Did Republican Mega-Donor Gordon Sondland Hang Trump?

I don't know if Ambassador Gordon Sondland is going to turn out to be the John Dean of Trump's impeachment or not-- or if he's just the one who winds up putting Rudy Giuliani in prison-- but his testimony yesterday was pretty damning. Watch the quid pro quo segment above. Fox anchor Chris Wallace mentioned on Fox News-- so watched by Trump supporters living their bubble-- that Sondland "took out the bus and ran it over President Trump, Vice President Pence, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney. He implicates all of them." That must be disturbing for them.

Jamie Raskin (D-MD), one of the smartest and most capable members on the House Judiciary Committee, was watching Sondland in front of the House Intel Committee yesterday. "His testimony was explosive and definitive," he told us. "Sondland made it perfectly clear that the President organized and executed the Ukraine shakedown. Trump essentially bribed Zelensky with a presidential meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance in return for Zelensky’s announcement of a criminal investigation into Joe Biden and statements validating the Russian disinformation conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine-- and not Russia-- which intervened in our 2016 election. There is no rival theory about what happened. Everyone involved now agrees.  The fulminating Republicans would be wise to stop their campaign of character assassination against the witnesses-- most of them members of the Trump administration itself-- and instead go with their final last-ditch argument: that the Ukraine shakedown was a terrible injury and offense but is not impeachable like something really serious, such as lying about sex. That’s all they have left."

The Washington Post's team on the ground-- Seung Min Kim, Josh Dawsey and Kayla Epstein-- noted that Sondland's "bombshell testimony" left the Trumpists scrambling to contain the damage.

As he traveled on Air Force One to Texas, Trump called members of the House to argue that the testimony was good for him, according to an aide familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks. Trump also professed to reporters that he had little familiarity with Sondland, a major donor to his inauguration who testified that he had spoken with the president about 20 times.

...On Sondland, key Republican allies sought to undermine the ambassador’s credibility, while insisting that the basic facts had not changed as to whether Trump had committed an impeachable offense by pressuring Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

“I say that he’s changed his story several times and one needs to be suspicious of that. But having said that, take what he says, compare it to the facts,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Wednesday of Sondland. “I just know this: That [Ukraine] got the money, and Hunter Biden and Joe Biden weren’t investigated. That’s what I do know.”

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) said he heard Sondland’s “interpretation and his presumption, and to me, that kind of makes it a little bit confusing in and of itself.”

Central to the Republicans’ case was testimony from Sondland where he recounted a Sept. 9 conversation during which Trump, according to the ambassador, said: “I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo.” The White House and its allies argued those remarks were exculpatory, and Trump read them to reporters as he departed from the South Lawn of the White House for Texas.

Republicans also highlighted an exchange from later in the hearing when Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, pressed Sondland on whether anyone “on this planet” told him that Trump was tying any investigation to the military assistance to Ukraine, which was meant to help the Eastern European nation fend off Russian aggression.

Sondland responded that no one had, and that his perception of any move to withhold military aid in exchange for a political investigation was based primarily on his “own presumption.”

“Mike Turner’s ability to get Ambassador Sondland to say that he had not heard from anyone in the administration that would suggest that aid was tied to any investigations was really powerful and compelling,” said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), one of Trump’s most ardent defenders in the House. “And certainly if this were a jury trial of peers, there’s no way that the president would be convicted.”

...The White House sent 14 different sections of talking points to congressional Republicans, coming in at more than 3,300 words, an official said. Included was a list of 10 times Sondland said he believed or presumed information to be true but could not prove it.

“Sondland Could Not Be Clearer, the President Was Not Involved in a Quid Pro Quo,” one segment was headlined, even though Sondland testified in his opening remarks that there was a quid pro quo.

Other Trump allies sought to argue that, even if there was a quid pro quo as Sondland had testified, there were other factors to consider.

“I don’t think the quid pro quo is the issue. If you’re talking about an illegal quid pro quo, there are legal and illegal quid pro quos,” said Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-LA). “And an illegal quid pro would be based on a president’s intent.”

