Sorry, I missed this December 3 report

Trump defenders say couldn't have been extorting because the Ukrainians didn't even know about the aid being withheld. Although some US diplomats have testified that they did know, the Trump cabal has insisted they didn't. Actually, we have a Ukrainian official weighing in.

As deputy foreign minister, it was Olena Zerkal’s job to read incoming diplomatic cables from embassies around the world. One from Washington caught her eye back in July, she recalled: It said the Trump administration had frozen military aid for Ukraine.

“We had this information,” Ms. Zerkal said in an interview. “It was definitely mentioned there were some issues.”

[...]

The Ukrainian presidential administration was copied as a recipient of the cable from the embassy in Washington, she said, adding: “We received it simultaneously.”

[...]

The timing of when Ukraine knew of the hold on the military aid is a critical question in the impeachment hearings in Congress.

Mr. Trump and his allies have also made the timing issue part of his defense. How could Ukrainian officials feel the pressure of the aid freeze, they ask, if they did not know about it when the White House was pushing them to investigate Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., one of Mr. Trump’s biggest challengers in the 2020 American presidential election?

“They didn’t even know the money wasn’t paid,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter last month.

Ms. Zerkal’s account is the first public acknowledgment by a Ukrainian official that senior figures in Kyiv knew about the aid freeze during the Trump administration’s pressure campaign — and that the Zelensky administration sought to keep that fact from surfacing to avoid getting drawn into the American impeachment debate.

She said her own government blocked a trip she had planned to Washington to meet members of Congress in October, worried she would discuss matters related to impeachment and drag its president into an inquiry he has been eager to avoid.

[...]

Mr. Zelensky, whose government is still dependent on the Trump administration for aid and diplomatic backing, has said he did not learn of the aid freeze until before a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on Sept. 1, though he has been vague about exactly when.

with the aid as early as July 25, the day Mr. Trump spoke with the Ukrainian president by phone and asked him to investigate his rivals.

[...]

Ms. Zerkal, who said she resigned from her post last week to protest her government’s back channel diplomacy with both the Trump administration last summer and Russia this fall, provided an insider’s account of when senior officials in Kyiv learned of the freeze, and how they tried to keep the information from becoming public.

  WaPo

How the hell did I miss this story?

Her account is backed by Laura K. Cooper, the American deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, who said in Congressional testimony during the impeachment inquiry that Ukrainian diplomats knew about the aid freeze at least by July 25, when they began to question United States officials about it. Did anyone bring it up in the House Manager's presentation?

That was the same day Mr. Trump spoke by phone with Mr. Zelensky and asked the Ukrainian leader to do him the “favor” of investigating the activities of Mr. Biden and his son.

[...]

Later, as the impeachment inquiry ramped up in the United States, Mr. Zelensky’s administration tried to squelch information that could embarrass or undercut Mr. Trump, Ms. Zerkal said.

At a meeting in September, Ms. Zerkal said, a senior aide to Mr. Zelensky told her to “keep silent” and avoid news media inquires on any topic.

[...]

“His main message to me was to keep silent, to not comment without permission,” Ms. Zerkal said of the aide to Mr. Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, who asked that she keep a low profile on all matters, not just those related to the United States. “They are in a very tricky situation and they understand this.”

[...]

The Zelensky administration, Ms. Zerkal said, is most concerned about placating Mr. Trump, having decided that the impeachment inquiry will fail in the Senate and that Mr. Trump could be re-elected.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More on Yermak

Wondering about Yermak's decision to speak out only now, threatening the impeachment premise, in a previous post, I wondered if he met with Rudy last week.

He has been in contact with Rudy in the recent past, in Madrid last August.  And with Trump's former campaign communication director Bryan Lanza on November 13. (same article)

I also wondered if the Dems had any backup for Sondland's testimony that he told Yermak about the military aid and White House meeting being contingent upon Zelensky publicly announcing they were investigating the Bidens.  I didn't remember, but apparently Tim Morrison's testimony contained a second-hand bacup.

