel—this one is a woman. As one tweet commented, DDT’s vile comments just sold 50,000 of Joy Reid’s book, The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story, already on the NYT bestseller list, after he said she had no “talent” and no “’it’ factor.” Reid raised DDT’s fury by saying that he sounded like a “desperate man” at his Baltimore speech and he treated “the gathered Republicans to some smoking hot beauty tips” such as selecting energy inefficient lightbulbs to avoid orange-appearing skin.

Reid responded to DDT by listing a few of his impeachable actions–and that was before the revelation of his extorting Ukraine.  

Last week, highly respected Cokie Roberts died, and DDT tweeted his response:

“I never met her. She never treated me nicely.”

Daughter of prominent U.S. Louisiana representatives for over a half century, Roberts, “called one of the 50 greatest women in the history of broadcasting” by ABC, helped pave the way for women in broadcast journalism. About Roberts, noted legal affairs correspondent Nina Tottenberg wrote:

“To know Cokie was to see the personification of human decency…. She was always the voice of people with less power, and the voice of what is right.”

Showing less finesse at a reception at the recent G7 Summit, DDT looked for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi by calling out, “Where’s my favorite dictator?” DDT was greeted with silence. He has not condemned the human rights violations of el-Sisi after he took power through a 2013 military coup against former President Mohammed Morsi. DDT said that el-Sisi is “a good man, and he’s done a fantastic job in Egypt.” At least DDT is right about el-Sisi being a dictator.

In the path of hurricanes, the U.S. military court and prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have cost over $6 billion to operate for almost 18 years; taxpayers are charged over $10 million each day to house 40 prisoners. Although almost 800 people have gone through the prison, only one person was convicted. So much torture has tainted evidence that no more prisoners can be convicted with an appeals processing costing a minimum of $1.5 billion during the next 10 to 15 years. If defendants are found not guilty, the government can imprison them indefinitely. The two men who proposed cost-saving measures were fired. With plans to keep the facilities open for another 25 years, the government will need to pay for geriatric care such as joint replacements. The oldest prisoner is now 71 years old.

Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, fired hours before his pension would go into effect in April 2018, is still in limbo because the DOJ has refused to tell him for ten days whether a grand jury indicted him for inappropriate media leaks about Hillary Clinton and her foundation. Charges against him require 12 of 23 jurors to agree for probably cause that he committed a crime. In his position, he can declassify anything he wishes so a jury will have trouble finding him guilty. He is accused of lying under oath, but that’s not a problem for Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justice. It’s been said that a grand jury can “indict a ham sandwich”; McCabe may be less guilty than that sandwich.

DDT wants to dump VP Mike Pence from the 2020 ballot because he doesn’t provide enough defense for DDT. Ivanka and Jared Kushner regularly threaten Pence to force him to follow orders, according to a White House official.

Even FLOTUS Melania Trump has become toxic. When she asked ten students from the United Nations International School (UNIS) in Manhattan to join at the New York Stock Exchange to ring the opening bell, parents don’t want their children photographed with her.

DDT consistently promises that he is bringing coal back, but in Wyoming two of the biggest U.S. mines have shut down.  

Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and Republicans spent seven years trying to repeal it. Democrats took the House in 2018 partly because people were afraid to lose their health care. House Republicans met in 2019 and made plans to repeal people’s health care as the 2020 election nears. That’s all the GOP has?

Attempts by DDT’s National Labor Relations Board to erase a rule making companies more responsible for temps, fast-food-franchise workers, and those who work indirectly for companies may be confounded for a second time because of conflicts of interest by the board—this time its use of temporary staffers. The board hired temporary lawyers and paralegals to review public comments on the rollback of the rule from a company that has a vested interest in the outcome, raising questions about the accuracy of their work.

Thanks to DDT’s trade war with China, the economic OECD, comprised of 36 countries, predicts a world recession. According to the conservative Bloomberg.com, the recession may have already started in some areas such as manufacturing  and farming since DDT started imposing tariffs. In 22 state, the number of people working in factories—members of DDT’s base—fell thus far this year as has truck delivery traffic.

