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Saturday, January 18, 2020



JANUARY 16 AND 17, 2020

NEWS AND VIEWS


WARREN VS SANDERS -- SEVEN ARTICLES

THE FEUD CONTINUES. THESE ARE TWO VERY INTENSE COMPETITORS, AND THE STAKES ARE YUUUGE. AS THE REPORTER SAID, THOUGH, IT WAS INEVITABLE. THEY ARE TOO SIMILAR AND THEIR BASES ARE ALSO. SANDERS IS GOING FOR SEVERAL THINGS, AND REMAKING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IS ONE OF THEM. THEIR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP MAY BE A CASUALTY IN THAT IDEOLOGICAL AND TACTICAL BATTLE. I HOPE THAT DOESN’T HAVE TO HAPPEN. I HOPE THEY WILL RETAIN POSITIVITY TOWARD EACH OTHER WHILE VYING FOR THE SAME POSITION.

AS FOR THE NOTION THAT “A WOMAN” CAN’T BECOME PRESIDENT, THE TRENDS OF THE TIMES BELIE THAT; AND WHILE AT THIS POINT IN AMERICAN HISTORY IT COULD BE TRUE, I WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT FOR FAIRNESS IN ALL WAYS, INCLUDING MY RIGHT TO VOTE ON THE BASIS OF IDEAS RATHER THAN GENDER. I’M JUST NOT GROUP ORIENTED ENOUGH TO VOTE FOR A WOMAN BECAUSE SHE IS FEMALE, WHEN THERE IS A MAN WHOM I LIKE OR TRUST MORE DUE TO THEIR IDEAS. POLITICS IS NOT A GAME.

Hot mic catches tense exchange between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders after debate
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CBS This Morning
1.13M subscribers
A tense moment between Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders was caught on a hot mic after Tuesday’s Democratic debate. Warren was clearly not happy after Sanders denied the story that he told her in 2018 that a woman couldn't be elected president. Ed O’Keefe reports on the rift between the longtime allies.

Watch "CBS This Morning" HERE: http://bit.ly/1T88yAR
Category
News & Politics



FORMER GOVERNOR SHUMLIN IS QUOTED IN THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE AS SAYING THAT SANDERS “ULTIMATELY DID NOT FEEL LOYALTY TO DEMOCRATS”. I APPLAUD SENATOR SANDERS FOR REMAINING FREE TO SPEAK HIS OWN WISDOM, FEELINGS, AND PRIORITIES. TOO MUCH “LOYALTY” IS AS CORRUPTING AS TOO MUCH POWER. HE IS NOT NEARLY AS DEEPLY ENTRENCHED INTO “GROUP-THINK” AS ARE MOST MEMBERS OF ANY GROUP, INCLUDING THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY; THEREFORE, HE CAN BE DEPENDED UPON TO FIGHT FOR ALL OF THE ECONOMIC UNDERCLASSES LIKE A MOTHER LION WHEN SO MANY ARE AFRAID TO DO IT, OR ARE SIMPLY, BEING PRIVILEGED, LACKING IN COMPASSION. “THAT’S NOT MY PROBLEM,” THEY SAY. BERNIE DOESN’T TAKE THAT STANCE.

HE HAS OPEN EYES TO THE TRUE SITUATION IN OUR COUNTRY, HAVING GROWN UP IN IT, AND DOES NOT FEEL THAT BEING POOR OR WORKING CLASS SHOULD MEAN A SUBSTANDARD LIFE: THAT INCLUDES BEING BULLIED OR SHAMED, LACK OF ACCESS TO MEDICAL OR DENTAL CARE, THE INABILITY TO FINANCE A HIGHER EDUCATION, POOR HOUSING AND SANITATION, POOR NUTRITION, A LACK OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS IN THE HOME FROM BOOKS AND GOOD DICTIONARIES TO THE INTERNET, ALL OF WHICH ARE EXTREMELY IMPORTANT FOR GROWING CHILDREN.

IF WE ARE TO HAVE A DECENT AND GENUINELY PROSPEROUS NATION, WE MUST GROW OUR CITIZENS BETTER AND MORE HEALTHFULLY, RATHER THAN HIRING MORE, OR MORE AGGRESSIVE, POLICE OFFICERS. THERE ARE REASONS WHY MORE OF OUR PEOPLE ARE IN JAILS AND PRISONS THAN THOSE IN MOST OTHER DEVELOPED NATION AND THE PRIMARY PROBLEM IS SOCIOLOGICAL RATHER THAN GENETIC. UNTIL WE SOLVE THE HUMAN PROBLEMS, THOUGH, WE SHOULD BE WORKING ON FAIRNESS IN THE WHOLE COURT SYSTEM, WHICH JAILS MORE PEOPLE OF COLOR THAN WHITES, AND MORE WHO ARE POOR THAN THOSE OF SUFFICIENT INCOME TO PAY BAIL. THAT IS WHY BERNIE IS VOWING TO ELIMINATE THE CASH BAIL SYSTEM.

THE LACK OF BASIC CONDITIONS THAT BRING EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL COMFORT AND ADVANTAGE IS DEEPLY DISCOURAGING AND TRULY DAMAGING. FOR A GREAT MANY AMERICANS, THAT IS AND HAS BEEN AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. GROWING UP IN A WORKING CLASS TOWN MADE IT CLEAR TO ME. A HIGHER LIKELIHOOD OF HAVING POOR MENTAL HEALTH, INCLUDING DRUG ADDICTION, GOES ALONG WITH DEPRIVATION, WHICH CAN MAKE CHILDREN BECOME SUICIDAL OR EVEN DANGEROUS ADULTS. BERNIE FIGHTS FOR THE DOWNTRODDEN, WHATEVER THEIR SKIN COLOR, RELIGION, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, OR THOSE FROM ANY OTHER SHUNNED AND SHORT-CHANGED CLUSTER OF INDIVIDUALS. THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO SEE IN A POLITICIAN / STATESMAN, AND TO ME HE IS THE LATTER.

YES, GROUP-THINK IS NECESSARY TO FORM A FIGHTING FORCE FOR ANY CAUSE, BUT IT IS MORE LIKELY TO INTRODUCE STATUS RANKING AS A DOMINANT CHARACTERISTIC OF THE CULTURE, AS OPPOSED TO AN EGALITARIAN COOPERATION; AND IT PRODUCES OVER AND OVER AGAIN THE VERY WORST OF THE SOCIAL ABUSES THAT POP UP IN EVERY COUNTRY WHEN THE PEOPLE PERSISTENTLY FEEL A NEED TO PUNISH SOMEONE ELSE FOR THEIR OWN SADNESS AND LACK OF HOPE.   

2020 ELECTIONS
Bernie 'will play dirty': Ex-Vermont governor slams Sanders
Democrat Peter Shumlin, who has endorsed Joe Biden, weighed in on the disagreement between Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
By NATASHA KORECKI
01/16/2020 04:49 PM EST

PHOTOGRAPH -- Tensions between Elizabeth Warren, left, and Bernie Sanders, right, came to a head at Tuesday’s debate, when a hot mic caught Warren asking Sanders after the debate if he was calling her a liar on TV. | Patrick Semansky/AP Photo

A former Vermont governor and ex-chair of the Democratic Governors Association is taking aim at Bernie Sanders and his campaign, accusing the senator of trying to “Hillarize” Elizabeth Warren.

In an interview with POLITICO, Peter Shumlin — who has endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2020 and served as Vermont’s governor from 2011 to 2017, while Sanders represented the state in the Senate — warned that Sanders, an independent and a self-described democratic socialist, ultimately did not feel loyalty to Democrats.

“What I’ve seen in Bernie’s politics is he and his team feel they’re holier than the rest. In the end, they will play dirty because they think that they pass a purity test that Republicans and most Democrats don’t pass,” said Shumlin. “What you’re seeing now is, in the end, even if he considers you a friend, like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie will come first. That’s the pattern we’ve seen over the years in Vermont, and that’s what we are seeing now nationally.”

Sanders’ campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The salvo from Shumlin is the latest reaction to an ongoing spat between Sanders and Warren, two longtime friends who had taken part in a nonaggression pact before entering the 2020 presidential primary. But tensions have been building slowly between the two, coming to a head at Tuesday’s debate, when a hot mic caught Warren asking Sanders after the debate if he was calling her a liar on TV, after he denied saying in an earlier private conversation that a woman could not be elected president.

Shumlin, who also served two terms as DGA [Democratic Governors’ Association] chair, slammed Sanders’ recent campaign tactics, reported by POLITICO, that cast Warren as elite. Sanders’ campaign briefly distributed talking points for supporters to use door-to-door, saying that Warren supporters “are highly-educated, more affluent people who are going to show up and vote Democratic no matter what” and that “she's bringing no new bases into the Democratic Party.”

And the day after Warren clashed with Sanders following a Democratic debate in Des Moines, #Warrenisasnake was among the hashtags trending on Twitter.

Shumlin accused Sanders of trying to “Hillarize” Warren, saying the senator had cast Hillary Clinton, too, as an elitist, contributing to divisions in the Democratic electorate.

“We should be weakening Donald Trump, not each other,” Shumlin said. “I’m concerned that we’re seeing a replay of the kind of dynamics that didn’t allow Hillary to win.”