Sondland isn’t the only person who testified to this. So too did former White House aide Timothy Morrison, who said he saw Sondland did indeed pull Yermak aside and that Sondland told him about the content of the conversation in real time.

Here’s the relevant portion of Morrison’s testimony:

Q: During the Warsaw visit Ambassador Sondland, I guess, had a sidebar with Yermak?

MORRISON: Yes. Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Yermak.

Q: Did you witness that exchange?

MORRISON: I witnessed it, yes.

Q: Okay. And were you part of the exchange on did you just see it occur?

MORRISON: I saw it occur.

Q: Okay. And what did you learn about that exchange? I guess Ambassador Sondland told you what he told Yermak?

MORRISON: He came -- he essentially walked across a, you know, a -- I don’t know how to describe the room. He walked across the space and he briefed me on what he said he had said to Mn. Yermak.

Q: Okay. What did he tell you?

MORRISON: He told me that in his -- that what he communicated was that he believed the -- what could help them move the aid was if the prosecutor general would go to the mike and announce that he was opening the Burisma investigation.

So there are two witnesses, under oath and penalty of perjury, who are testifying to this, including Morrison who was a Republican witness and wasn’t anxious to accuse Trump of wrongdoing. And it’s their word against a witness who wasn’t under oath.

It’s also worth noting that Ukraine has plenty of motivation to cast doubt on this, and that some of Yermak’s comments strain credulity.

  WaPo

Of course that's true, but it's not proof, and the Trump cabal will have all the time between now and the Senate trial to press Yermak's new statements. And to have Yermak make more statements contradicting Sondland and Morrison's testimony.

It bear[s] emphasizing that Yermak was the one most intimately familiar with the horse-trading that was going on here. His texts with Trump aides regularly attached a White House meeting for Zelensky to Ukraine announcing the investigations. To read those texts and not believe there was at least an implied quid pro quo is to put blinders on.

The default Trump supporter/Republican position. And I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't take the support for impeachment down a notch, or at least have some independents wavering.

To hear Yermak tell it, he was involved in all of those quid-pro-quo-y discussions, but when the military aid was frozen, he didn’t think that might be related to the investigations which still hadn’t been announced. If he didn’t, he was really giving the benefit of the doubt to a bunch of people who were rather clearly leveraging him.

He knew. The question is why he's coming out with this now and whether he intends to keep saying it. And Zelensky. What will he be saying?

Then again, we have the claim that Lev Parnas was there for the Giuliani/Yermak meeting, and Parnas, through his attorney, claims he wants to testify. I'm going to guess he'll try to leverage his testimony for leniency or immunity in his criminal case.  Whether the Dems will bite, I don't know.

This article was published November 22:

When Rudy Giuliani met with a senior Ukrainian official in Madrid earlier this year and urged him to investigate the Bidens, Lev Parnas was at the table, according to Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian official.

Parnas’ presence at the meeting, which has not been previously reported, indicates that he may have significant visibility into Giuliani’s efforts to pressure Kyiv to investigate a company linked to one of President Donald Trump’s political rivals.

[...]

“Giuliani introduced him as his associate/colleague, and probably said his name, but I didn’t remember it, and remembered again when I saw Lev Parnas’ face on TV and thought that this face looks familiar,” Yermak said in a statement provided to The Daily Beast. “But we didn’t have a conversation, I spoke only to Giuliani.”

Joseph Bondy, Parnas’ New York-based criminal defense attorney, confirmed that his client attended the meeting.

“Mr. Parnas traveled to Madrid to meet Rudolph Giuliani, where he attended Rudolph’s meeting with Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak, and witnessed Rudolph pressuring Yermak on behalf of President Trump to compel Zelensky to announce that his administration was launching a corruption investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden and alleged Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election,” he said in a statement.

[...]

Giuliani told Yermak that the Ukrainian government needed to investigate Burisma and the allegations about 2016.

“I talked to him about the whole package,” Giuliani told The Washington Post in September.