DDT: Week 139 – Self-Serving, ‘Quid pro Quo’

The whistleblower debacle about a troubling “promise” from Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) has exploded—at least in the mainstream media. During a July telephone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, DDT told him eight times to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani to investigate Joe Biden for corruption. Tightlipped Director of National Intelligence Joseph MacGuire is keeping his mouth shut about why he doesn’t follow the law to give the complaint to Congress, but DDT’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani has no problem talking about the situation. Last night, he told Chris Cuomo on CNN that he asked Ukraine to look into Joe Biden and that he didn’t ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden—in back to back answers. Last May, Giuliani said about his pressuring Ukraine to help DDT get reelected that it wasn’t “illegal” although “somebody could say it’s improper.” This follows the Russian scandal about a foreign government’s interference in a U.S. election. Now Giuliani—and perhaps DDT—are asking for intervention from another foreign government. The exchange and Giuliani’s meltdown are here.

Giuliani is as much of a con as DDT; he’s just not as good at doing it, which says he’s really bad in what he does. Here’s a timeline between May 2, 2019, when Giuliani and DDT pushed the scandal against Biden, and September 13, 2019, when DDT gave up on the blackmail and released the Congress-approved $250 million to Ukraine. The trail of breadcrumbs leads from the whistleblower to Ukraine.

Trying to hide his activities, DDT stopped the bipartisan practice of publishing “readouts,” official descriptions of his telephone calls with world leaders in June. People in the U.S. learn about his calls only through the foreign press, for example this week’s calls to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Without a U.S. readout, foreign leaders shape the narratives, and DDT demonstrates his level of paranoia.

Giuliani’s admission makes him a co-conspirator in the situation, possibly a federal crime. The day after DDT’s call with Zelensky about investigating Joe Biden’s son, U.S. Special Representative Kurt Volker met with Ukrainian leaders. Soon after, Giuliani was sent to Spain to meet with one of Zelensky’s closest associates, Andriy Yermack. As DDT delayed appropriated military aid for Ukraine, Giuliani explained the quid pro quo—literally “something for something”—when he told Yermack,  “Your country owes it to us and to your country to find out what really happened.” Giuliani was referring to Ukraine’s investigation into corruption about Joe and Hunter Biden’s involvement with a gas company and Joe Biden’s advocacy for firing a Ukrainian prosecutor overseeing an anti-corruption probe of the company’s owner. The next prosecutor general said he found no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden. Giuliani said his goal is to make sure Biden doesn’t become president without answering for the problems in Ukraine.

Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine for Russia. What would stop DDT from promising Putin he’ll give Ukraine to Russia if he gets elected in 2020?  https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/susan-jones/giuliani-raises-alleged-corruption-joe-biden-and-son-whistleblower  Giuliani’s latest scam to please Fox is declaring that Biden took $1.5 billion out of China. 

DDT’s diversion for the Ukraine blackmail scandal is sending an unspecified number of troops to protect oil in Saudi Arabia despite no evidence that Iran was behind the attacks. He’s also punishing Iran by putting sanctions on its central bank.

NRA, Republicans, and DDT are avoiding any gun safety legislation, but Colt announced that it will no longer manufacture rifles, including the AR-15, for civilian use.

Brett Kavanaugh stays in the news as NYT reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly, authors of a book investigating his scandals, said that Kavanaugh agreed to talk to them if they publicly lied for him. His offer was to provide background information in exchange for a claim in the book that he declined to be interviewed. Authors of The Education of Brett Kavanaugh refused his offer and therefore did not speak with him about the book. Kavanaugh isn’t commenting on the matter.

In late December, most voters polled by the research firm Perry Undem believed Kavanaugh had lied about his teenage years. Forty-nine percent had a largely unfavorable impression of him, as compared with the 29 percent who had a favorable one. Thirty-five percent said the Senate did the right thing in confirming him; a close 41 percent disagreed. A poll from Perry Undem found that 57 percent of voters said Kavanaugh lied under oath and that, except among “self-identified Republicans and white men (both minorities of the electorate),” most voters believed Christine Blasey Ford over Kavanaugh. Every time I look at Kavanaugh’s photos, I think about his pushing his penis in a young woman’s face—that the NYT called “harmless fun.” 

On tonight’s Bill Maher show, both Maher and Andrew Sullivan defended Kavanaugh with the claim that his behavior came from teenage bad choices. They skipped over the fact that he lied under oath in all his confirmation hearings and now asks writers to lie in a book about him. The GOP talking point is blame the victim. It’s a man’s world even when women are doing the attacking.

