Add another charge of obstruction of justice to the impeachment articles

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fired a broadside at House Democrats on Tuesday, saying State Department officials scheduled to appear this week before committees conducting the impeachment inquiry would not be made available until “we obtain further clarity on these matters.”

[...]

The refusal, in a letter to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), described the demand for depositions by five officials who played a role in U.S. relations with Ukraine as “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly, the distinguished professionals of the Department of State."

  WaPo

They're distinguised okay. By their undermining of the Constitution.

The committee, along with the House Intelligence and Oversight panels, had requested the five officials to appear for depositions this week and next, to begin Wednesday with Marie Yovanovitch, who was recalled by Pompeo as ambassador to Ukraine in May, prior to the end of her tour.

Other State Department officials scheduled for depositions include Kurt Volker, the administration’s special envoy to Ukraine, who resigned last week; Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent; U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland; and State Department Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl.


[...]

Saying that no subpoenas had been issued for the five depositions, he said “we are not aware of any other authority by which the committee could compel appearance at a depositions,” and that the scheduled depositions thus “could only be read as a request for a voluntary appearance of the five Department officials.”

Subpoena their asses. And then let them gain clarity in those cells in the House basement if they don't appear.

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

UPDATE:

Not so unbelievable

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

GOP slippage

No wonder His Lardship is panicking.

A lot of lies in one two-part tweet

1) It wasn't all second-hand information;
2) He was not wrong about the call;
3) Pelosi and Schiff aren't embarrassed;
4) It's against the law to unmask the whistleblower (who is negotiating the possibility of testifying to Congress, not the accused;
5) No one gave the whistleblower false information that we know of;
6) It's not just about a phone conversation;
7) Not a hoax.

And yet another lie in a subsequent tweet.



Someone is desperately worried.  And should be.

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

UPDATE:



I'm thinking about not bothering with the tweets and corrections thereof.  He's getting pretty tiresome.

UPDATE:

Pushing back against the Trump cabal

Excerpts:

The law required that the Complainant be “[a]n employee of an element of the intelligence community, an employee assigned or detailed to an element of the intelligence community, or an employee of a contractor to the intelligence community.” 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(A). The ICIG confirmed the Complainant was such an employee, detailee, or contractor.

The law also required that the Complainant provide a complaint or information with respect to an “urgent concern,” which is defined, in relevant part, as: “A serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of the law or Executive order, or deficiency relating to the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity within the responsibility and authority of the Director of National Intelligence involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.” Id. § 3033(k)(5)(G)(i). The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined that the Complainant alleged information with respect to such an alleged urgent concern.

At the time the Complainant filed the Disclosure of Urgent Concern form with the ICIG on August 12, 2019, the ICIG followed its routine practice and provided the Complainant information, including “Background Information on ICWPA Process,” which included the following language:

In order to find an urgent concern “credible,” the IC IG must be in possession of reliable, first-hand information. The IC IG cannot transmit information via the ICWPA based on an employee’s second-hand knowledge of wrongdoing. This includes information received from another person, such as when a fellow employee informs you that he/she witnessed some type of wrongdoing. [...] If you think wrongdoing took place, but can provide nothing more than secondhand or unsubstantiated assertions, IC IG will not be able to process the complaint or information for submission as an ICWPA.

 [...] 

The Disclosure of Urgent Concern form the Complainant submitted on August 12, 2019 is the same form the ICIG has had in place since May 24, 2018, which went into effect before Inspector General Atkinson entered on duty as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community on May 29, 2018, following his swearing in as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community on May 17, 2018. Although the form requests information about whether the Complainant possesses first-hand knowledge about the matter about which he or she is lodging the complaint, there is no such requirement set forth in the statute.  In fact, by law the Complainant – or any individual in the Intelligence Community who wants to report information with respect to an urgent concern to the congressional intelligence committees – need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern. The ICIG cannot add conditions to the filing of an urgent concern that do not exist in law.

 The Complainant on the form he or she submitted on August 12, 2019 in fact checked two relevant boxes: The first box stated that, “I have personal and/or direct knowledge of events or records involved”; and the second box stated that, “Other employees have told me about events or records involved.”

As part of his determination that the urgent concern appeared credible, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined that the Complainant had official and authorized access to the information and sources referenced in the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix, including direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct, and that the Complainant has subject matter expertise related to much of the material information provided in the Complainant’s Letter and Classified Appendix. In short, the ICIG did not find that the Complainant could “provide nothing more than second-hand or unsubstantiated assertions,” which would have made it much harder, and significantly less likely, for the Inspector General to determine in a 14-calendar day review period that the complaint “appeared credible,” as required by statute.  Therefore, although the Complainant’s Letter acknowledged that the Complainant was not a direct witness to the President’s July 25, 2019, telephone call with the Ukrainian President, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community determined that other information obtained during the ICIG’s preliminary review supported the Complainant’s allegations.

