Expect Trump To Be Busy Pardoning A Lot Of People In His Last Month In The White House

Josh Dawsey, Carol Leonnig and Tom Hamburger reported in the Washington Post about more trouble for Trump. They wrote that a confidential White House review of Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal-- clearly part of a cover-up. "The research by the White House Counsel’s Office," they wrote, "which was triggered by a congressional impeachment inquiry announced in September, includes early August email exchanges between acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after President Trump had already ordered a hold in mid-July on the nearly $400 million in security assistance."

Meanwhile, Schiff told Jake Tapper on State of the Union that the House Intel Committee "will press ahead with its impeachment report even though key witnesses have not testified, in the latest signal that Democrats are moving swiftly in their probe of President Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine... Schiff said the evidence against Trump is 'already overwhelming.'" Felicia Sonmez and Elise Viebeck reported that "Democrats are seeking to prove Trump leveraged military assistance and an Oval Office meeting in exchange for investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden and a debunked theory concerning purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Several key figures, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former national security adviser John Bolton and Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, have declined to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.

A federal judge is expected to rule Monday on whether former White House counsel Donald McGahn must testify under subpoena.

Some have argued that Democrats should litigate the matter in the courts to force more witnesses to testify. But Schiff said Sunday that time is of the essence and that Democrats will continue to investigate even after they have submitted their report to the House Judiciary Committee.

“We’re going to continue our investigation… The investigation isn’t going to end,” he said, adding that “we may have other depositions and hearings to do.”

He took particular aim at Bolton, arguing that the former national security adviser will have to explain why he chose to give his account of events “in a book” rather than show the “courage” that Fiona Hill, the former National Security Council Russia adviser, did in testifying before lawmakers last week.

Schiff declined to say how long it might take impeachment investigators to finish their report, saying only that “we’ll take the time that’s necessary.”

Trump, meanwhile, continued to take aim at Democrats, saying in a tweet on Sunday that they “are not getting important legislation done” because of the impeachment inquiry.

“USMCA, National Defense Authorization Act, Gun Safety, Prescription Drug Prices, & Infrastructure are dead in the water because of the Dems!” Trump said, referring to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement and other matters.

In another tweet, Trump claimed that public opinion has “turned very strongly against Impeachment, especially in swing states,” though national polls have shown that public sentiment about impeachment has remained stable.

According to an NPR-PBS-Marist poll, 49 percent of respondents supported removing Trump from office in mid-November. This is similar to the 48 percent who said the same in early October in another NPR-PBS-Marist poll.

Administration officials and other Republicans on Sunday continued to defend Trump and sought to keep the focus on Biden, who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway argued that there was no quid pro quo because Ukraine eventually received its military aid and Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in late September.

Conway also dismissed the notion that last week’s testimony strengthened Democrats’ hand, claiming that she sees swing-district Democrats “wringing their hands” over what to do.

“I think defense will go on offense if there is a Senate trial, and we’ll be able to call witnesses, we’ll be able to challenge their witnesses, produce other evidence,” Conway said on CBS News’s Face the Nation.

She added, “We simply can’t impeach and remove a democratically elected president from office because they didn’t beat him in 2016, they haven’t a clue how to beat him in 2020, [and] they don’t much like him.”

Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he was “pretty sure that every single one” of Conway’s assertions was “inaccurate,” noting that Ukraine received its military aid and Trump met with Zelensky in New York only after a whistleblower made the complaint that triggered the impeachment inquiry.

“I understand that the White House is all about making facts slippery,” Himes said. “When the jig was up, yes, then the aid was released, once they [Trump and his allies] were caught.”

Himes also challenged Conway’s claim that Democrats in Congress were losing faith in the allegations.

“I don’t think any Democrat in the Congress looked at what happened over the last two weeks and said, ‘Gosh, there’s nothing there,’ ” Himes said, adding: “Every single day, every single piece of testimony brought up new information.”

Calling Trump’s alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine a “red herring,” Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-LA) said it’s important for lawmakers to understand why Trump asked Zelensky for an investigation of the Bidens and what Hunter Biden did as a board member for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company.

Kennedy said it was unfair that Trump was unable to call witnesses or offer a direct rebuttal during the initial proceedings of the impeachment inquiry.

“I think Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s judicial philosophy from the beginning has been ‘guilty,’ ” Kennedy said on Fox News Sunday. But he said that if there is a Senate trial, he does not think the allegations will be “summarily dismissed.”

“I’m in favor of doing it in accordance with due process and [letting] everybody offer whatever they want to in terms of evidence,” Kennedy said, even if that “takes a long time.”

The Louisiana Republican said he was unsure whether Russia or Ukraine hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers during the 2016 election despite the intelligence community’s consensus that Russia was to blame. His comment drew a strong response from Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who said, “It was Russia, and as a country, we have to make sure that we absolutely acknowledge it was Russia [and] condemn Russia for it.”