One might wonder if DDT is trying to kill Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) by retweeting a lie that she celebrated the anniversary of 9/11. The video he copied came from a Congressional Black Caucus event on 9/13. Twitter didn’t take down the tweet because it was from the man in the Oval Office. When DDT copied the originator, Terrence Williams, he called him “a very highly respected conservative pundit” with “half a million followers” on Twitter. DDT has made Omar the target by millions of racist white supremacist followers who believe everything DDT says.

DDT has been ordered back to court, this time by a New York state Supreme Court justice who wants a videotaped deposition for a civil suit about a 2015 occurrence between protesters and DDT’s security guards. Plaintiffs claim that DDT’s guards assaulted them on the sidewalk outside the Trump Tower when they demonstrated against DDT’s calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “criminals.”

Although DDT pretends he’s concerned about homeless people, but he admitted that his reason for “rounding up” homeless people in California cities and dropping them into government facilities is that foreign investors may not want to rent or buy real estate if they see homeless people. Last July, DDT told Tucker Carlson that homelessness started only two years ago but he had cleaned up the problem in Washington, D.C. The city has a slightly larger homeless population than San Francisco.  DDT is looking out for the 30 percent of the former Bank of America tower in San Francisco and properties in Los Angeles that he owns. He is so concerned about pollution going into the ocean from the homeless people that he plans to have the EPA cite San Francisco for environmental violations. DDT made this announcement shortly after he blocked California from restricting pollution from automobile exhaust and sued four car manufacturers for voluntarily cooperating with the state’s clean air rules. 

Republicans claim states’ rights as part of their policies, but DDT is removing California’s right to set tailpipe pollution rules stricter than federal regulations. To do so, he will revoke a legal waiver granted to the state by the 1970 Clean Air Act, an act that affects 13 other states comprising one-third of the auto market. DDT wants the change now to defend his legal right to undo emissions regulations in the Supreme Court before the 2020 election. Twenty-three states have joined California in its 60^th lawsuit to stop DDT’s administration from blocking states’ authority to set higher emission standards than the U.S. for cars and trucks.

The Feds cut the interest rate another 0.25 percent to 1.75 percent—bad news for retirees and savers—and the stock market went down. Ten of the 17 Fed leaders look to keeping or raising the rates for the rest of 2019. Bad news for DDT as business executives and lawmakers blame him for the trade uncertainty. DDT inherited a stable economy, but his irrational actions required the NY Fed to borrow $128 billion in Treasuries and other securities at between five and 10 percent interest over a two-day period so that banks could maintain their reserve requirements, its first rescue since the 2008 recession. The feds may start printing new money before the end of the year to make up for the gap.

According to a Fox survey, 52 percent of the country feel exhausted with DDT’s administration, and he caused only 37 percent to feel energized about politics. The percentage of people nervous about the economy has increased from 43 percent to 48 percent in the past six months, and a plurality of 43 percent believe that DDT’s policies hurt the economy. More poll results here.

The Self-Appointed King Tries to Hide

Loose Lips Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) had to be reminded that he was spreading classified information when he used his signature Sharpie to proud signed the wall replacement—that he called the “new” wall—at the southern border and said:

“One thing we haven’t mentioned is technology. They’re wired so that we will know if somebody’s trying to break through….   You won’t be able to touch it. You can fry an egg on that wall.”

Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite, acting head of the Army Corps, couldn’t even stop him with his recommendation, “Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing that” before DDT described the steel wall’s beams as heat conductors.

Breaking just hours later was news about an intelligence community whistleblower who described a “promise” that DDT made a foreign leader that “raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information.” A high authority, presumably DDT, has ordered the information kept even from congressional members who have legal access to the report. The term “new” means that the concern came after one last summer when DDT released a detailed photo of a failed Iranian launch that was possibly classified, his earlier release of highly classified information to Russian guests about a highly sensitive and valuable matter with Israel, and the discussion of North Korea ballistic missile tests in front of Mar-a-Lago guests and staff. He also refuses to give up his unsecured cellphone. Conservatives point out that presidents can declassify any information, but DDT is the first person in the Oval Office who lacks any filter on his mouth after complaining throughout his campaign about Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 emails.