Shumlin said his critique of Sanders is not sour grapes, noting that Sanders endorsed him and campaigned for him in Vermont. Shumlin also had attempted to enact a single-payer health care system in the state, an effort that ultimately failed.

Still, Shumlin teed off on Sanders’ relationship with Vermont Democrats.

“Don’t forget, the first office he won was beating the Democratic mayor of Burlington. He never endorsed most Democrats until his Senate career,” Shumlin said. “The only way he could win the Senate seat and avoid a Democrat winning the nomination and splitting the vote in the general election has been to run for the Democratic nomination, win it and immediately turn it down.”

In 2016, Sanders drew criticism for initially not campaigning for the Democratic nominee in the general election race in Vermont. He did later cut an ad for the candidate.

During the 2018 midterms, Sanders stumped for Democratic candidates across nine battleground states.

FILED UNDER: ELIZABETH WARREN, ELIZABETH WARREN 2020, BERNIE SANDERS, BERNIE SANDERS 2020,



KRYSTAL BALL REALLY GETS IT, PER KILPATRICK, AND I AGREE. WHEN I FIRST STARTED PAYING ATTENTION TO BERNIE SANDERS WAS AROUND 2014 WHEN HE BEGAN A PUSH TO 2016. I WAS THEN AND AM TODAY ATTRACTED TO THE GENEROSITY AND FAIRNESS OF HIS IDEAS, THE CLEAR-SIGHTED VIEW OF OUR PROBLEMS, THE BREADTH OF HIS CONCERNS, AND THE STRENGTH OF HIS PERSONALITY. FOR BEING SOMETIMES PRICKLY, I FORGIVE HIM. IS HE THE BEST CANDIDATE TO BEAT DONALD TRUMP? THAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN, BUT I BELIEVE HE PROBABLY IS. AT ANY RATE, A GROUNDSWELL OF ENLIVENED VOTERS CAN’T BE A BAD THING.

Krystal Ball Is the Anti–Rachel Maddow Bernie Fans Have Been Waiting For
BY
CONNOR KILPATRICK
12.19.2019

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Connor Kilpatrick is the story editor at Jacobin.

Krystal Ball was once an MSNBC star. Now she’s one of the few mainstream media figures who gets why Bernie Sanders matters and why liberal professionals shouldn’t be allowed to dominate progressive politics.

Krystal Ball, cohost of TheHill.com's political talk show Rising with Krystal & Saagar.

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Connor Kilpatrick
Krystal Ball looks like she belongs on TV. She sounds like it, too — if you’re not paying attention.

“Good morning, everyone! Welcome to Rising. Saagar, what kind of show do we have today?” she asks her cohost.

“We have an amazing show for everyone today,” he replies.

On Rising with Krystal & Saagar, Ball’s political talk show at TheHill.com, it is always a good morning. And Ball and her conservative cohost, Saagar Enjeti, are always happy to bring us an amazing show. The studio is sleek and modern in that Star Trek–bridge sort of way with impeccably designed graphics easily up to CNN’s standards. The music is bright and upbeat, as if threatening to break into a Mighty Mighty Bosstones cover. Both Ball and Enjeti are always smartly dressed, gleaming smiles all around, with Ball’s colorful wardrobe crushing the competition.

“I guess I’d call it conventional but playful,” she tells me. “But these days, I must confess, it’s also a little tongue in cheek.”

If you were to watch it all in the manner that millions of Americans catch morning news broadcasts (in the background, while making coffee and toast), you could be forgiven for thinking you were tuning in to one of any dozen Good Morning America clones. Democracy Now! this is not.

But when you start listening to what they’re saying, that’s when Rising becomes a very surreal experience.

“3 NEOLIBERALS OUT — WHO’S NEXT?”

That’s how Ball’s “On My Radar” graphic read the morning after Kamala Harris dropped out. The “Radar” segment is a kind of aggressive left-populist take on Bill O’Reilly’s infamous Talking Points Memo. “Prepare for a holiday season of neoliberal tears,” she said, closing it out with a huge grin. Another recent monologue focused on whether or not Obama would step up to stop Sanders. “Many of the elite preservers of the status quo in the Democratic Party would rather see Trump re-elected than Bernie as president,” Ball said. “Remember, they’re all making money under Trump. That includes Obama. That includes the oligarchs. That includes the professional managerial class,” or PMC. (Her “On My Radar” bullet points that morning: “They Prefer Trump,” “Wake-Up Call”).

The effect is something like if Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos suddenly burst into trash-talking ‘neoliberals’ and chuckling about ‘the PMC.’
After the Democrats won back the Kentucky governor’s mansion in November, she turned the show over to a heavily accented Kentucky Teamster official. The bullet point read: “Ditch Ukraine. Embrace class.” The effect is something like if Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos suddenly burst into trash-talking “neoliberals” and chuckling about “the PMC.”

“I do think part of the power of it is that it looks mainstream,” Ball says as we sit in the cafĂ© at the Newseum* in Washington, DC. She’s just finished shooting Rising for the day, still in makeup and wardrobe. “There we are, sitting behind an anchor desk. I’m wearing my jewel-colored sheath, or whatever, with my professional makeup and hair done. And then we start talking, and it sounds way, way different. From the topics we choose, to the way that we think about them, to the way that we engage with each other, and with guests, to the type of debates we have.”

Krystal Ball with cohost Saagar Enjeti on the set of Rising with Krystal & Saagar.
Watching Rising is like you just woke up a decade into some mass political realignment, in which the Bloombergians, the Paul Ryans, the Clintonites, and even the Obamicans have all been swept into the dustbin of history, leaving only two poles standing: Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon.

And for a growing segment of the American public — disproportionately online — it’s exactly what they’ve been waiting for. In June, the show started off with 6,000 of them subscribing on YouTube. After a mere six months, subscribers now number over 172,000. (Ball has more than 220,000 followers on Twitter, quickly climbing.) And despite a feisty yet traditional polish that’s closer to Fox News than Vice, Ball is more and more shaping up to be their champion.

“I was completely non-political growing up,” Ball says as we stroll by a chunk of the Berlin Wall at the Newseum. An actual rifle tower from Checkpoint Charlie looms over us. “I couldn’t have even told you the difference between a Democrat and a Republican until probably close to college.”

She grew up in King George County, Virginia, where she still lives, commuting an hour and a half to work. (“It’s awesome to go to the grocery store and run into someone I grew up with who does not give a shit at all about the things that we’re fixated on every day.”)

After graduating from the University of Virginia with a degree in economics, she moved to East Liverpool, Ohio, once known as “the pottery capital of the world,” a time Ball calls “most influential for me, politically.” Steel mills in the surrounding Mahoning Valley kept the region steady with nearly 10,000 jobs — until they began to vanish in the 1980s.

“Today,” she tells me, “the thing that East Liverpool is most known for is this horrible photo that went viral of two adults who had OD’d in the front seat with a child strapped into the backseat.” A police officer, she points out, shared the photo on social media.

At twenty-eight, she ran for congress in Virginia as a Democrat at the height of the Tea Party movement in one of the most conservative districts in the state, going door-to-door with her two-year-old daughter in a stroller. And while that campaign was closer to Obamaism than the economic populism she would later embrace, it seems to have sparked the beginning of a leftward trajectory.

“The DCCC [The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] literally will take your phone and go through it. They call it rolodexing, and see if you have enough wealthy people in your phone to be able to raise $200,000 or $300,000 right out of the gates.” I ask her if they did that to her. “Yes, they did.”

A few months into the race in the fall of 2010, photos surfaced of Ball in a bawdy college Halloween costume. The photos were silly, innocuous, and thoroughly PG-13, but in the media climate still stuck in the conservative W years, they were more than enough to finish off her insurgent campaign.

“For a brief moment, I was one of the most googled people in the world,” as she put it on a recent episode of Rising.

But the attention and sympathy from liberals led to regular spots on MSNBC. And then as a host on The Cycle, part of an attempt by the network to cultivate Millennial talent. But Ball might’ve been more than they bargained for. It was there in 2014 that she delivered a powerful and prescient monologue urging Clinton not to run for president.

“We’re now at a moment of existential crisis as a country. We’re recovering slowly from the Great Recession, but as we pick our heads up at where we’re heading, we don’t like what we see.”

Krystal Ball (second from left) cohosting the MSNBC talk show The Cycle in 2013.
While the rest of the Democratic Party elites were still patting themselves on the back for reelecting Obama, Ball alone at MSNBC saw the fires on the horizon. She cited inequality statistics, the decline of workers’ rights, the rise of a ruling class, and Clinton’s complicity in all of it.

“Don’t run, Hillary,” she said. “Don’t run.”

Shortly after it aired, she was called into her boss’s office. Clinton World, it seems, was not at all pleased.

“After that, every time I was going to do another monologue on Hillary Clinton, I had to get it approved by the president of the network,” she tells me. “That’s not a normal thing.” Ball’s show was canceled in the summer of 2015.

“I would do these MSNBC pieces on inequality, or the plutonomy, or Piketty, or how I thought Hillary Clinton was going to lose, and it felt very lonely. Honestly, it has felt very lonely until basically this moment,” she tells me. “But it’s also kind of funny that it would be so radical to just actually talk about class politics, and actually not go out of your way to smear Bernie Sanders every day.”