This morning The Post was back with a blow-by-blow description of how the day had gone: "The political megadonor-turned-ambassador was almost nonchalant as he implicated the president and his top advisers in a scheme to pressure Ukraine. He agreed amiably with Democrats that it was wrong for Trump to use his office to go after political opponents and shrugged off denials from Cabinet officials he named as they were read into the record by fuming Republican lawmakers. There was no somber rhetoric, no cancer on the presidency in his eyes-- but rather a businessman for a president who had a transactional issue to solve: Trump wanted certain things from Ukraine, and vice versa. 'Look,' Sondland said, 'we tried to fix the problem.' He recounted-- without a hint of remorse-- using his perch as U.S. ambassador to the European Union to pressure a foreign government to pursue investigations sought by his boss, the sitting U.S. president. Sondland also acknowledged reversing the testimony he’d given under oath to Congress a month earlier, chalking it up to a busy schedule. He’d simply forgotten that he told a top Ukrainian official in September that the country needed to announce the investigations to see U.S. security assistance flow again, Sondland said."

His opening statement surprised Democrats, who were not expecting him to embrace the quid pro quo phrase or to implicate other Cabinet members.

And Republicans appeared not to know what to make of a top political appointee-- one who had contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration-- flatly undercutting the president’s repeated defense that there was “no quid pro quo.”

...While he said it was “abundantly clear to everyone that there was a link” between the aid and the investigations, Sondland acknowledged that “President Trump never told me directly that the aid was conditions on the meetings.”

More often, the questioning added up for Democrats.

“Is this kind of 2 + 2 = 4 conclusion that you reached? Pretty much is the only logical conclusion to you that given all of these factors, that the aid was also a part of this quid pro quo?” asked Daniel S. Goldman, the attorney for the Democrats.

“Yep,” Sondland replied.

Trump, who watched the testimony from Air Force One en route to Texas, argued that beneath the pizazz and bluster, Sondland had not proven he did anything wrong, according to a senior administration official. While some aides wanted to hit Sondland harder, Trump thought he affirmed the president’s “no quid pro quo” argument and could be spun as a positive witness.

But Democrats saw Sondland confirming a quid pro quo that occurred at the direction of the president, implicating not only Trump but Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said. “It was no secret.”

...At one point earlier this fall, Trump had praised Sondland as “a great American.” On Wednesday, a lawmaker read Sondland the latest presidential comment: “This is not a man I know well.”

Sondland seemed unperturbed, saying with a chuckle, “Easy come, easy go.”

Mark Gamba, mayor of Milwaukie, Oregon and a candidate for Congress, said today that "Sondland's testimony is like pouring gasoline on the already burning dumpster fire that is the Trump Administration. This qualifies as sufficient evidence for impeachment.  Most folks in the Portland Metro region don't think much him, this may dramatically improve his standing here." Before Trump sold Sondland an ambassadorship for a million dollars, he has been a GOP-mega-donor, having made over a hundred contributions to Republicans, Republican organizations and Republican PACs, like these dozen:

• May 16, 2017- NRSC- $33,900
• May 31, 2016- NRSC- $33,400
• Sept. 11, 2015- RNC- $33,400
• June 28, 2013- RNC- $32,400
• Jan. 30, 2012- RNC- $30,800
• July 21, 2011- NRC- $30,800 (x 2)
• Jan. 17, 2008- NRC- 28,500
• Jan. 14, 2015- Jeb Bush SuperPAC- $25,000
• March 29, 2007- RNC- $25,000
• April 19, 2016- Kentucky GOP- $10,000
• June 24, 2016- Ohio GOP- $10,000
• Oct. 12, 2012- Oregon GOP- $6,700

On top of that, Sondland gave max contributions to one Republican candidate after another: John McCain (AZ), Joe Heck (NV), Mitch McConnell (KY), Rob Portman (OH), Thom Tillis (NC), Rand Paul (KY), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA). He also gave significant money to home-state Democratic Senator Ron Wyden.