DDT’s response to the news about the whistleblower was “No problem!”—that people are always listening to his conversations with a foreign leader. He also stated that he was far too smart to “say something inappropriate” in that situation and he “would only do what is right.” The news isn’t “fake,” as he claimed: the whistleblower filed a complaint, the IG’s office examined the complaint, and he considered it credible and urgent enough that he contacted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence which illegally worked with the DOJ to circumvent legal process on congressional disclosure.

After the acting DNI and IG appeared before the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) reported that the complaint came from “more than one” event although the IG refused to give any other information about the complaint. The impression from the hearing is that the DOJ (aka AG Bill Barr) and DDT are trying to cover up the situation. The acting DNI will testify in open session on September 26, and both men will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week. From appearances, the DOJ (aka AG Bill Barr) and DDT are trying to cover up the situation.    

According to a source, the “promise” was made on a phone call. Reporters found conversations with three foreign leaders in the two months before the complaint filing:  Chinese President Xi Jinping (June 18), French President Emmanuel Macron (July 1), and Russian President Vladimir Putin (July 31). The call with Putin wasn’t recorded, but Russia announced it. Key events during that time of the event and coverup: Dan Coates, Director of National Intelligence, resigned (July 28); U.S. pulled out of INF treaty with Russia (August 2); John Huntsman, the Russian Ambassador, resigned (August 6); and Joseph Maguire named acting DNI (August 8). Maguire was the person who went to the DOJ and told to withhold the information.

Today the media also reported communication 18 days before the complaint was filed in August 12 between DDT and new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The readout of the call noted a focus on Ukraine’s ability to “complete investigations into corruption cases that have hampered Ukraine-US cooperation.” House Democrats were already investigating the call to check on the possibility that DDT and his attorney Rudy Giuliani were manipulating Ukraine to help DDT’s reelection campaign. Records related to efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian government into helping DDT’s former campaign chair Paul Manafort, in prison for illegal lobbying and financial fraud, and finding dirt on Democratic presidential candidate through his son’s activity in Ukraine while Hunter Biden was on the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. DDT had also blocked financial aid for Ukraine that Congress had appropriated.

Giuliani has already pressured Zelensky to extend an investigation into Hunter Biden although previous inquiries had discovered no wrongdoing and advised DDT about how to deal with Zelensky. Last week, DDT released the $250 million to Ukraine after a bipartisan push.

In a letter written this week, Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson disagreed with the basis of DDT’s suppression of the whistleblower’s complaint that the situation is out of the DNI’s jurisdiction because it doesn’t concern anyone in the intelligence community and that its release would violate DDT’s “privilege.” Atkinson wrote that the DNI and the DOJ are wrong, that the “disclosure not only falls within the DNI’s jurisdiction, but relates to one of the most significant and important of the DNI’s responsibilities to the American people.” He continued that denial of permission to disclose the “general subject matter” of the complaint to Congress affects “the execution of two of my most important duties and responsibilities as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community”—his responsibility toward the whistleblower and his duties to the congressional oversight committees.

While DDT declares himself above the law in not permitting congressional members to see a whistleblower complaint, his lawyers are making the same “above the law” claim in a lawsuit against New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance. New York had subpoenaed eight years of his state tax returns per a new state law, and lawyers declared that DDT cannot be criminally investigated while he is in office. With no legal backing, they argued that sitting presidents are immune from all criminal inquiries while in the White House. It’s their enormous responsibility and unique role that removes them from any legal action, especially from local prosecutors. Any “originalist” judge or justice who believes in following the words of the Constitution would laugh in the lawyers’ faces; those words aren’t in the Constitution.

The lawyers themselves probably are aware of their arguments’ ridiculousness, but they’re working hard to delay the release of DDT’s financial records. The request for DDT’s personal and corporate tax returns came from a search into the part that he and his family played in making hush payments to two women during his presidential campaign.

DDT has filed other lawsuits to keep his tax returns private since he promised to make public after his election. These include attempts by congressional Democrats, New York lawmakers, and California in a law requiring presidential primary candidates to release tax returns before being on the ballot. A judge ruled against California today, winning legal arguments were on narrower grounds.