Warren has leaned more and more into gender and identity and less into the core of her critique of power,” Ball says. “I mean, she actually said that Deval Patrick of Ameriquest and Bain Capital would be a ‘must have’ in her cabinet. What?!

After MSNBC, she started a PAC called the People’s House Project (PHP), dedicated to the goal of putting working-class candidates in Congress. PHP backed the Marine vet and severely crew-cut Rich Ojeda for West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District — who introduced himself to voters with an intense four-minute video of him pumping iron — as well as former ironworker Randy Bryce in Wisconsin’s 1st. Both men looked and sounded about as far from a 2010s Ivy League Democrat as one could get — at one of Ojeda’s earlier campaign BBQs, a childhood acquaintance beat him with brass knuckles, then attempted to run him over with a truck. Both men won their primaries, too — but lost in the general.

Ojeda, however, received the largest swing of Trump voters toward Democrats in any congressional district that year, likely due in part to his prominent role in supporting the West Virginia teachers’ strike.

“They have been a godsend,” Ojeda said of Ball’s support.

While mainstream Democrats saw little more than a redneck state senator who openly admitted to voting for Trump — less an error of judgment than an unforgivable sin for many — Ball saw something else entirely: a spark of working-class populism that might catch on in Trumpland. And the total opposite of the MSNBC green rooms she knew so well.

“Ojeda is a guy who, in his community, had a ton of credibility and trust, and was a true working-class guy, and just got that to his core. It was instinctive. I could not have told him, in southern West Virginia, what to say, or how to say it, or whatever. He just knew how to talk to people.”

That she was drawn to a candidacy like Ojeda’s after her time at MSNBC shows just how unlikely Ball’s career is. And how far she’s moved from her congressional run.

“If her views have accelerated,” her cohost, Enjeti, says, “it’s not a result of her departure. It’s a result of the times we live in.”

Because Krystal Ball is very good at what she does. It’s just surprising that what she does even exists.

Whereas MSNBC celebrates the Democratic Party’s takeover by affluent moderates, Rising seems to revel in attacking anyone or anything that smacks of “PMC.” Just as liberals tune in to Rachel Maddow to have a well-dressed wonk make them feel smart, Rising fans live to roast (and troll) that very demographic. With Harris out, Pete Buttiegieg is now a favorite punching bag of Ball’s, calling him the candidate of “generational change, which really just means the status quo, only from a younger dude.” (Her “On My Radar” bullet point for the candidate: “OK Boomer.”)

“I guess it comes from always having a foot in both worlds, so to speak,” she tells me. “I grew up in rural Virginia, where I actually live now to this day, in a place that Trump won by something like thirty points.” (In a recent podcast interview, she video-chatted in from her car, apologizing because there was little broadband access in her hometown.)

But look no further than her take on Elizabeth Warren, a candidate she once gave a thumbs-up to in her MSNBC days, but who Ball now eviscerates regularly on her show as “a perfect candidate for the type of liberal that the media is,” and — even more damning in the world of Rising — the winner of “the Rachel Maddow vote.” (Maddow, despite being a former colleague, has been the target of heavy criticism on Rising for spreading what Ball calls “feverish, Russian conspiracy theories.”)

Warren, for Ball, is someone “relentlessly cheerful and unflappable. Never cross. Always ready with a plan or a folksy quip. Or a tale from her upbringing on the ragged edge of the middle class. A sort of peppy, silver-sneakers cheerleader with the right answer always ready to go,” she said in November. “But every once in a while, Warren’s mask slips.”

For a former supporter, it’s quite a turn. “I practically begged her to run against Hillary in 2016,” Ball says. At the time, “Warren seemed to be an antidote.” She cites Warren’s failure to endorse Sanders in the last election plus her recent rhetorical shifts. “She’s leaned more and more into gender and identity and less into the core of her critique of power,” Ball says. “I mean, she actually said that Deval Patrick of Ameriquest and Bain Capital would be a ‘must have’ in her cabinet. What?!”

But sometimes, it sounds like Ball’s skepticism is rooted in an intimate familiarity with Warren’s appeal — and her own professional-class instincts: “Warren can’t get a B on the test, she has to get an A. As a natural pleaser, ‘A’ student, rule follower? I get it,” she said in a recent Rising monologue. “I really do.”

Ball doesn’t dispute it. “I’ve absorbed all the ‘good girl’ cultural programming that comes with being raised in an American middle-class household,” Ball tells me. “My natural mode is rule worshipper, pleaser. I still hate confrontation, and I hate making people uncomfortable.” She points out a tic she has on Rising — a nervous laugh to break the tension after she goes on the attack. “Ultimately, though, you’ve got to be willing to fight for the things and the people you say you are fighting for, whether it’s personally comfortable or not. I guess that is why I have so much scorn for the kind of civility politics of the PMC crowd. The lives of working people literally depend on those of us with a modicum of power being willing to be uncomfortable.”

Krystal Ball at the fourth Annual WIE Symposium at Center 548 on September 20, 2013 in New York City. Laura Cavanaugh / Getty
The morning we met in her Washington studio, shortly after Sanders’s fiery, post–heart attack debate, numerous media outlets including NBC, New York magazine, and the Washington Post had mysteriously misattributed Sanders’s searing attack on the health insurance industry to Elizabeth Warren.

“Maybe it’s an honest mistake, but then you look at all the outlets that repeated his honest mistake, you look at the overall tone of his coverage and the direction that it always goes in,” she says, rolling her eyes. “I think a lot of it with Bernie Sanders is the fact that his support is disproportionately working class. These aren’t the people that newsrooms are filled with. They just genuinely don’t understand his appeal or think that he has an appeal, really, to speak of.”

Ball’s familiarity with that green-room world though is what makes watching Rising so much fun. She’s the anti-Maddow. It’s as if she’s defected from the enemy, ready to spill all their secrets.

In a segment on CNN’s selling of Buttigieg as the new Obama, Ball gives us an insider’s view as to how exactly cable news picks favorites: “Basically, the reporter and the producer decide whatever angle they’re looking for. Then they find someone willing to parrot that angle that they’ve devised back to them. Just watch and learn.” (“On My Radar” headline this time: “LOL CNN” with a “Condolences to the Media” bullet point.)

“I’m going to be on CNN this weekend, actually,” she says, sighing. “We’re going to talk about impeachment and Ukraine.”

But “defector” is maybe the wrong way to describe Ball. That would imply she’s split from the mainstream for a subculture, and she seems to have her eye on something much bigger than that. Instead, she’s shaping up to be the Normie Queen of the new, Sanders-friendly media sphere.

As with Sanders himself, Ball is an unlikely envoy to the very online Millennial and Zoomer socialist set. And she doesn’t share many of the lefty shibboleths of other fellow travelers.

She unashamedly believes “you start with class.” She certainly doesn’t shy away from pointing out when the politics of identity are deployed for anti-socialist purposes. Perhaps even more controversially for certain online quarters, she believes “cancel culture”* is, in fact, real — and a weapon capable of being used by the powerful to smear the Left. And she doesn’t believe in writing off workers who voted for Trump or Brexit either. (“No one is going to vote for a party who looks down their nose at them.”)

What you see with Ball’s polished style is a kind of shaking off of subcultural paraphernalia, accumulated detritus from a half century of political defeat.

“We like to see professionalism, we like to see preparation, we like to see our views espoused by someone articulate and well dressed,” Enjeti says of Ball’s popularity. “It’s a very validating experience. The goal of being antiestablishment is, after all, to ultimately take power.”

She’s shaping up to be the Normie Queen of the new, Sanders-friendly media sphere.
It’s a perspective that better reflects the actual divisions in America more than anything you’d hear from Ball’s old colleagues on MSNBC. And with Sanders’s surging poll numbers, it seems more and more of the country is in agreement.

“I think the most important divide in the American public is between people who are fundamentally treated as human beings in their work, the ‘creative class’ that Richard Florida named, and people who are basically disposable commodities. You get sick, you don’t show up for work one day, sorry, get out,” she says. “The idea that you’re there just as a cog to deliver sushi to the creative class at 2:00 a.m., or whatever their whims desire.”

Before we leave the Newseum, we head up to the roof, with a gorgeous view of Washington at dusk. It all looks so well-manicured and sturdy, the opposite of the disarray and distress that much of the country finds itself in today.

From up there, the Sanders incursion, even if he were to win the White House, seems even more daunting: How in the hell is a single administration with a historically weak working class going to challenge — let alone uproot — all of this?

“Some of the wealthiest counties in the nation, the wealthiest zip codes, are right here,” Ball says, not exactly sharing my pessimism. “That’s one of the fun things about our show — doing it from the city. It feels extra subversive.”

But when I push a little harder, asking her how a Berniecrat insurrection — even with a less hostile media — can possibly seize control of this town, she sees that same “bourgeois stability” as another reason not to hold back. And to remember just what the stakes are — professional-class norms be damned.

She brings up John Weigel, the Navy Air Force veteran who stood up at one of Sanders’s events and announced that, due to his medical debt racked up by Huntington’s disease, he was going to kill himself. It was a moment that anyone who saw could never forget — a reminder of what’s at stake in America but rarely heard on cable news.