It's worth noting that during Sondland's testimony, Ken Starr mused on Fox News about what Republican senators would be able to handle it and whether or not they might do a replay of the Nixon scenario, where a party of Republican senators went to the White House and told Nixon he was about to be impeached and that the Senate would convict and remove him and that he should resign, which he did. Starr: "Are senators going to now say in light of what we hear today, it’s going to be a long day even with the ambassador alone, in light of what we have heard, 'We need to make a trip down to the White House'? That historic example set during the Nixon presidency. From what I’ve been able to glean I don’t think that’s going to happen. But obviously what happens today could-- has the potential to be a game-changer... this obviously has been one of those bombshell days... There will be articles of impeachment. I think we’ve known that, it was just confirmed today. Substantively, what we heard from the chairman just now is: It’s over. We now know-- this is his position-- we now know that the president in fact committed the crime of bribery."

Rudy Giuliani-- "Super Ethical And Always Legal" by Nancy Ohanian

Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution makes the president subject to impeachment and removal for “"Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." As Ben Wittes of Lawfare explained right after Sondland's testimony, the exchange between Schiff and Sondland at the end of the morning session was seems to have unambiguously described "a corrupt demand for something personally valuable (investigations of political opponents) in return for being influenced in the performance of two official acts (granting a White House meeting and releasing hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance)."

What did Giuliani, to whom Trump had personally directed Sondland, say to him? “Mr. Giuliani emphasized that the President wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into corruption issues. Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election (including the DNC server) and Burisma as two topics of importance to the President.”

In other words, behind the exchange with Schiff is a specific claim that Trump personally directed Sondland to Giuliani, who then made substantive demands on Trump’s behalf for the investigations he wanted.

But it doesn’t end there. Sondland also confirms, while quibbling over details, that he spoke by phone with Trump on July 26 from a restaurant in Kiev and that the president, as another witness recounts, asked him whether Zelensky was going to deliver the investigations. “Actually,” Sondland testified, “I would have been more surprised if President Trump had not mentioned investigations, particularly given what we were hearing from Mr. Giuliani about the President’s concerns.”

And then there’s, of course, the text of the Trump-Zelensky call itself, in which Trump asked for Zelensky to initiate the very investigations described in these other incidents, shortly after Zelensky asked for his continued military assistance.

Was Trump here acting “corruptly”? Duh. Seeking investigations of political foes for personal political gain is a prototypically corrupt. But beyond that, Sondland was clear in his testimony that Trump wasn’t actually asking for the investigations themselves, but merely the announcement of them. In other words, he wanted not an investigation of corruption, but the political optics of Ukraine’s declaring that his political opponents were under investigation. What’s more, Sondland also confirmed that Trump seemed not to care a whit about Ukraine-- that he only cared about the investigations that could benefit him.

In short, a witness with first-hand knowledge of both U.S. interactions with the Ukrainians and the president’s own conduct today accused President Trump of soliciting a bribe from a foreign head of state. Whether or not this would qualify as a bribe under the criminal law, I would have no hesitation describing it as one if I were a member of Congress considering the impeachment of a president.

This mornings's press went badly for the Trumpist regime

Pramila Jayapal, who represents Seattle in Congress and is the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, serves on the House Judiciary Committee and after Sondland flew back to Brussels last night sent a statement to her constituents: "Gordon Sondland’s bombshell testimony today further corroborated the facts and evidence the House has already gathered through our impeachment inquiry. One by one, we have seen career civil servants, a decorated military officer, and now a Trump appointee-- who gave $1 million to Trump-- all saying the President directed efforts to pressure a foreign ally to dig up dirt on a political opponent. Sondland also corroborated under oath what President Trump and Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney have admitted to: There was a quid pro quo. He so clearly painted a picture of President Trump using American foreign policy as leverage to further his own personal and political interests. The President of the United States inviting a foreign ally to interfere in our elections-- using taxpayer dollars as hostage-- is a gross abuse of power and a betrayal of our Constitution, values and national security. My Republican colleagues shift their defense of President Trump on a daily basis, but the stark reality is that there is no defense of the President’s conduct."

And the GOP response? One that truly represents what the Republican Party stands for right now-- and is a fair representation of how it presents itself and why it is losing so many supporters-- came from corrupt Louisiana Trumpist, John Kennedy: "You know what these proceedings look to me like right now? They look like the Kavanaugh hearing without the vagina hats."