During the Nixon and Clinton administrations, the DOJ barred federal prosecutors from charging a sitting president with a federal crime while in office, claiming that impeachment is the process for wrongdoing. The orders, however, do not deal with state prosecutors. During his time in the Oval Office, DDT has been investigated in federal criminal inquiries by special investigator Robert Mueller. As of May 13, 2019, federal, state, and congressional authorities had at least 29 investigations into DDT’s businesses, campaign, inauguration, and presidency. In May, Mueller said that the DOJ “explicitly permits” the investigation of presidents, but they cannot be charged with federal crimes. DDT’s lawyers claim that investigations against a sitting president are also unconstitutional and called the Manhattan DA “a county prosecutor.”

According to New York law, filing a false business record can be a felony if that the filing was made to commit or conceal another crime, such as tax violations or bank fraud. If Vance obtains DDT’s tax returns, they remain secret unless they are used as evidence in a criminal case.

Thus far, judges have not quashed any subpoenas for his tax returns, and today he obtained only a one-week delay.  The winners of the 2016 election are the lawyers. Being in court doesn’t seem “burdensome” for DDT because he spends a lot of time suing other people.

In another attempt to hide information from Congress, the White House refuses to reveal potentially disqualifying material in Darrell Issa’s FBI file for his director of U.S. Trade and Development Agency confirmation before the Senate. Issa has escaped convictions after his run-ins with the law. Only GOP and Democrat leaders of the Foreign Relations Committee were allowed to see the file, and Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) initially decided to schedule hearings without the agreement of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ). Over Menendez’ objections, the confirmation for Marshall Billingslea for the State Department’s human rights activities leader continued despite document gaps in his file while he worked on detainee torture policies for George W. Bush. Risch had asked the White House for Issa’s FBI file but receive no response.

DDT’s game is to succeed in his corruption through declaring himself king and hiding everything.

Kavanaugh on the Hot Seat Again

One year ago, the Senate defended and confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court despite a credible witness who described his sexual assault when they were teenagers. A year later, the New York Times reported another of Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults at Yale that the Senate and FBI attempted to conceal at the confirmation hearings. At the hearings, Kavanaugh denied the woman’s description of how he forced his penis into her face and tried to get her to touch it. He said, “If that had happened, that would have been the talk of campus in our freshman dorm.”

Investigation reveals that Kavanaugh’s assault was “the talk of the campus.” Long before he became a federal judge, at least seven people, including the victim’s mother and two classmates, heard about his behavior. Two FBI agents who interviewed the victim, found her “credible,” but the GOP-controlled Senate did not give them authorization to investigate.

The FBI also failed to investigate another report from a classmate, Max Stier, who “saw Mr. Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.” Stier told both senators and the FBI about Kavanaugh’s behavior during the vetting process, but no one followed up, in spite of 25 possible corroborating witnesses.

These credible witnesses were in addition to the account from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford published in the Washington Post:

“[Kavanaugh] pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.”

The NYT buried the story under “news analysis” that appeared to focus on the victim not fitting into Yale. The tweet from NYT Opinion claimed “having a penis thrust in your face at a drunken dorm party may seem like harmless fun.” Even the follow-up deletion and “apology” about the “poorly phrased” statement didn’t salvage the disgusting former tweet that made sexual assault seem like the new normal.

The article was abstracted comes The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, extensively researched by the authors Robin Pogrebin, Kavanaugh’s classmate at Yale, and Kate Kelly. Among much more information, the authors point out that all Kavanaugh’s achievements, including justice on the Supreme Court, resulted from the power given him by other men, starting with his parents paying for his education in a prestigious school. In the hearing, Kavanaugh surrounded himself by female family and friends to show how much they love him.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), one of the five top contenders for Democratic presidential nomination, said: “I sat through those hearings. Brett Kavanaugh lied to the US Senate and most importantly to the American people. He was put on the court through a sham process and his place on the court is an insult to the pursuit of truth and justice. He must be impeached.”

Another candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) agreed that the confirmation process was a “sham.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) will undoubtedly face more ire from DDT for saying:

“Nothing terrifies this corrupt president more than the idea of Congress upholding the rule of law. We must open impeachment inquiries against Trump and Kavanaugh immediately. It’s our constitutional duty.”