  Daily Beast

While Parnas is not the ideal witness for the Dems' impeachment process, considering his criminal activity and shady background, they may end up needing to use him anyway.

At any rate, Giuliani himself said he told Yermak "about the whole package." That doesn't translate as pressure, but at least it's an admission they talked about the Bidens. (I can't keep track of it all, but reports are that Giuliani told the Ukrainians they needed to release a public statement.)  And there are the emails between Yermak and Giuliani about the wording of the statement Trump was asking for. There are a number of emails that put Yermak squarely in the negotiations, and I'm sure he's worried about how those look to the Ukrainians. Here's one of his emails to Volker:

[8/10/19, 4:56:15 PM] Andrey Yermak: Hi Kurt. Please let me know when you can talk. I think it’s possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit. Let discuss it

Among the documents released today is a set of text messages between American and Ukrainian officials, discussing a statement that Ukrainian officials understood was essential to getting the administration to agree to a White House meeting. On the evening of August 12, Yermak sent a draft statement to Kurt Volker, then a special envoy to Ukraine.

“Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians,” Yermak’s draft stated. “I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, which in turn will prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.”

[...]

The next afternoon, on a new chain adding Sondland, Volker sent Yermak an edited draft. “Following is text with insert at the end for the 2 key items. We will work on official request,” he said. The updated draft read:

Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable. We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 U.S. elections, which in turn will prevent a recurrence of this problem in the future.

  Defense One

I highlighted the addition Volker made to the statement. Although this statement was never made, because the whole scheme was busted when the whistleblower filed his complaint, this makes it hard to believe Yermak wasn't involved in quid pro quo.  But that's what he's now saying: "We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected to any one specific issue.”

Or, maybe that's not a lie: there were two issues.

A new wrench in the Dems' impeachment case: Andrei Yermak

Sondland's thrice-altered testimony is going to prove problematic in the impeachment trial.

[Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to the President of Ukraine,] in his first interview about those [impeachment] public hearings, Yermak has questioned the recollections of crucial witnesses.

[...]

The most crucial point at which Yermak’s recollection contradicts the testimony of the inquiry’s witnesses relates to a meeting in Warsaw on Sept. 1, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. The meeting was part of an ongoing effort by the Zelensky administration to improve ties with the Trump administration.

One of the American diplomats who attended that meeting, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union, testified before the inquiry last month that he pulled Yermak aside after the Warsaw meeting and delivered an important message: U.S. aid to Ukraine would probably not resume until Zelensky’s government announced two investigations that could implicate President Trump’s political rivals.

“I told Mr. Yermak that I believed that the resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine took some kind of action on the public statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Sondland testified.

[...]

Based on the testimony from Sondland and other witnesses, the final report from the House Intelligence Committee concluded last week that Sondland made this offer of a quid pro quo clear to Yermak that day in Warsaw. “Following this meeting, Ambassador Sondland pulled aside President Zelensky’s advisor, Mr. Yermak, to explain that the hold on security assistance was conditioned on the public announcement of the Burisma/Biden and the 2016 election interference investigations,” the report states.

Yermak disputes this. “Gordon and I were never alone together,” he said when TIME asked about the Warsaw meeting. “We bumped into each other in the hallway next to the escalator, as I was walking out.” He recalls that several members of the American and Ukrainian delegations were also nearby, as well as bodyguards and hotel staff, though he was not sure whether any of them heard his brief conversation with Sondland. “And I remember – everything is fine with my memory – we talked about how well the meeting went. That’s all we talked about,” Yermak says.

  Time

Was Yermak talking to Giuliani last week?

These comments cast doubt on an important moment in the impeachment inquiry’s reconstruction of events: specifically, the only known point at which an American official directly tells the Ukrainians about the link between U.S. aid and the announcement of specific investigations.

In a statement, Sondland’s lawyer said “Ambassador Sondland stands by his prior testimony and will not comment further.” Yermak said no one from the congressional committees that are overseeing the impeachment inquiry have contacted him to seek his testimony, nor have any other U.S. officials.