“I think about that man, and I’m like, okay, you’re willing to do anything to make it better for him? Then you need to accept risking the wrath of someone on Twitter,” she says. “There are a lot of places in the world where, if you’re a dissident, you get knocked off. You’re actually risking your life. Here, you’re worried about, oh, my mentions on Twitter are going to be ugly for a day? Give me a break.”


“CANCEL CULTURE”*

Call-out culture
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Call-out culture (also known as outrage culture) is a form of public shaming that aims to hold individuals and groups accountable for their actions by calling attention to behavior that is perceived to be problematic, usually on social media.[1][2][3] A variant of the term, cancel culture, describes a form of boycott in which someone (usually a celebrity) who has shared a questionable or unpopular opinion, or has had behavior in their past that is perceived to be either offensive or problematic called out on social media, is "canceled"; they are completely boycotted by many of their followers or supporters, often leading to massive declines in celebrities' (almost always social media personalities) careers and fanbase.[4][5]

Description

Michael Bérubé, a professor of literature at Pennsylvania State University, states, "in social media, what is known as 'callout culture' and 'ally theater' (in which people demonstrate their bona fides as allies of a vulnerable population) often produces a swell of online outrage that demands that a post or a tweet be taken down or deleted".[6]

Lisa Nakamura, a professor at the University of Michigan, described cancel culture as a "cultural boycott", adding that "when you deprive someone of your attention, you're depriving them of a livelihood."[7]


THE NEWSEUM*

ABOUT THE NEWSEUM

For 22 years, the Freedom Forum educated people about the five freedoms of the First Amendment and the importance of a free and fair press through an innovative interactive museum called the Newseum.

The brainchild of Freedom Forum and USA TODAY founder Al Neuharth, the first Newseum was located in Rosslyn, Va., just outside Washington, D.C., from 1997-2002. It featured eight sections of the Berlin Wall, a gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs and the News History Gallery, displaying 500 years of print news history. Interactive exhibits invited visitors to weigh in on ethical debates journalists face, and play TV anchor in the Be a TV Reporter experience.

At the Newseum, visitors experienced the story of news, the role of a free press in major events in history, and how the core freedoms of the First Amendment — religion, speech, press, assembly and petition — apply to their lives.

After five successful years in Rosslyn, the Freedom Forum purchased a prominent location on historic Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., enlisting award-winning architect James Stewart Polshek to design a building, with exhibits by Ralph Appelbaum.

Located halfway between the White House and the U.S. Capitol, the building made a powerful statement, the 45 words of the First Amendment etched into a 75-foot tall tablet of Tennessee marble facing Pennsylvania Avenue. With 15 galleries and 15 theaters, the Newseum opened April 11, 2008, to great fanfare. It had two state-of-the-art television studios and was a sought-after spot for conferences, weddings, movie premieres and other special events.

Visitors, who embraced the Newseum experience, enjoyed exhibits including the 9/11 Gallery Sponsored by Comcast, which displayed the broadcast antennae from the top of the World Trade Center; the Berlin Wall Gallery, whose eight concrete sections are one of the largest displays of the original wall outside Germany; and the Pulitzer Prize Photographs Gallery, which features photographs from every Pulitzer Prize–winning entry dating back to 1942.

More than 60 changing exhibits explored such topics as the FBI and the press; news coverage of Hurricane Katrina; the hunt for the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln; early photographs of  presidential candidate John F. Kennedy and press coverage of his 1963 assassination; major moments in the civil rights movement from 1963 to 1968; Stonewall and the rise of the LGBTQ rights movement; as well as a several exhibits featuring the winners of the prestigious worldwide Pictures of the Year competition. Exhibits focusing on popular culture and the news media included “Anchorman: The Exhibit,” based on the comedy film about women entering TV newsrooms in the 1970s, and “Seriously Funny: From the Desk of ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.’”

In 2019, Time magazine named the Newseum one of the “world’s greatest places.”

But the financial obligations associated with operating the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue were burdensome, and in January 2019 the Freedom Forum entered into an agreement to sell the building to Johns Hopkins University. After 11 years and 11 million visitors, the Newseum closed its doors on Pennsylvania Avenue on Dec. 31, 2019. The Freedom Forum hopes to find a suitable location to serve as the Newseum’s next home but that process will take time.

The Freedom Forum will move to temporary offices in downtown Washington, D.C. in 2020, where the organization will continue to carry out its mission to foster First Amendment freedoms for all.

TODAY, TRAVELING EXHIBITS AND A WORLD-CLASS COLLECTION
Today, the Newseum hosts traveling exhibits that have been displayed in galleries around the globe.

The Newseum collection of more than 40,000 print news items, 200,000-plus photographic prints and negatives and more than 22,000 objects related to news gathering and First Amendment freedoms is available for loan to institutions whose criteria meet lending guidelines. The bulk of the photographic collection is photographs by freelance photojournalist Ted Polumbaum, who covered anti-Vietnam War and civil rights protests, the political career of Sen. Ted Kennedy, chef Julia Child and sporting events including boxer Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston and the 1967 Boston Red Sox.



RISING TO THE ISSUE OF THE MOMENT

Hill.TV's Krystal Ball rips Warren over feud with Sanders
RISING   KRYSTAL BALL   1/16/2020

VIDEO -- [LW NOTE: In this Rising report, 1/16/2020, Ms. Ball correctly criticizes CNN for the manner of questioning both Sanders and Warren at the debate – and very intelligently; but you will only see it if you can tolerate the ridiculous way The Hill has inserted a 13 second ad literally every 10 seconds, chopping the news video into very small sound bites. Is this another form of censorship, or did the ad sponsor ask for a large amount of air time with a tiny ad? Whatever happened, it’s irritating.]

Hill.TV host Krystal Ball is doubling down on her criticism of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) amid the ongoing feud between the Massachusetts senator fellow progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Ball, who is a vocal supporter of the Vermont independent, on Thursday pointed to Sanders’s long history of being supportive of women’s rights and hit Warren over her past affiliation with the Republican Party.

“Please explain to me how it serves the cause of women to kneecap a senator who has consistently stood up for the economic and human rights of women since the time that Elizabeth Warren was a Republican,” Ball said.

“Help me understand white [sic?] feminists, why whether or not Bernie Sanders was sufficiently woke and PC in that conversation should matter more to women than whether they have health care, are bankrupt from student debt, have access to free childcare,” she continued.

“Explain it slow so I really get it because this makes no sense,” she added.

The two progressive firebrands have yet to make peace following their clash during the Democratic presidential primary debate this week.

Sanders told reporters Thursday that they had not spoken since the dust-up.

During Tuesday’s debate, the pair sparred over a CNN report that claimed that Sanders had told Warren in a 2018 private meeting that a woman couldn’t win the White House. While Warren stood by her corroboration of the report, Sanders vehemently denied making such a comment.

Warren was seen approaching Sanders after the debate and appeared furious at the Vermont senator for denying her claim.

“I think you called me a liar on national TV,” Warren said, according to audio released later by CNN.



ENJETI MORE OR LESS QUESTIONS SANDERS’ MASCULINITY FOR FAILING TO MAKE A BIG FIGHT WITH HER ON NATIONAL TV. SOME SAY HE’S TOO PASSIVE, OTHERS SAY HE’S TOO AGGRESSIVE. I THINK HE’S PRETTY WELL MODULATED, PERSONALLY. WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS HOW THE HEY CNN GOT THEIR HANDS ON THAT STORY IN THE FIRST PLACE. COULD IT HAVE COME FROM ANYWHERE EXCEPT THE WARREN CAMP? WHO ELSE WAS IN THAT MEETING, IF ANYONE?

Hill.TV's Saagar Enjeti rips Sanders over handling of feud with Warren
1/17/2020

Video – RISING, Ro Khanna interviewed.   1:24 duration.

Hill.TV host Saagar Enjeti criticized Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday for his handling of this week's CNN report that the Vermont independent said a woman couldn’t win a presidential election during a private meeting with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) in 2018.

“How do you sit there as a man and somebody calls you a sexist and then a liar … and you’re a front-runner in the Democratic race and you just sit there and take it?” Enjeti asked.

“I mean is that how you’re going to run?” he added.

Tensions between Warren and Sanders reached a new high during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate when the candidates were asked about the CNN report.

Sanders flatly denied ever making such a statement, saying “anyone who knows me know that it is incomprehensible that I do not think a woman could be president of the United States.”

Warren, who confirmed the report, doubled down on her position following Sanders’s denial and confronted him about the issue following the debate.

"I think you called me a liar on national TV," Warren said to Sanders, according to audio released a day after the exchange.

The senators have yet to make amends, even as a number of progressive groups call for unity.



RO KHANNA SPEAKS FOR INTELLIGENT BEHAVIOR

Sanders campaign co-chair calls for progressive unity amid senators' fallout
RISING, KRYSTAL BALL
1/17/2020

A co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) 2020 presidential campaign came to Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) defense amid a public fallout between the two progressive firebrands and joined calls for unity.

“There are ups and downs in campaigns, but I have tremendous admiration and respect for Senator Warren,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Hill.TV, noting Warren’s record on anti-corruption and founding of the Consumer Protection Bureau.