Last fall, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) wrote FBI Christopher Wray with a request for an “appropriate follow up” with one individual who had come to Coons with information about Kavanaugh. The letter, which identified Kavanaugh’s classmate at Yale University Max Stier, stated that “several individuals” contacted his office who had wanted to share information with federal authorities but said they had “difficulty reaching anyone who will collect their information.” DDT was in charge of the investigation’s scope and limited the number of witnesses to ten of all the people who had information about the Supreme Court justice nominee. A spokesman for Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said the senator’s staff knew nothing about Stier’s information. Friends of the woman who was the subject of Stier’s information said that she didn’t remember it happening.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) may be the senator most hurt by a vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. In any close vote, she tends to support the GOP even if she has promised not to do so. Her vote for Kavanaugh gave him the 50 votes that he needed, and she claimed that it was after a “very thorough review.” As a Senate insider, she knew a year ago what the public is now learning, that the investigation was a sham without reasonable investigative steps. Agents interviewed none of the 12 people whose names were given to the FBI by one of the women alleging that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her. The investigators, given only one week, also ignored an allegation of another drunken misbehavior. When Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) asked for openness, the other GOP senators provided cover for their nominee. Meanwhile, DDT made repeated calls for the DOJ to strike back at accusers.

Up for re-election in 2020, Collins faces angry constituents. She said she is opposed to DDT stealing money from the military for his wall but cast the deciding vote against an amendment that would stop it, taking $200 million from construction at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. She cast a vote for the tax cut benefiting the wealthy and big business with a lying excuse that it would help the poor and middle class, and she cast the deciding vote for a nominee who separated families. She also voted for three judges who refused to affirm the Supreme Court decision to desegregate public school students. Donations reflect her lack of popularity in her home state: the owners of Breitbart have donated more to her campaign in one quarter than all the money from Maine voters combined. Only 15 people have donated more than $200 to her, and the number of people donating less than that sum is small.

Over a month ago, the House Judiciary Committee requested records from the National Archives related to Brett Kavanagh while he worked for George W. Bush to understand his true position on Roe v. Wade. During his hearings for the Supreme Court and his appointment to a lower court, Kavanagh downplayed under oath his anti-abortion views, likely illegal representations and downright lies like the ones Collins believed. Republicans withheld 92 percent of these documents during the confirmation process. Already known are his lies about his knowledge regarding warrantless surveillance and torture during W’.s administration in 2006 and other information about Ken Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton, but these other records could show the extent of his falsehoods under oath. Committee Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said the records are relevant because “in the coming year, the Supreme Court will again address important matters regarding civil rights, criminal justice, and immigration [and] may also review certain high-profile cases related to reproductive rights, the separation of powers, and the limits of executive authority.”

As might be expected, DDT was furious about the reporting, calling for Kavanaugh to sue people for “liable,” his term for libel. If Kavanaugh follows DDT’s directions, the discovery about his lying under oath could be extremely damaging. Using his belief that the DOJ is his fixer, DDT asked the DOJ to “rescue” Kavanaugh just as he argued that the DOJ shouldn’t bring federal charges against members of Congress to protect the GOP campaigning and directions to the DOJ to fire employees disloyal to DDT or prosecute his enemies.

The DOJ followed DDT’s directions by suing Omarosa Manigault Newman for financial disclosure violations after Omarosa had missed a disclosure report while ignoring Kavanaugh’s violations. He has never identified the “friends” who paid off his mortgage and the $60,000-$200,000 credit card debt, much of it for baseball tickets, so that he could be a “credible” nominee for the Supreme Court. The money should be counted as a financial gift to be publicly reported, and the benefactors may have cases before the Supreme Court.

Last week, AG Bill Barr started his fixing by giving an award to Kavanaugh’s fixers. The Attorney General’s Award for Distinguished Service, the second highest honor from the DOJ, was awarded last year to the prosecutor who convicted Ahmed Abu Khattala, a ringleader of the Benghazi terrorist attack that killed four people from the U.S. This year Barr gave the award to the 100 DOJ lawyers who covered up for Kavanaugh to get him onto the Supreme Court allowing the perversion of law enforcement with politics. 

Those who have forgotten how evasive and unhinged Kavanaugh appeared at his confirmation hearing can refresh their memories by watching this clip from The Rachel Maddow Show. [Visual – Kavanaugh victim]

Kavanaugh consistently lied during confirmation hears for both federal judge and Supreme Court justice. These new reports add to this record of falsehoods.

Thanks to DDT, the DOJ, and GOP senators, the U.S. Supreme Court now has two men among its nine justices who are credibly accused of sexual assault.