Rudy, of course, isn't a US official. But I take the point. Why didn't the Democrats try to contact him?   (And why did he wait until now to speak?) Sondland actually said he spoke "individually" with Yermak, which doesn't necessarily mean alone. So, hopefully, the Dems have other witnesses to the conversation.*

When TIME asked [Yermak] whether he had ever felt there was a connection between the U.S. military aid and the requests for investigations, Yermak was adamant: “We never had that feeling,” he says. “We had a clear understanding that the aid has been frozen. We honestly said, ‘Okay, that’s bad, what’s going on here.’ We were told that they would figure it out. And after a certain amount of time the aid was unfrozen. We did not have the feeling that this aid was connected to any one specific issue.”

That's not good for the Dems. If they lose the first article of impeachment - abuse of power - connected to the Ukraine aid, it will look very bad, even if they prove the second - obstruction of Congress.  And they've narrowed the articles to only the Ukraine affair.  They won't be able to then go back to the Mueller investigation, trying to get McGahn to falisfy records, obstruction of justice, emoluments violations or anything else.

For Yermak, the most unpleasant part of the public impeachment hearings so far has been the publication of his private communications with senior U.S. diplomats. These messages appear to show Yermak discussing the wording of a statement that President Zelensky could make to announce the investigations Trump wanted.

Yeah, that's bad for Yermak.  They have to be extremely careful that Ukrainians don't see them as making under-the-table deals, because they were elected on an anti-corruption promise.

“I am not going to comment on whether that was all we wrote to each other, whether it was incomplete or something else. But I remember very clearly what I said, what I did and whom I wrote to. I can tell you 100%, and I can answer for this, that everything I did was right. Everything I did was within the law, and I never crossed the line, never violated legal norms or moral ones.”

[...]

According to the report issued last week as part of the impeachment inquiry, the closest that Ukraine came to announcing the investigations Trump wanted was during an interview that President Zelensky had planned to give CNN in September.

“After hearing from President Trump, Ambassador Sondland promptly told the Ukrainian leader and Mr. Yermak that ‘if President Zelensky did not clear things up in public, we would be at a stalemate,’” the report states. “President Zelensky responded to the demand relayed by Ambassador Sondland, by agreeing to make an announcement of investigations on CNN.”

Yermak also disputed this series of events. “The interview with CNN did not happen because of a scheduling conflict, and that’s the only reason,” he tells TIME.

[...]

"We never entered into a conspiracy with anyone. We never participated in any conversations under the carpet. It was all public and transparent.”

[...]

One of the top priorities for the Ukrainian government’s foreign policy is to arrange a state visit to the U.S. and a meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office. On the morning of our interview, Yermak had met in Kyiv with two senior U.S. diplomats who testified before the inquiry last month, George Kent and Philip Reeker, in part to discuss the Ukrainian hope of visiting the White House soon. “My colleagues supported me,” Yermak said, referring to Kent and Reeker. He added that they did not discuss any specific dates for the visit.

[...]

“Once the President has meetings in the White House, in Congress and in business circles, it will create a final understanding that this is a new team, a new set of leaders in Ukraine, a set of leaders who have come to change the country, to fight corruption, who in the course of three months in parliament, and six months of our tenure, have achieved a whole lot,” Yermak says.

Which is confirmation of the importance of a meeting that is being withheld for reasons that appear to be Trump extorting the Ukrainian president, but the rest of Yermak's interview doesn't help the Dems.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

* I didn't recall, but apparently Tim Morrison testified that he saw Sondland pull Yermak aside, and then Sondland told Morrison about the encounter in real time.

UPDATE: More on Yermak.

UPDATE:  Aaaaand, they're off...

Well, well, well

Oh, really?

US diplomats told Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that a prestigious White House visit to meet Donald Trump was dependent on him making a public statement vowing to investigate Hunter Biden’s company, and a Ukrainian role in the 2016 elections, according to texts released on Thursday night.