All those years pretending to be a moderate... flushed

Who Knows How History Will Really Judge Anything-- Other Than The Climate Change Deniers?

Pretty much everyone I know agrees that history will judge the Trump enablers in Congress harshly, very harshly. But I don't know Ken Starr. Yesterday on Fox News' American Newsroom, Starr asserted that history-- which already judges him harshly for his failed attempt to railroad Bill Clinton out of office-- will judge congressional Democrats harshly. "The text of the Constitution," he said, "just entrusts [impeachment] to the good judgment, whether it's being exercised or not, to the House of Representatives. But history will, I think, judge this not well. It should judge it not well. [You] didn't have a full debate on the floor of the House-- and that just lends itself to, 'then to let's go to court and have this litigated.' And of course, the chairman then says, 'you go to court, you're in contempt.'"

Starr said that "For [Schiff to] essentially declare guilt... is another procedural irregularity. He should try his best... to give the appearance of fairness and open-mindedness. He's already declared the president substantively guilty, as well as procedurally guilty."

Republicans have been whining-- for no sane reason-- that the deposition phase of the impeachment inquiry was secret. It was secret because the Democrats were following House rules proposed by John Boehner and passed by the Republican-dominated House. Well, now they'll have nothing to whine about, right? Pelosi announced the public phase of the hearings will be voted on this week. You think Trump and his enablers want that?

Yesterday, the National Review ran an op-ed by Matt Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute, explaining why Republican senators aren't going to vote for impeachment. He points out that they would need Republican voters to change their minds about Trump in order for even senators who loath him and want to vote to expel him to do so. He points to a column by Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post for backup. "Samuelson acknowledges that public opinion is sticky. People don’t like changing their minds. 'People define themselves by their beliefs. It’s who they are and want to be.' Their views of Trump are like hardened concrete. 'At least for his core supporters, Trump has seemed remarkably adept at controlling the narrative of his presidency.' Samuelson offers two examples of shifts in public opinion: same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization. The public changed its mind about both. But advocates of impeachment shouldn’t get their hopes up. The comparison between cultural issues and political figures is misguided [and] the timeline for cultural change is much longer than the political calendar. It took decades for the public to accept same-sex marriage and pot. The rising generation is responsible for much of the difference in attitude. House Democrats hope to vote on impeachment by the end of 2019. Absent some technological breakthrough, there is not enough time for a pro-conviction GOP youth movement to be born, come of age, and displace Senate Republicans."

The Democratic strategy, Samuelson writes, “is premised on the hope that further shocking revelations will alter the political climate. Trump’s image will be so shattered that Republican senators will feel free to join the revolt against him.” This assumes the aim of the Democratic strategy is Trump’s removal, and not simply weakening him ahead of reelection while putting at-risk Republican senators like Susan Collins and Cory Gardner in difficult positions.

The record is clear that not much Donald Trump does shocks conservative Republicans. They are prepared to tolerate a high degree of instability and dysfunction simply to prevent the Democratic left from gaining power. They would have to reject this bargain rapidly, wildly, stunningly, and decisively for the Senate to remove the president from office. As Lincoln said: Public sentiment is everything.

A former assistant to Starr, now a member of Congress, told me these assertions yesterday were "bullshit piled on top of other bullshit. For three out of the last five federal officials who were impeached, there was no authorizing vote. And the impeachment target never has the right of cross-examination during the investigation, only during the Senate trial, and only when the Senate feels like it. The Supreme Court has ruled that an official being impeached has, basically, NO due process rights; the Fifth Amendment doesn’t even apply. I think that history already is judging Ken Starr harshly, and he knows it."

Sanctimonious Turd Alert: Ken Starr

- by Noah

Were you under the misapprehension that you would never have to hear the name Ken Starr, ever again? Fear not! Sure, one could only hope that Ken Starr and his bad name would slither back under the rock from which he came, but the evil ones never really disappear. At the very least, they leave a trail. Thanks to a recent article in the New York Times, however, we are offered a glimpse at Starr’s pathetic attempt to reinvent himself as a normal, well-adjusted human.