“You have to look at campaigns for what they are, and I have no doubt that the progressive movement needs her leadership as well,” he added.

Khanna went on to join progressive calls for the party to remain unified.

“I agree with a lot of the groups who have been saying let’s get the progressives all marching in the same direction.

Eighteen leading progressive groups with ties to both candidates have signed a unity pledge calling for solidarity.

The three-part pledge says the groups will focus their fight for the nomination against candidates on the “corporate wing” of the Democratic Party and ensure that a progressive candidate wins the party’s presidential nomination.

“When progressives fight each other, the establishment wins,” said Charles Chamberlain, the chairman for Democracy for America.

Sanders and Warren have not spoken since their contentious exchange following Tuesday’s Democratic debate.

Warren approached Sanders after the debate in Iowa and accused him of calling her a liar on national television.

Sanders appeared to try to defuse the situation by offering to talk about it later.

“You know, let’s not do it right now. If you want to have that discussion, we’ll have that discussion,” he said, before telling Warren she had also called him a liar.

Their feud is centered on a CNN report claiming that Sanders had told Warren that he didn’t believe a woman could win the White House. While Warren confirmed the report, Sanders has denied making such a statement and both dug into their positions during the debate.

The pair also clashed earlier this week after reports surfaced on Sunday that the Sanders campaign was urging volunteers to tell voters that Warren only appealed to the wealthy elite.

—Tess Bonn



I THINK, JUST MAYBE, WE ARE SEEING WHAT I HAVE BEEN YAMMERING FOR SINCE THE 2016 DEMOCRATIC DEBACLE – A SEPARABLE, AND IF WE’RE COURAGEOUS ENOUGH, SEPARATE PROGRESSIVE PARTY. WE COULD ACT WITH THE DEMOCRATS, BUT NOT BE WITHIN THEIR ORGANIZATION. AT LEAST I HAVE HOPES FOR THAT. IF WE’RE HONEST ABOUT WHAT THE MAINSTREAM DEMOCRATIC PARTY HAS BECOME, IT’S THE ONLY ANSWER TO MAINTAINING ANY PROGRESSIVE STRUCTURE AT ALL.

18 progressive groups sign unity pledge amid Sanders-Warren feud
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 01/16/20 07:00 AM EST

PHOTOGRAPHS – Warren and Sanders, smiling   © Getty Images

Eighteen progressive groups have signed a unity pledge vowing to keep their fire trained on the “corporate wing” of the Democratic Party amid a burgeoning feud between Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that has split the left.

The signers include seven groups who back Sanders's 2020 presidential bid and two that back Warren's. The remaining nine groups are either supportive of both candidates, such as Democracy for America, or have not endorsed anyone yet.

The three-part pledge says the groups will “focus our fight for the nomination against candidates supported by the corporate wing, instead of fighting each other.” The groups say they’re committed to ensuring a progressive candidate wins the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination and that they’ll join forces to ensure that candidate ultimately defeats President Trump.

“When progressives fight each other, the establishment wins,” said Charles Chamberlain, the chairman for Democracy for America. “We saw it in 2004 when progressives took each other out and John Kerry slipped through to win Iowa and then went on to lose in November to a very unpopular Republican incumbent. We’re determined to not let that happen again.”

Sanders and Warren had agreed to not attack one another and stuck to that pledge for all of 2019.

But the detente exploded in spectacular fashion earlier this week after reports that the Sanders campaign was instructing volunteers to question whether Warren is electable.

Warren later alleged that Sanders told her in a private meeting in 2018 that a woman could not win the White House. Sanders, however, denies ever saying that.

The allegations and denials escalated between the two at Tuesday night’s debate in Des Moines, culminating in a post-debate exchange in which Warren confronted Sanders and accused him of calling her a “liar on national TV.”

Sanders and Warren are at the top of many polls of Iowa with the caucuses only weeks away, and liberals are fearful that the bitter dispute will hurt both candidates and potentially pave the way for a centrist contender, such as former Vice President Joe Biden or former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, to emerge victorious.

“We need a bold progressive president. In our opinion, the most inspirational and electable Democrat we could nominate is Elizabeth Warren,” the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said in a statement. “We are joining this effort out of a belief that it represents leaders in the progressive movement urging everyone from campaign staff to Twitter commenters to focus on defeating a corporate, establishment Democrat like Joe Biden. This effort inherently includes standing opposed to sexism and bad-faith arguments in the primary process. We look forward to working with our friends to enforce these principles."

The unity effort, called “Progressives Unite 2020,” features a website where members can sign the pledge and commit to voting for either Sanders or Warren at their caucus or primary.

That’s particularly important in Iowa, where candidates must reach a 15-percent threshold at a caucus site to win delegates. Organizers will be seeking to ensure that if one of the progressive candidates does not hit that threshold, those voters move to back the progressive candidate that does.

“We need a President who will put the interests of everyday people ahead of those of the wealthy elite and big corporations,” said Bree Carlson, the deputy director of People’s Action, which backs Sanders. “Our members voted to endorse Senator Sanders as the best choice for President because he is ready to work side by side with us to do just that. Senator Warren is our clear second choice, both Senator Sanders and Senator Warren stand heads and shoulders above the candidates seeking only to prop up the status quo of corporate interests."

A full list of the groups that signed on to the effort and the candidates they support is below:

1. Be A Hero Action Fund

2. Black Male Voter Project

3. Black Voters Matter Fund

4. Center for Popular Democracy Action (Sanders)

5. Democracy for America

6. Dream Defenders (Sanders)

7. Inequality Media Civic Action

8. Justice Democrats

9. Our Revolution (Sanders)

10. People’s Action (Sanders)

11. Presente Action

12. Progress America

13. Progressive Change Campaign Committee (Warren)

14. Progressive Democrats of America (Sanders)

15. Roots Action (Sanders)

16. Social Security Works

17. Sunrise Movement (Sanders)

18. Working Families Party (Warren)

TAGS ELIZABETH WARREN PETE BUTTIGIEG BERNIE SANDERS DONALD TRUMP JOHN KERRY JOE BIDEN



IMPEACHMENT -- SEVEN ARTICLES

MORE MUELLER DOCUMENTS FROM THE DOJ MAY WELL BE A RESPONSE TO DEMOCRATIC PRESSURE, INCLUDING BAD PUBLICITY, IT SEEMS TO ME. THERE IS APPARENTLY ANOTHER LOAD OF DOCUMENTS THAT CAME FROM LEV PARNAS.

DOJ releases new tranche of Mueller witness documents
BY TAL AXELROD - 01/17/20 11:05 PM EST

PHOTOGRAPH – ROBERT MUELLER   © Greg Nash

The Justice Department on Friday released a new tranche of documents from witness interviews from former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

The documents, obtained by CNN as part of a joint lawsuit with BuzzFeed News, were compiled by FBI agents or prosecutors after they questioned each witness.

However, despite a court order, the outlet said the Department of Justice (DOJ) withheld memos related to interviews Mueller’s team conducted with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and a White House senior staffer.


Among the witness interviews included in the release are those conducted with Russian oligarch Petr Aven, former Trump campaign aides George Papadopoulos and Carter Page, and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The memo from the interview with Aven, who is known to have close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, showed the two discussed U.S. sanctions and the prospect of engaging with members of the Trump transition team to ameliorate relations between Moscow and Washington and end the sanctions.

Papadopoulos, who has faced legal scrutiny over his dealings with Russia, told investigators that former Trump campaign national co-chairman Sam Clovis told him Russia would be important to the campaign.

"Papadopoulos recalled the topic of Russia came up during his phone call with Clovis, in the context that Clovis had mentioned that Russia would be a very important aspect of the Trump campaign," investigators wrote in 2017. The surrounding sentences of the quote are redacted.

Of all the memos released, those from Page shine the brightest light into the investigation. The former campaign aide met with agents several times without an attorney present and prepared presentations for them.


Among other things, agents discussed with Page how Russia may have been molding him to become a witting or unwitting informant for Moscow’s intelligence agents, an effort that may have been ramped up when he joined the campaign.

"PAGE referenced himself being 'on the books' of Russian Intelligence Services," an FBI agent wrote. Page later added that "he is probably the highest level contact" for the Russians.

Page also “suspected” Manafort of being responsible for a controversial change to the Republican Party platform during the 2016 convention that blocked a provision calling for the providing of lethal weapons to Ukraine to help defend against Russian aggression.

A redacted copy of an October 2016 arrest warrant for page showed that FBI officials believed him to be “the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.”

The Justice Department has released two prior tranches of documents from the Mueller probe. The investigation closed last year, finding insufficient evidence of a conspiracy by the Trump campaign to collude with Russia in 2016 but declining to make a prosecutorial decision as to whether the president obstructed justice by trying to hinder subsequent probes into collusion.

TAGS GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS VLADIMIR PUTIN ROBERT MUELLER PAUL MANAFORT JARED KUSHNER



2 + 2 = 4

Democratic lawmaker dismisses GOP lawsuit threat: 'Take your letter and shove it'
BY TAL AXELROD - 01/17/20 08:42 PM EST

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) on Friday dismissed what he said was the threat of a lawsuit from fellow Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), telling a lawyer for Nunes to “shove it.”