The texts, released by three congressional committees holding impeachment hearings, show that the diplomats made clear that any improvement in Kyiv’s relations with Washington would be dependent on Zelenskiy’s cooperation in Trump’s quest to find damaging material about son of his leading political opponent, and on the Democrats in general.

[...]

The texts are exchanges from July to early September between three US diplomats - Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, Kurt Volker, the then special envoy on Ukraine, and Bill Taylor, the acting ambassador to Kyiv. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and a Zelenskiy aide, Andrey Yermak, also make brief appearances in the correspondence.

The conversations leave no doubt that the state department was deeply involved in the effort to use the office of the presidency to pressure a foreign government to investigate Trump’s political enemies. At one point the diplomats even draft a statement for Zelenskiy to read out.

[...]

For their part, the Ukrainians were quite aware about what was happening and were deeply uneasy about what they were being asked to do. They made their concerns clear to Bill Taylor, who had taken on the acting ambassador’s job in May.

“Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday was [Ukranian finance minister] Sasha Danyliuk’s point that President Zelensky is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic , reelection politics,” Taylor wrote to Sondland on 21 July.

Sondland, the Trump donor and ambassador to the EU, brushes aside the concerns, arguing they had to move forward “irrespective of the pretext.” “I am worried about the alternative,” he added [...] "

[...]

After the 25 July presidential call, Yermak confirmed it “went well” and Trump told Zelenskiy to pick a date for his White House visit. However, a final agreement was clearly delayed. By 9 August Sondland told Volker the White House was ready to confirm the visit “as soon as Yermak confirms”. He added: “I think potus [Trump] really wants the deliverable.”

Sondland suggests asking Yermak to forward a draft of what Zelenskiy is going to say. On the same day, Volker checked in with Giuliani and told him about the statement the Ukrainian president is going to make.

“Can we all get on the phone to make sure I advise Z correctly as to what he should be saying? Want to make sure we get this done right,” Volker said. Giuliani agreed.

  Guardian

Nothing wrong with that, eh?

The next day, it was clear the Ukrainians were nervous about trusting Trump and ask for the date of the White House visit to be announced before Zelenskiy made his statement.

A little quid pro quo of his own. No wodner Zelesky didn't like Trump releasing the text of that phone call.



Oh, really?

On the same day, Volker presented a US draft of what Zelenskiy should say to Sondland.

“Special attention should be paid to the problem of interference in the political processes of the United States, especially with the alleged involvement of some Ukrainian politicians. I want to declare that this is unacceptable,” the draft statement said. “We intend to initiate and complete a transparent and unbiased investigation of all available facts and episodes, including those involving Burisma and the 2016 US elections, which in turn will prevent the recurrence of this problem in the future.”

“Perfect. Let’s send to Andrey after our call,” Sondland replied.

Nothing wrong with scripting a foreign leader's role in an illegal operation.

However, the plan to exchange Zelenskiy’s statement for a White House visit was torpedoed when the Ukrainians read a report on the Politico news site, that Trump had blocked $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, as well as state department funding.

Ooops.

The news made the Ukrainians even more skittish. Taylor, increasingly uneasy himself, asked Sondland directly: “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations.”

In reply, Sondland told him to call to get a reply, instead of texting.

Nothing suspicious there.

Taylor wrote to both Sondland and Volker to express his shared misgivings with the Kyiv government, that Zelenskiy would make his statement this time in the form of an interview, but that Ukraine would still not receive the military aid.

“The nightmare is they give the interview and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love it. (and I quit.)” Taylor warned.

Should have quit before all this, dude.

The last published text is dated 9 September and is between a distressed Taylor and Sondland. “The message to the Ukrainians (and Russians) we send with the decision on security assistance is key. With the hold, we have already shaken their faith in us. Thus my nightmare scenario,” Taylor said, adding: “As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”

So much for hiding shit in a phone call.