“It actually plays into Russia’s hands if they [Republicans] have this equivalence with Ukraine where we’re saying, ‘Well, maybe we don’t know which one it was,’ ” Swalwell said.

In a separate interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, Schiff said there is no longer a need for testimony from the anonymous whistleblower-- though Schiff had previously pledged that his panel would hear from the individual.

“We don’t need the whistleblower’s secondhand evidence anymore,” he said. “It would only serve to endanger this person and to gratify the president’s desire for retribution, and that is not a good enough reason to bring in the whistleblower.”

Schiff also pushed back against the argument that he himself should be called to testify in the Senate trial, noting, “I’m not a fact witness.”

“All I can relate is what the witnesses said in deposition and in the open hearings,” he said, arguing that calling him to testify would show a lack of seriousness by Senate Republicans.

On CNN, Schiff also declined to say whether he believes the House Ethics Committee should investigate Rep. Devin Nunes (CA), the top Republican on the intelligence panel, over allegations that he met with an ex-Ukranian official to obtain information about Joe Biden and his son.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA) said Saturday that it was “quite likely” that Nunes would face a House inquiry. But Schiff said Sunday that he did not want to weigh in on the matter.

“I don’t want to comment on what the Ethics Committee should do, particularly vis-a-vis the ranking member of my committee,” Schiff said.

There seems to be an unending flow of impeachment-related witnesses and information the Democrats could still tap. Sunday night, for example, CNBC reported that Lev-- of Lev and Igor-- "wants to testify to Congress that aides to Rep. Devin Nunes called off a trip to Ukraine this year when they realized they would be required to notify Democratic committee chairman Adam Schiff. The purpose of the trip was to interview two Ukrainian prosecutors who claim to have evidence that could help President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, according to Parnas’ lawyer. Parnas also alleges that Nunes, a leading Trump ally, himself traveled to Vienna last year to interview a potential source of political dirt on Joe Biden.

And Schiff is already in possession of video and audio tapes and photographs from Lev that are supposedly damning to Giuliani, Nunes and possibly Trump himself. "Some of the material sought by congressional investigators is already in possession of federal investigators within the Southern District of New York and thus held up from being turned over, according to sources familiar with the matter."

This morning, Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Bernstein, reminded his readers that conservative Republicans stuck with President Richard Nixon in 1974… right up until they didn’t. In other words: it ain't over 'til it's over. "Trump’s seemingly unanimous support right now is similar to the backing that Nixon had even as his original cover-up collapsed in early 1973; as the Senate Watergate committee hearings dominated that summer; as the Saturday Night Massacre unfolded in October; and as the House judiciary committee debated and voted on specific articles of impeachment in 1974. And then: The smoking gun tape came out and it all collapsed immediately. Even Nixon’s strongest supporter on the judiciary committee, the Jim Jordan of the day, who had just vigorously defended the president during televised deliberations, flipped and said he’d vote to impeach on the House floor."

Hannity & Friends Raise The Flag by Nancy Ohanian

You don't go to prison for hackery, of which Nunes is clearly guilty, but Nunes has gone much further than that. This morning, Charlie Sykes wrote that "In the real world, Nunes’ behavior has become so openly outlandish it's drawing fire from former colleagues. Even among the antics of Jordan and Stefanik on the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes stands out. As the hearings wrapped up, former Republican congressman and current (long-shot) presidential candidate Joe Walsh tweeted: 'One takeaway for what it’s worth: @DevinNunes is a stupid, partisan hack.' Perhaps, but Walsh’s critique seems incomplete. It is true that Nunes will never be confused with Abraham Lincoln in either intellect or statesmanship. It also is worth remembering that he is the guy suing a Twitter account called “Devin Nunes' Cow,” for $250 million for (among other things) calling him a 'treasonous cowpoke,' and tweeting that: 'Devin’s boots are full of manure. He’s udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison.'"

Walsh is also right that Nunes is, like so many of his colleagues, a political hack. But he’s more than that. Devin Nunes has redefined hackery in the age of Trump.

Old-fashioned hackery generally consisted of loyalty and a willingness to take one for the party, because hacks were concerned with self-preservation. But the thing about this form of hackery is that there were limits-- a point beyond which even the most devoted hack would not go. (See: Watergate.)

So how to explain Nunes and his colleagues?

It is one thing to defend their party’s president against his partisan foes. This is hardly unprecedented. But the innovation of Trumpian hackery is the demand that hacks set their intellect, character and political future on fire.

Nunes is the very model of this new hackery. He is not merely Trump’s defender, he has become his doppelgänger and co-conspirator, willing to peddle discredited propaganda likely cooked up by Russian military intelligence if Trump demands it.

There are two possibilities here: Nunes knows that he is cynically using Trump-friendly talking points because they play well on Fox News, or he actually believes this fetid mass of falsehoods because, as Slate’s Will Saletan told me, “he’s been using his own product.” It’s not clear which is worse, but the question goes to the essence of the new hackery.

I have a strong feeling that a judge and jury will be deciding before this is all over.