The Democrat shared on Twitter the first page of a letter sent by Nunes’s counsel and dated Dec. 31 in which the lawyer cited the right to maintain an "unimpaired reputation." The letter was mentioned by Lieu on Twitter earlier this week.

Lieu hinted in his response that the threat centered on his comments tying Nunes to Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born businessman and former associate of President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani who is at the heart of the impeachment proceedings.

“I received your letter dated December 31, 2019 in which you state your client Congressman Devin Nunes will sue me if I don’t, among other actions, issue a public apology to Devin Nunes,” Lieu wrote in his own letter dated Thursday. “It is true that I stated Congressman Nunes worked with Lev Parnas and conspired to undermine our own government.”

“I welcome any lawsuit from your client and look forward to taking discovery of Congressman Nunes. Or, you can take your letter and shove it.”

LIEU’S TWEET AND PDF OF LETTER

Ted Lieu
Verified account

@tedlieu
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Attached is the first page of a five page letter in which the lawyer for @DevinNunes threatens that Rep Nunes will sue me.

Attached is my response.

Lieu pointed to recent evidence released by the House in its impeachment investigation and Parnas's MSNBC interview earlier this week, noting Parnas and Nunes communicated amid efforts by Trump allies to convince Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.

Neither Lieu nor Nunes immediately responded to requests for comment from The Hill on Friday evening.

Nunes has emerged as one of Trump’s top allies in the House from his perch as the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, maintaining that the president acted appropriately in his dealings with Ukraine despite testimony from several current and former officials that they were alarmed by the president's efforts to push Kyiv to conduct investigations desired by Trump.

TAGS DONALD TRUMP DEVIN NUNES TED LIEU
  
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Dems plan marathon prep for Senate trial, wary of Trump trying to 'game' the process
BY MIKE LILLIS - 01/17/20 09:24 PM EST

PHOTOGRAPH – PRESIDENT TRUMP   © Getty Images

The House Democrats prosecuting the impeachment of President Trump are planning a marathon preparation session ahead of next week's Senate trial, using the long holiday weekend to polish their case that the president abused his power in his dealings with Ukraine.

The seven impeachment managers tapped to make the Democrats' case before the Senate will return to Washington on Sunday to dig through the extensive record built over the course of the months-long investigation that led to Trump's impeachment last month, according to aides working on impeachment.

They'll be joined by staffers and counselors for the Intelligence, Judiciary and Oversight committees, all working to "refine" their arguments before taking their case to the Senate trial, with launches in earnest on Tuesday. The extensive preparations will include a walk-through of the Senate chamber.

"The case is not a complicated one," said one Democratic aide working on the process. "The safety and security of the United States, of our Constitution ... [and] our democracy domestically rests on elections. And when the president invites a foreign government to announce investigations attacking a political opponent, he's undermining our democracy."

Aside from the legal merits of the case, much of the Democrats' argument will also delve into process.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has resisted the notion of considering any evidence, or hearing witness testimony, outside of that examined in the House investigation. That position has gained outsize prominence — and stirred outsize controversy — with the emergence of beguiling new details surrounding Trump's efforts to press Ukrainian leaders to find dirt on his political opponents.

In recent days, Democrats have received a trove of documents from Lev Parnas, a Soviet-born Florida businessman and close associate of Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, who led the pressure campaign on Ukrainian officials. Parnas, who was on the front lines of the unsuccessful effort to launch the Ukrainian investigations, has alleged that Trump was privy to that campaign from the start, along with other top administration officials that include Vice President Pence, Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

"President Trump knew exactly what was going on," Parnas told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow this week.

Trump has denied any association with Parnas, while attacking the Democrats' impeachment effort as a politically motivated "hoax."

Democrats have also found ammunition in John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, who had refused to testify in the House investigation but is now offering his insights under Senate subpoena.

McConnell has agreed to Senate rules allowing votes on potential witnesses, but not before the Democrats make their opening arguments and Trump's defense team offers its rebuttal. That chronology has outraged Democrats, who want all the evidence presented at the outset of the debate.

"When in a trial do you address witnesses' testimony at the end of the trial and not at the beginning?" a second Democratic aide told reporters Friday evening. "We're talking about specific witnesses, and specific documents from specific agencies that the president has acted to blockade from Congress and to suppress."

While House investigators heard testimony from 17 diplomats and national security officials with experience in Ukrainian affairs, at least a dozen others obeyed a White House directive to refuse participation in the process. Separately, the administration, defying House subpoenas, rebuffed all Democratic requests for documents related to the Ukraine episode.

Democrats have pounced on the White House recalcitrance to hammer McConnell's argument that he's simply conducting the process according to the same parameters that governed President Clinton's impeachment trial in 1999. Then, the Democrats note, the president allowed all requested witnesses to testify, while providing tens-of-thousands of pages of documents to the special prosecutor managing the investigation. Additionally, three witnesses who had previously testified in the special prosecutor's probe into Clinton were interviewed again during the Senate trial — a process backed by Republicans, including McConnell, at the time.

"There was no argument about documents in Clinton because President Clinton had provided those 90,000 documents. How many documents has President Trump provided in response to House subpoenas? Zero," said the first Democratic aide. "We ought to start with that right away. It speaks to the fundamental fairness of the trial, and it is out of sync with precedent, with law and with what the American people want."

Democrats are also wary that the administration's blanket withholding of related documents gives Trump a wild card in the coming fight. They're voicing concerns that the president's defense team will try to slip some of that evidence into the trial, cherry-picking only the documents that boost Trump's case.

"One thing we'll be watching very closely is whether the president is seeking to game the system by selectively introducing documents or [other] material here and there in order to suggest a misleading narrative," said the second Democratic aide. "That's something we're very keenly aware of."

The release of documents from both sides ahead of the Senate trial will follow two streams in the coming days. The Democratic impeachment managers, led by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), presented their articles to the fully packed Senate on Thursday. Trump's team is slated to provide their response to those charges on Saturday at 6 p.m., and Democrats will then offer their own formal counter-argument to the administration at noon on Monday.

Separately, House Democrats will release their trial brief on Saturday at 5 p.m. That will be followed by the president's trial brief, due Monday at noon. Democrats will then have exactly 24 hours to formulate their response to the White House brief.

Meanwhile, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee on Friday posted all the information that will be transmitted to the Senate as part of the trial, including all the closed-door depositions, public hearing transcripts, notices of those witnesses who refused to testify, and supplemental information that includes the recent trove of photos and documents provided by Parnas.

Despite McConnell's resistance to hearing evidence that wasn't presented during the House investigation, Democrats say they're ready to lean on that supplementary information as they make their oral arguments before the Senate. If the majority leader intends to follow the Clinton model, they argue, that evidence should be permitted.

"The House Judiciary Committee ... can produce the record which will consist of publicly available material," said the first Democratic aide, citing the Clinton rules. "There is no reason why the same that precedent should not apply. We fully expect that it will apply. And if it does not apply, you'll hear about it from us."

TAGS MITCH MCCONNELL RUDY GIULIANI RACHEL MADDOW WILLIAM BARR DONALD TRUMP ADAM SCHIFF JOHN BOLTON MIKE POMPEO



THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE COLD WAR ERA RUSSIAN / USA SPYING. AS FAR AS I HAVE READ OR HEARD, RUSSIA HASN’T POISONED OR OTHERWISE ASSASSINATED ANYONE HERE, AS THEY HAVE IN AT LEAST THREE CASES IN BRITAIN. MAYBE HACKING BURISMA, THOUGH, COULD POSSIBLY HAVE TO DO WITH TRYING TO DAMAGE THE NATURAL GAS PRODUCTION IN UKRAINE, AS VOX STATES, WITH TAMPERING WITH OUR 2020 PRESIDENTIAL RACE AS THEY DID FOUR YEARS AGO. THEY DON’T LIKE COMPETITION MUCH, AND IT WOULD BE INTERESTING IF TRUMP TURNS OUT TO BE INVOLVED AGAIN, NOT JUST WITH UKRAINE, BUT RUSSIA. THAT SOUNDS LIKE ANOTHER ARTICLE OF IMPEACHMENT. SEE ALSO THE RECENT ARTICLE BELOW ON THE RUSSIAN HACK, WHICH GIVES MORE DETAIL. [https://www.vox.com/2020/1/13/21064818/russia-hacks-burisma-biden-hunter]  

Ukrainian authorities ask FBI for help investigating Russian hack on Burisma
BY MAGGIE MILLER - 01/16/20 12:43 PM EST

PHOTOGRAPH – UKRAINIAN FLAG   © Getty

PHOTOGRAPH -- Ukrainian authorities ask FBI for help investigating Russian hack on Burisma   © Getty

Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs on Thursday announced that the country’s cyber police had started "criminal proceedings" around the recent hacking of gas company Burisma, and noted that authorities were seeking the assistance of the FBI in pursuing the case.

The ministry wrote in a statement that criminal proceedings had been launched, and that “persons involved in committing this criminal offense are being identified.”

The company has been propelled into the spotlight in recent months due to the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, which began after an anonymous whistleblower report alleged that Trump had tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who served on the company's board between 2014 and 2019.