Starr was once a federal judge in the Reagan administration and he was once the Solicitor General under the first President George Bush. After being named by Congress as an independent counsel in 1994 to investigate the suicide of Clinton White House deputy counsel Vince Foster when Republicans across the Republican political and media landscape were claiming Foster was somehow murdered by the Clintons, he rapidly expanded his investigation to peep into President Clinton’s sex life.

In a classic example of NY Times understatement and reserve, the Times article, slyly titled Kenneth Starr, Who Tried To Bury Bill Clinton, Now Only Praises Him, begins-

An unlikely voice recently bemoaned the decline of civility in presidential politics, warned that “deep anger” was fueling an “almost radical populism” and sang the praises of former President Bill Clinton-- particularly his “redemptive” years of philanthropic work since leaving the White House.

The voice was that of Kenneth W. Starr, the former Whitewater Independent counsel, whose Javert-like pursuit of Mr. Clinton in the 1990s helped bring a new intensity to partisan warfare and led to the impeachment of a president for only the second time in the nation’shistory.

Let that sink in. One of the major architects of the “decline of civility in presidential politics” is now bemoaning that decline of civility. This is like some psycho arsonist with mommy problems lighting several small fires in a packed movie theater and then bolting the doors from the outside before leaving to go find the fire department so he can tell them there’s a fire down at the movie theater.

As he should be, Ken Starr will always be known as the twisted holier-than-thou chronicler of President Bill Clinton’s sex life, a sex life that obsesses Republicans to this day in the same way that people who buy 20 lottery tickets a week fantasize about what it would be like to be rich beyond their wildest dreams. It’s a fixation.

In the 18th century, another attorney, a Scotsman named James Boswell (1740-1795), chronicled English writer Samuel Johnson in his The Life Of Samuel Johnson” (1709-1784) in what amounts to staggering detail. In fact, to this day, it is the most famous biography in English literature: giving the reader a fine glimpse at a segment of 18th century life. Boswell did the world and historians a service. Not so, Ken Starr.

Starr took the Boswell idea a whole lot further, taking it down a much narrower and darker road, compiling and chronicling what should be called The Sex Life Of Bill Clinton. Cheered on by his fellow crotch-clutching Republicans, he did his exhaustive research all in an effort to find a way to impeach President Clinton. His chronicle even went so far as to describe the size of and any “spots” on the presidential penis.

Starr also wrote of the most cherished garment in Republican World: Monica Lewinsky’s semen stained blue dress. To this day, Lewinsky’s dress is revered by Republicans and spoken of in hushed tones as if it is a modern day Shroud of Turin. It is a holy relic of their self-righteousness. It would not shock me if it now resides in some sort of private Republican museum, where it is viewable only to six figure donors to the party’s candidates and causes. When Bill O’Reilly starts selling merchandise on his show, replica Lewinsky dresses will be near the top of the list of items for sale. Herr Trump is, even now, bringing it all up in a sick effort to trash the very woman who was the victim of her husband’s affairs.

Back then, the salivating House and Senate Republicans flogged themselves into a fervor and demanded that the fruits of Starr’s investigations and inquisitions, The Starr Report, be released, not only to them so they could eagerly read it and quote from it, but published in book form for all to see. They really, genuinely thought that the great silent majority of the American population would be filled with such revulsion at the idea that a president got a blow job and then lied about it that they would demand he be sent packing immediately. They guessed wrong. You see; we assume that our presidents, at least the non-Republican ones, have sex. Some might even see it as one of the perks of the job.

Imagine if Ken Starr had been around in JFK’s day. The Kennedy White House might have been so preoccupied with defending itself that JFK couldn’t have properly dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis. None of us would be here today, but the Republicans of the day would have gotten their pound of flesh so it would have been worth it, to them.