Sondland’s reply was startling. Throughout the text dialogue he had taken the lead in arranging the original quid pro quo, Ukrainian help in investigating Biden’s company and the 2016 election, in return for a White House visit.

But on 9 September , as if he had become newly aware of the high stakes of leaving a digital trail of the conversation, Sondland adopted a suddenly formal tone and reverted to the official line. By that time, the White House had become aware that a complaint about the 25 July presidential phone call was in the pipeline, and that it was likely to cause a scandal.

“Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s of any kind,” he told Taylor.

Nice try. A little late.

The texts.

The  attempted clean-up:



...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:



They always say on the cop shows that the first one to fess up gets the lightest treatment.



Because there's nothing wrong with that, right?  It's the "in your face" form of governing favored by Trump.

The crime

Giuliani told Chris Cuomo that Trump didn't ask him to talk to the Ukrainian leader, Anton Zelensky.  That was, of course, technically true.

Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department.

Giuliani didn’t initiate it. A senior U.S. diplomat contacted him in July and asked for permission to connect Yermak with him.

Then, Giuliani met in early August with Yermak on neutral ground — in Spain — before reporting back to State everything that occurred at the meeting.

That debriefing occurred Aug. 11 by phone with two senior U.S. diplomats, one with responsibility for Ukraine and the other with responsibility for the European Union, according to electronic communications records I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

  John Solomon @ The Hill

By early August, Trump had talked to Zelensky, pressing him 8 times to talk with Giuliani.

When asked on Friday, Giuliani confirmed to me that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting and that he did, in fact, apprise U.S. officials every step of the way.

“I didn’t even know who he (Yermak) really was, but they vouched for him. They actually urged me to talk to him because they said he seemed like an honest broker,” Giuliani told me. “I reported back to them (the two State officials) what my conversations with Yermak were about. All of this was done at the request of the State Department.”

[...]

Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it?

I think we have our answer. But let's hear the Ukrainians' (or this reporter's) side of the story.

According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.

[...]

Eventually, Giuliani in November 2018 got wind of the Ukrainian allegations and started to investigate.

Why in Hell would Rudy Giuliani be the one to investigate? He doesn't have any position at all in the US government or Trump's administration. He's Trump's personal lawyer.

As President Trump’s highest-profile defense attorney, the former New York City mayor, often known simply as “Rudy,” believed the Ukrainian’s evidence could assist in his defense against the Russia collusion investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.

Sure. Whatever. That still doesn't answer why an actual US government agency wouldn't be tasked with investigating such Ukrainian claims. This is pure bullshit.

So Giuliani began to check things out in late 2018 and early 2019, but he never set foot in Ukraine. And when Ukrainian officials leaked word that he was considering visiting Ukraine to meet with senior officials to discuss the allegations — and it got politicized in America — Giuliani abruptly called off his trip. He stopped talking to the Ukrainian officials.

Isn't that interesting?

The belief was that if Zelensky’s top lawyer could talk to Trump’s top lawyer, everything could be patched up, officials explained to me.

Sure.

So the media stories of Giuliani’s alleged political opposition research in Ukraine, it turns out, are a bit different than first reported. It’s exactly the sort of nuanced, complex news development that my mentor nearly 30 years ago warned about.

And it’s too bad a shallow media effort has failed to capture the whole story and tell it to the American public in its entirety.

Sure.

It’s almost as though the lessons of the now debunked Russia-Trump collusion narrative never really sunk in for some reporters.

Sure.

The continuing folly was evidenced when much attention was given Friday to Hillary Clinton’s tweet suggesting Trump’s contact with Zelensky amounted to an effort to solicit a foreign power to interfere in the next election.

That tweet may be provocative but it’s unfair. The contacts were about resolving what happened in the last election — and the last administration.

Sure.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 9/22:



That's my point.  (In case you don't know, Neal Katyal is a "Supreme Court lawyer; law professor; extremist centrist. Former Acting Solicitor General of United Sts."

The only thing I'd say is this DOJ, with its head being a Trump butt boy, would approve.