The proceedings were launched following a story from The New York Times earlier this week, which reported findings by cyber group Area 1 Security that Russian military hackers had launched email phishing attacks designed to steal credentials of Burisma employees and gain access to the company’s systems.

The attack reportedly came amid impeachment hearings in November.

According to the Times, the Russian hackers successfully got into at least one server, although it is unclear what they were able to access or whether anything was stolen.

The ministry noted that it had approached both the FBI and Area 1 Security for assistance in the probe into the hacking of Burisma.

“In order to properly investigate the circumstances of the offense, the National Police is initiating the creation of a joint international investigation team, to which FBI representatives will be invited,” the ministry wrote.

The announcement of the criminal proceedings in relation to the Burisma hack came the same day the ministry also launched a criminal investigation into whether former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch had been tracked by associates of Lev Parnas, an associate of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, while serving as ambassador.

According to communications between Parnas and Republican congressional candidate Robert Hyde that were made public earlier this week, Yovanovitch may have been followed while in Ukraine. Hyde has since denied that any spying took place.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment on whether it would assist Ukrainian authorities in their investigation.

TAGS UKRAINE RUSSIA MARIE YOVANOVITCH RUDY GIULIANI DONALD TRUMP JOE BIDEN CYBERSECURITY HACK




HOW MUCH CLOUT DOES THE GAO HAVE? SEE THE WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE BELOW.

LEGAL
White House violated the law by freezing Ukraine aid, GAO says
House Democrats have said the Ukraine aid pause is part of a broader “pattern of abuse” by the White House budget office.
By ANDREW DESIDERIO, KYLE CHENEY and CAITLIN EMMA
01/16/2020 10:01 AM EST
Updated: 01/16/2020 03:34 PM EST

PHOTOGRAPH -- President Donald Trump. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

The White House budget office violated the law when it froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report.

President Donald Trump ordered the hold on the critical security assistance in July, a slew of senior White House officials testified to House impeachment investigators late last year. It was a move that coincided with an effort by the president and his allies to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s Democratic rivals.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO wrote in an eight-page report released on Thursday.

Trump’s decision to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid, which he reversed in September after House investigators began probing the move, is at the heart of the articles of impeachment the House passed last month, and it will be a central focus in the Senate’s impeachment trial that begins later Thursday.

The report undercuts an oft-stated defense of Trump’s decision to hold the aid back: that it was a lawful exercise of the president’s authority.

“I have never seen such a damning report in my life,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee. “I mean, this is a nonpartisan thing. I read it twice. ... To have something saying this is such a total disrespect of the law. It’s unprecedented.”

Leahy said the conclusion “screams” for the need to force impeachment testimony from White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also said it “reinforces, again, the need for documents and eye witnesses in the Senate. You see this more and more and more in all of this — this tangled web to deceive that the administration is engaged in.”

But Republicans were unmoved by the findings, either claiming that they haven’t read GAO’s analysis or that it doesn’t mean much for the Senate impeachment trial.

“I wouldn’t think that a GAO opinion, per se, would change anything,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). “But we’ll listen to it, we’ll look at it and we’ll evaluate it.“

“I don’t think they should be deciding who broke the law,” he added.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said the report “identifies OMB, not the president. And it identifies policy reasons, not political reasons. I think we’re going to hear some more about it, but I don’t think that changes anything.“

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the ranking Republican on the House Labor-HHS-Education spending panel, conceded that OMB’s action might deserve some scrutiny. But it doesn’t hurt the president, he said.

“Look, I have a lot of respect for GAO,” he said. “I look at it this way. The aid got there within the fiscal year … There are no investigations in the Ukraine. So if the process wasn’t handled as well as it should have been, then fair enough and we should look at that and make sure it is handled appropriately. Do I think this has any impact on impeachment? No I don’t.“

GAO, an independent nonpartisan government watchdog that responds to congressional requests, said the White House attempted to justify its decision not to notify Congress of the hold by claiming it was simply a “programmatic delay.” But GAO rejected that claim, saying Trump’s decision, carried out by the budget office, was a violation of the Impoundment Control Act, which requires notification to Congress of any such delay in an appropriation of funds.

“OMB’s assertions have no basis in law,” the GAO argues, referring to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

OMB spokeswoman Rachel Semmel pushed back on GAO’s conclusions.

“We disagree with GAO’s opinion,” Semmel said. “OMB uses its apportionment authority to ensure taxpayer dollars are properly spent consistent with the president’s priorities and with the law.”

The GAO report also states that OMB and the State Department “failed” to provide all of the information that was necessary for its investigation. That decision will likely fuel Democrats’ arguments in the Senate trial that Trump has attempted to obstruct Congress’ ability to investigate the Ukraine matter, and that he has been engaged in a “cover-up.” The second impeachment article alleges that Trump obstructed Congress when he ordered senior officials to refuse requests and subpoenas seeking testimony and documents.

“The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has confirmed what congressional Democrats have understood all along: President Trump abused his power and broke the law by withholding security assistance to Ukraine,” House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) requested GAO’s opinion in a letter last month, noting that several administration officials have raised concerns about whether the president’s decision violated federal budget law. The move prompted two White House budget officials to resign in part out of frustration. Senior officials at the Pentagon and State Department sought an explanation for the hold, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

Van Hollen sent the letter one week after the House voted to impeach Trump on Dec. 18, charging him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for allegedly using his office and federal resources to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals — and then resisting the House’s investigation.

At issue in GAO’s legal opinion is how the Ukraine aid pause gels with the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, a law that sharply curbs the executive branch’s authority to alter congressionally appropriated funds.

Mark Sandy, a senior OMB civil servant, told House impeachment investigators last year that acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney’s office informed OMB on July 12 that Trump planned to halt Ukraine’s aid without providing an explanation.

The administration released its hold on Sept. 11, just hours after a whistleblower complaint about the matter was circulating around the government, and after House committees began investigating Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and his efforts in Ukraine to spur Trump’s desired investigations.

The funds were set to expire at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, and while the administration un-paused the money, millions of dollars never made it to Ukraine by the deadline.

House Democrats have said the Ukraine aid pause was part of a broader “pattern of abuse” by OMB, which has disregarded federal budget law and congressional spending authority.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) is now drafting a bill aimed at keeping OMB in check, and Lowey is expected to sign on as a co-sponsor. Yarmuth said he expects to release the measure in mid-March.

John Bresnahan, Heather Caygle and Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this story.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified Republican Rep. Tom Cole’s home state. He is from Oklahoma.

LOOSE ENDS WHICH THE READER MAY WANT TO READ FROM POLITICO:

IMPEACHMENT TODAY

*The White House budget office violated the law when it froze U.S. military aid to Ukraine, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a new report.
*Who supports Trump’s conviction in the Senate?
*Meet the Democrats prosecuting Trump's impeachment

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

*Lev Parnas: Trump ‘knew exactly what was going on’ in Ukraine
*The Senate is prepared to enforce strict measures on reporters' access during the trial. But not all Republicans are on board.
*Sen. Rand Paul is threatening fellow Republicans with tough votes if they back Democrats' demands for new evidence.
*Democrats delivered impeachment articles to the Senate and appointed prosecutors for the trial.
*Read all impeachment coverage »



GAO – IT BEGAN AS “THE GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE” AND THEN HAD A NAME CHANGE IN THE 1930S TO THE GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE, WITH A “WATCHDOG” FUNCTION. READ THIS HIGHLY INFORMATIVE ARTICLE. I THINK IT ANSWERS THE QUESTION OF WHETHER THE GAO’S POWERS ARE LEGITIMATE AND WHETHER IT WILL “MAKE A DIFFERENCE” IN THE TRIAL. IF OTHER CITIZENS ARE LIKE ME, IT WILL MATTER, AND SOMETIMES I DO GET ON MY EMAIL ACCOUNT AND MAKE CONTACT WITH MY REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS TO TELL THEM WHAT I THINK.

Government Accountability Office
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a legislative branch government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the United States Congress.[2] It is the supreme audit institution of the federal government of the United States. It identifies its core "mission values" as: accountability, integrity, and reliability.[3]

Powers of GAO

Work of GAO is done at the request of congressional committees or subcommittees or is mandated by public laws or committee reports. It also undertakes research under the authority of the Comptroller General. It supports congressional oversight by:

*auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively;
*investigating allegations of illegal and improper activities;
*reporting on how well government programs and policies are meeting their objectives;
*performing policy analyses and outlining options for congressional consideration;
*issuing legal decisions and opinions;
*advising Congress and the heads of executive agencies about ways to make government more efficient and effective.

History

The GAO was established as the General Accounting Office by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. The act required the head of the GAO to "investigate, at the seat of government or elsewhere, all matters relating to the receipt, disbursement, and application of public funds, and shall make to the President … and to Congress … reports [and] recommendations looking to greater economy or efficiency in public expenditures".[4]

According to the GAO's current mission statement, the agency exists to support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people.

The name was changed in 2004 to Government Accountability Office by the GAO Human Capital Reform Act to better reflect the mission of the office.[5][6][citation needed] The GAO's auditors conduct not only financial audits, but also engage in a wide assortment of performance audits.