 [...] 

In summary, regarding the instant matter, the whistleblower submitted the appropriate Disclosure of Urgent Concern form that was in effect as of August 12, 2019, and had been used by the ICIG since May 24, 2018. The whistleblower stated on the form that he or she possessed both first-hand and other information. The ICIG reviewed the information provided as well as other information gathered and determined that the complaint was both urgent and that it appeared credible.  From the moment the ICIG received the whistleblower’s filing, the ICIG has worked to effectuate Congress’s intent, and the whistleblower’s intent, within the rule of law. The ICIG will continue in those efforts on behalf of all whistleblowers in the Intelligence Community.

Full statement

Impeach.

UPDATE:

Barr's Italian vacations

Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

  

On its face, that seems ourageous. Not that I'm a fan of US intelligence agencies, but this does not seem like a legal, much less ethical, job for the US Attorney General.

Barr’s personal involvement is likely to stoke further criticism from Democrats pursuing impeachment that he is helping the Trump administration use executive branch powers to augment investigations aimed primarily at the president’s adversaries.

At the very least.

But the high-level Justice Department focus on intelligence operatives’ conduct is likely to cheer Trump and other conservatives for whom “investigate the investigators” has become a rallying cry. Barr has voiced his own concerns, telling lawmakers in April that he believed “spying did occur” when it came to the U.S. investigation of the Trump campaign.

By whom? If it's the FBI, that's what they do. If by spying he means CIA or other spies that are (ostensibly) limited to foreign spying, that's a different matter. If he means foreign spies who may have then given information to the Clinton campaign, then it's going to be hard to justify Trump campaign use of foreign intelligence against Biden.  Does he mean foreign spies giving info to the FBI? To the CIA?

The direct involvement of the nation’s top law enforcement official shows the priority Barr places on the investigation being conducted by John Durham, the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, who has been assigned the sensitive task of reviewing U.S. intelligence work surrounding the 2016 election and its aftermath.

Is John Durham a Trump soldier? Probably rhetorical.

The attorney general’s active role also underscores the degree to which a nearly three-year-old election still consumes significant resources and attention inside the federal government.

Which is absolutely astounding considering the fact that TRUMP WON!

Current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials expressed frustration and alarm Monday that the head of the Justice Department was taking such a direct role in reexamining what they view as conspiracy theories and baseless allegations of misconduct.

Barr has already made overtures to British intelligence officials, and last week the attorney general traveled to Italy, where he and Durham met senior Italian government officials and Barr asked the Italians to assist Durham, according to one person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

He had to go personally? He couldn't send a letter? Or make a phone call? Nothing suspicious here.

It was not Barr’s first trip to Italy to meet intelligence officials, the person said.

Italian vacations on the taxpayers dime in assistance to the president's abuse of power. Well done, Bill.

Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said: “Mr. Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials.”

[...]

Trump still complains frequently that those involved in the investigation of his campaign should be charged with crimes, asserting that the FBI search for possible election-season collusion between Russia and Trump campaign officials was a witch hunt spurred by agents and bureaucrats opposed to Trump becoming president.

Stalinesque.

“Even if one questions, as a threshold matter, the propriety of conducting a re-investigation of the Justice Department’s own prior investigation of Russia’s interference, the appointment of John Durham — a seasoned, nonpartisan prosecutor — provided some reason to believe that it would be handled in a professional, nonpartisan manner,” [David Laufman, a former Justice Department official who was involved in the early stages of the Russia probe] said. “But if the attorney general is essentially running this investigation, that entire premise is out the window.”

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

UPDATE:

Why WOULDN'T he lie to Mueller?

Lawyers for the House of Representatives revealed on Monday that they have reason to believe that the grand-jury redactions in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report show that President Donald Trump lied about his knowledge of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks.

  Politico

I'm further disappointed in Robert Mueller.

The attorneys made the stunning suggestion in a court filing as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s bid for Mueller’s grand-jury materials, which have remained secret by law.

“Not only could those materials demonstrate the president’s motives for obstructing the special counsel’s investigation, they also could reveal that Trump was aware of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks,” the lawyers wrote in the filing, which was in response to the Justice Department’s opposition to the disclosure of the grand-jury information.

To back up their claim, the House’s legal team — led by House General Counsel Douglas Letter — cited a passage in Mueller’s report about former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s testimony that he “recalled” Trump asking to be kept “updated” about WikiLeaks’ disclosures of Democratic National Committee emails. There is a grand-jury redaction in that passage, the lawyers note.