Republicans are always obsessed with other people’s sex lives in a major OCD kind of way. They see perversion or impropriety in others when it would just be better if they just looked in the mirror. Newt Gingrich was having at least one affair while he was persecuting Clinton for his. Gingrich’s replacement as Speaker, Bob Livingston, had to resign in mere hours when if became known that he was having an even more “sordid” sex life than Gingrich and Clinton combined. After Livingston in the Republican pantheon of 1990s House Speakers came Dennis Hastert, an admitted serial child molester. But, none of this mattered to Peepshow Starr and his creepy cohorts.

Ken Starr and his sicko like-minded Republican brethren have done more damage to this country than any of our 10 mass-murderers you care to mention. Think that’s harsh or even tasteless? Yeah, well, I’m mindful of the hurt that our nation’s mass murderers have caused; the pain the victims’ families have suffered. But, let’s put this in a bigger context: How many of our citizens have died and/or suffered horrible disease or economic setback due to extreme hateful partisan politics that Ken Starr and the likes of Newt Gingrich (who’s currently busy inflating himself up like a puffer fish as the logical choice to be Trump’s VP), his partner in crime, engendered? Benedict Arnold was a blip on the screen of American history next to Ken Starr. In the late 1990s, Ken Starr was nothing short of a major capo in the American Taliban.

Now, all these years later, Ken Starr claims he has regrets. He refers to the damaging partisan ugliness that he helped mastermind merely as “unpleasantness.” At a recent panel discussion on the presidency, held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he expressed regret that so much of President Clinton’s legacy remained viewed through the lens of such “unpleasantness.” No, Kenboy, your proudest creation is way beyond “unpleasantness.” There are better words. Douchebaggery is just one that comes to mind. You really are a sanctimonious turd, Ken Starr; and that’s me being understated and reserved.

ADDENDUM:

As an example of Ken Starr’s lack of sense and lack of character, take a look at his handling of sex assault charges at Baylor University in Texas, where he is Chancellor and, until he was demoted a few days ago, was President of the school!

Baylor is a conservative, Baptist university, by most accounts, a good one, yet, when news of at least eight accusations of sexual assault spread across the campus, Starr, the man who so feverishly investigated President Clinton, said and did little of meaning to address them. He had no comment at all the night when hundreds of students, praying and carrying candles marched on his house back in February.

The sex assault allegations involved several Baylor football players. Campus sexual violence is an extremely big issue on today’s college campuses, but not, apparently, to Ken Starr. This isn’t even the first time there have been criminal problems at Baylor. The year 2003 (before Starr took the job) even saw a murder within the school’s basketball program. It’s peculiar that a man who pursued Bill Clinton’s sex life in such painstaking detail wasn’t more vigilant and sensitive to more serious issues in his own backyard.

Apparently, to Starr, Baylor campus rape is not so bad, but, consensual sex between two adults, however childish, in the White House? Now, that’s something to go after full throttle.

Starr’s approach to this very real crisis at Baylor was to hire a law firm known more for investigating and making policy recommendations for the future, not for doggedly investigating alleged perpetrators for indictment purposes. Under Starr’s guidance of the school, no Title IX representative was even named until 2014. One of the purposes of Title IX is to help protect the civil rights of female students.

Unfortunately and all too predictably, Starr took the ol’ ‘sweep it under the rug’ approach to the problems at Baylor: no “unpleasantness” here. Move along! At this point, there is nothing Ken Starr can say or do that would be credible. Attorneys have been disbarred for less important moral infractions.

Now, Baylor football coach Art Briles has been fired. Players, past and present are being arrested. Things have finally heated up at Baylor. Judging by their twitter accounts (see the article), however, Baylor’s players don’t see why their coach had to go.

So, as I said, of a few days ago, Starr is no longer the president of the university. He has been “removed from office” as it were. However, Starr remains, not as the school president but as one of the university’s law professors. What parent would want a man like Starr teaching law to and influencing their child?

Incredibly, Ken Starr is also still the University’s Chancellor. The school describes its Chancellor position as one “centered around development and religious liberty.” As Chancellor, he’ll, doubtlessly be heavily involved in fund raising activities for the school. Maybe he can offer would be big donors a look at that blue dress, through a keyhole, of course. He’ll even have time to answer his true calling and write for the National Enquirer.