Over the years, the GAO has been referred to as "The Congressional Watchdog" and "The Taxpayers' Best Friend" for its frequent audits and investigative reports that have uncovered waste and inefficiency in government. News media often draw attention to the GAO's work by publishing stories on the findings, conclusions and recommendations of its reports. Members of Congress also frequently cite the GAO's work in statements to the press, congressional hearings, and floor debates on proposed legislation. In 2007 the Partnership for Public Service ranked the GAO second on its list of the best places to work in the federal government and Washingtonian magazine included the GAO on its 2007 list of great places to work in Washington, a list that encompasses the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

The GAO is headed by the Comptroller General of the U.S., a professional and non-partisan position in the U.S. government. The comptroller general is appointed by the president, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, for a 15-year, non-renewable term. The president selects a nominee from a list of at least three individuals recommended by an eight-member bipartisan, bicameral commission of congressional leaders. During such term, the comptroller general has standing to pursue litigation to compel access to federal agency information. The comptroller general may not be removed by the president, but only by Congress through impeachment or joint resolution for specific reasons.[7] Since 1921, there have been only seven comptrollers general, and no formal attempt has ever been made to remove a comptroller general.

Labor-management relations became fractious during the nine-year tenure of the seventh comptroller general, David M. Walker. On September 19, 2007, GAO analysts voted by a margin of two to one (897–445), in a 75% turnout, to establish the first union in the GAO's 86-year history. The analysts voted to affiliate with the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), a member union of the AFL-CIO. There are more than 1,800 analysts in the GAO analysts bargaining unit; the local voted to name itself IFPTE Local 1921, in honor of the date of the GAO's establishment. On February 14, 2008, the GAO analysts' union approved its first-ever negotiated pay contract with management; of just over 1,200 votes, 98 percent were in favor of the contract.




Office of Management and Budget
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is the largest office within the Executive Office of the President of the United States (EOP). OMB's most prominent function is to produce the President's Budget,[2] but OMB also measures the quality of agency programs, policies, and procedures to see if they comply with the president's policies and coordinates inter-agency policy initiatives.

. . . .   The OMB Director reports to the President, Vice President and the White House Chief of Staff.

History

The Bureau of the Budget, OMB's predecessor, was established in 1921 as a part of the Department of the Treasury by the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, which was signed into law by president Warren G. Harding. The Bureau of the Budget was moved to the Executive Office of the President in 1939 and was run by Harold D. Smith during the government's rapid expansion of spending during the Second World War. James L. Sundquist, a staffer at the Bureau of the Budget described the relationship between the President and the Bureau as extremely close and of subsequent Bureau Directors as politicians and not public administrators.[5]

The Bureau was reorganized into the Office of Management and Budget in 1970 during the Nixon administration.[6] The first OMB included Roy Ash (head), Paul O'Neill (assistant director), Fred Malek (deputy director) and Frank Zarb (associate director) and two dozen others.

In the 1990s, OMB was reorganized to remove the distinction between management staff and budgetary staff by combining the dual roles into each given program examiner within the Resource Management Offices.[7]

Purpose

OMB prepares the President's budget proposal to Congress and supervises the administration of the executive branch agencies. OMB evaluates the effectiveness of agency programs, policies, and procedures, assesses competing funding demands among agencies, and sets funding priorities. OMB ensures that agency reports, rules, testimony, and proposed legislation are consistent with the president's budget and with administration policies.

OMB also oversees and coordinates the administration's procurement, financial management, information, and regulatory policies. In each of these areas, OMB's role is to help improve administrative management, to develop better performance measures and coordinating mechanisms, and to reduce any unnecessary burdens on the public.

OMB's critical missions are:[8]
Budget development and execution is a prominent government-wide process managed from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and a device by which a president implements his policies, priorities, and actions in everything from the Department of Defense to NASA.
OMB manages other agencies' financials, paperwork, and IT.

Structure

The Office is made up mainly of career appointed staff who provide continuity across changes of party and persons in the White House. Six positions within OMB – the Director, the Deputy Director, the Deputy Director for Management, and the administrators of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, and the Office of Federal Financial Management are presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed positions.

. . . .  



“I DON’T KNOW” LEV PARNAS. IN RESPONSE TO PHOTOS OF THE TWO TOGETHER, HE SAID THAT HE TAKES SO MANY PHOTOS OF THAT KIND THAT HE CAN’T REMEMBER. IT’S THE PRICE HE PAYS FOR HIS FAME, I GUESS, HAVING TO TAKE ALL THOSE PICTURES. RIGHT. RIGHT.

IMPEACHMENT
Lev Parnas: Trump ‘knew exactly what was going on’ in Ukraine
The associate of Rudy Giuliani also leveled accusations against Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General William Barr.
By MATTHEW CHOI, KYLE CHENEY, DARREN SAMUELSOHN and QUINT FORGEY
01/15/2020 08:05 PM EST
Updated: 01/16/2020 09:55 AM EST

PHOTOGRAPH -- Lev Parnas said: “I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president.”

Lev Parnas, the Rudy Giuliani associate caught in the middle of President Donald Trump’s impeachment, said on Wednesday that the president was fully aware of his actions in Ukraine, and he leveled a string of potentially damaging accusations against the president’s closest allies, including Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr and the House Intelligence Committee’s top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes.

“President Trump knew exactly what was going on,” Parnas, who was indicted over an alleged campaign finance scheme in October, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow when asked to correct the biggest inaccuracy about his dealings with the president. “He was aware of all of my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president.”

Speaking in an interview aired Wednesday night, Parnas said Trump and Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, directed him to urge Ukrainian officials to publicly open an investigation into a Trump Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. Parnas asserted that the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine last spring was motivated entirely by her interference in their efforts to start a Biden investigation. And he even apologized to her for his conduct.

Parnas added that Pence, Barr and former national security adviser John Bolton were all aware of or involved in parts of the scheme.

Parnas is a complicated figure in the unfolding Ukraine saga. He worked closely with Giuliani as the former New York mayor defended Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, and he helped lead Giuliani’s monthslong effort to smear and remove Yovanovitch, who stood in the way of the effort to investigate Biden and other Democrats. After Parnas was indicted, he resisted cooperating with the House impeachment inquiry but changed his tune shortly after Trump disavowed a relationship with him.

Some lawmakers are wary of relying too much on his account because of the pending charges against him. But elements of his story are backed up by a trove of contemporaneous documents he provided to lawmakers in recent days — files that were seized by law enforcement officials after his indictment and released to him only last week.

Things get heated when McCarthy is asked about connection to Lev Parnas
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Parnas’ latest comments quickly became fuel for Senate Democrats who said they amplified the need for the Senate to call witnesses and demand documents from the Trump administration during the impeachment trial.

Pushing back on previous defenses from Trump’s team, Parnas said he was sent as an emissary of Trump himself to the administration of the then-new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and that Giuliani vouched for him. He said he urged the administration to open an investigation into Biden’s son Hunter, who sat on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, to hurt the 2020 presidential hopeful politically — not to combat corruption, as Giuliani has repeatedly claimed.

“It was all about Joe Biden, Hunter Biden,” Parnas told Maddow. “It was never about corruption. It was never — it was strictly about Burisma, which included Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.”

In a separate interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Parnas said Giuliani was always pursuing Trump's personal interests — not those of the American government — during his work in Ukraine.

Giuliani described his role similarly in a May letter to Zelensky — released this week by House Democrats — in which he wrote: "Just to be precise, I represent him as a private citizen, not as President of the United States."

On the pressure campaign on Ukraine, Parnas told Cooper, "Obviously, now I can see what the situation, the way it is — I mean, it was strictly for" Trump's political benefit.

"But again, I thought he was our leader. He's the chief, he's the president. And it was all about 2020 to make sure he had another four years," Parnas said.

Trump says Giuliani letter to Zelensky 'wouldn’t have been a big deal’
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"That was the way everybody viewed it," he continued. "I mean, there was — that was the most important thing, is for him to stay on for another four years and keep the fight going. I mean, there was no other reason for doing it."

Parnas dismissed as disingenuous the arguments by administration officials and the president's Republican defenders in Congress that Trump was legitimately concerned by systemic corruption in Ukraine and sought to root it out.

"They all know.  They go home at night. They all have a conscience," he said. "I've been there when they liked him, when they didn't like him. When they talked behind his back. When they agree with him and disagree with him. And to see the things that they're doing now and just blindly, just — I mean, it's a sham. It's a shame."

Giuliani and another of the president’s personal attorneys, Jay Sekulow, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday night. A lawyer for Pence also did not respond. At the end of her program, Maddow said Giuliani had reached out to deny that Parnas ever spoke on behalf of the president, calling him a “sad situation.”

A Justice Department spokeswoman wrote Parnas’ allegation that Barr was “on the team” pressing for the Biden investigation was “100% false.”

The spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, included in an email a statement from last September in which she said Barr first learned of Trump’s July conversation with Ukraine’s president several weeks after the call took place and that Trump hadn’t spoken with Barr about anything related to having Ukraine investigate the Bidens.

“The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter,” Kupec said at the time. “The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject. Nor has the Attorney General discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.”

Appearing Thursday on "Fox & Friends," White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham maintained that Trump "did nothing wrong" with regard to Ukraine and said the White House was "not too concerned about" Parnas' allegations. 

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