[...]

“Those materials therefore have direct bearing on whether the president was untruthful, and further obstructed the special counsel’s investigation, when in providing written responses to the special counsel’s questions he denied being aware of any communications between his campaign and WikiLeaks,” they added.

Of course, Jay Sekulow is also pushing that conspiracy theory about whistleblower forms being changed just for the Ukraine complaint.

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

Speaking of Barr carrying Trump's water

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

You CAN indict an attorney general and a secretary of state

When a summary appeared last week of the July phone call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, the scope of involvement by the Trump administration seemed at first to be limited. Trump had mostly used his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to pursue his project, it seemed.

But that picture has quickly changed. The release of a whistleblower report Thursday suggested an active role by Barr, and said that a dozen US officials had listened to the Trump-Ukraine phone call, and that summaries of the call had been distributed more widely – raising the question of what proportion of Trump administration energies in recent months have been devoted to Trump’s pet projects.

[...]

Both William Barr, the attorney general, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, collectively participated in contacts between Trump and leaders of at least four foreign countries, according to multiple reports.

Those contacts were variously aimed at producing stories that could damage Joe Biden, Trump’s potential 2020 opponent, or at producing stories that could undermine the US intelligence community assessment from 2017 of Russian election tampering in the last election, the reports said.

[...]

Barr and Pompeo – whose vast portfolios nominally run from administering criminal justice in the United States to securing international alliances and combating threats abroad – have separately tried to distance themselves from the avalanching revelation that Trump’s conduct of the matters of state has apparently, in significant proportion, been devoted to the pursuit of the president’s personal bugbears and ambitions.

  The Guardian

When you live with pigs, you learn to grunt.

Barr was previously reported to be “surprised and angry” to find his name mentioned in a summary of a call between Trump and the Ukrainian president, while Pompeo, when asked what he knew about that phone call, replied that he had not seen a copy of the whistleblower document that flagged it: “I haven’t seen the complaint,” he told ABC News.

For Barr: sure, he's angry. He thought, for whatever reason(s), that his name would be kept out of it. And for Pompeo: that's not an answer to the question.

In fact, Pompeo reportedly took part in the call, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing a senior state department official. For his part, Barr flew to Italy and to London to ask for help in “investigating” the roots of the Russia investigation, the Washington Post reported.

He was in Italy when the complaint became public knowledge, which was just recently. So, they're still at their ventures on behalf of Trump's reelection campaign.

Trump also asked the Australian prime Scott Morrison for help, and Morrison agreed to assist, something first reported by the New York Times, and confirmed by the Australian government.

“It should trouble all of us that the attorney general is flying overseas and spending his time focused on discrediting the origins of the Mueller probe instead of combating crime here in the US,” tweeted the former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. “His personal involvement reinforces the view that he does Trump’s bidding.”

“Pretty clear that Barr is working feverishly [with] Trump to produce some kind of anti-Mueller report,” tweeted the MSNBC host Chris Hayes.

The justice department defied that characterization, issuing a statement Monday describing Barr’s work as business-as-usual to support the US attorney John Durham’s ongoing investigation of the FBI’s former investigation of Russian election tampering. The justice department opened the counter-investigation following Trump’s repeated claims that his campaign, which had serial secret contacts with Russian operatives, had been unfairly targeted for scrutiny.

[...]

But it was very unusual for the attorney general, much less the president, to be personally involved at such lengths in an internal investigation.

[...]

“In a real investigation, all that is needed is a request from a line prosecutor to the foreign country, made through the [justice department] Office of International Affairs, and pursuant to the terms of a mutual legal assistance treaty,” tweeted Harry Sandick, a former prosecutor in the southern district of New York.

[...]

Pompeo oversees the internal state department investigation – but has refused questions about it.

Trump finally got the attorney general he wanted.

One night in late October,
When I was far from sober,
Returning with my load with manly pride,
My poor feet began to stutter,
So I lay down in the gutter,
And a pig came near and lay down by my side;
Then we sang “It’s all fair weather when good fellows get together”,
Till a lady passing by was heard to say:
“You can tell a man who boozes,
By the company he chooses”,
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

~Anonymous

UPDATE:

To be clear, this is not assistance in investigating the Bidens, but in the ostensibly legitimate investigation into the investigators of the Mueller investigation.

UPDATE:

We've already covered that bullshit with Eric's dim-witted wife, two days ago.



I don't know where he was going with that opening quotation mark, but neither does he.  If he's quoting anyone, he's quoting himself again.

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