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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsExplosive new revelations just weakened Trump's impeachment defenses
Link to tweet
But extraordinary new revelations in the New York Times about Trumps corrupt freezing of military aid to Ukraine will or should make this much harder to get away with....
Among the storys key points:
As early as June, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney worked to execute the freeze for Trump, and a top aide to Mulvaney Robert Blair worried it would fuel the narrative that Trump was tacitly aiding Russia.
Internal opposition was more forceful than previously known. The Pentagon pushed for the money for months. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and then-national security adviser John Bolton privately urged Trump to understand that freezing the aid was not in our national interest.
Trump was unmoved, citing Ukraines corruption. We now know Trump actually wanted Ukraine to announce sham investigations absolving Russia of 2016 electoral sabotage and smearing potential 2020 opponent Joe Biden. The Times report reveals that top Trump officials did not think that ostensibly combating Ukrainian corruption (which wasnt even Trumps real aim) was in our interests.
Lawyers at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) worked to develop a far-fetched legal argument that Trump could exercise commander-in-chief authority to override Congress appropriation of the aid, to get around the law precluding Trump from freezing it.
Michael Duffey, a political appointee at OMB, tried to get the Pentagon to assume responsibility for getting the aid released, to deflect blame away from the White House for its own role in blocking it. This led a Pentagon official to pronounce herself speechless.
Duffey froze the aid with highly unusual bureaucratic tactics, refused to tell Pentagon officials why Trump wanted it withheld and instructed them to keep this closely held. (Some of this had already been reported, but in narrative context it becomes far more damning.)
Its impossible to square all this with the lines from Trumps defenders that there was no pressure on Ukraine; that the money was withheld for reasonable policy purposes; and that there was no extortion because it was ultimately released. As the Times shows, that only came after the scheme was outed.
lame54
(35,290 posts)It's working
marble falls
(57,081 posts)spanone
(135,831 posts)Hermit-The-Prog
(33,345 posts)mopinko
(70,103 posts)OKNancy
(41,832 posts)all this information. Someone wants it out. Bolton?
progressoid
(49,990 posts)History might even ignore is war mongering ways.
But I don't think he's honorable enough to do it.
NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)if he was refusing to testify to promote his book (that was speculation a few weeks ago) - just imagine if he testified and it was devastating to Trump (he saved texts/emails and/or recorded phone calls) - he would be a hero and his book sales would go through the roof.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)Link to tweet
Reading between the lines of the (pretty much always) anonymously-sourced reporting from Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti, it appears that Mulvaney is trying hard to get the story out there that he had no idea what Trump was up to, even though he was a key conduit for transmitting Mr. Trumps demands for the freeze across the administration, as the authors write:
Mr. Mulvaney is said by associates to have stepped out of the room whenever Mr. Trump would talk with [Rudy] Giuliani to preserve Mr. Trumps attorney-client privilege, leaving him with limited knowledge about their efforts regarding Ukraine. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he learned of the substance of Mr. Trumps July 25 call [with Zelensky] weeks after the fact.
Which is to say, Mulvaneys associates are trying to claim hes innocent by telling reporters he didnt know why Trump was holding back aid, even as he was working around the clock to make sure that Trumps desires regarding the aid hold were fulfilled. It sure sounds like Mulvaney is setting up the possibility of throwing the president under the bus, by suggesting that he was simply following orders, and that Trump and Giuliani were the only people who knew why those orders were being issued.
crickets
(25,979 posts)Mr. Mick "get over it!" Mulvaney when he spins this yarn? Alrighty then.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)crickets
(25,979 posts)Anybody turning on Trump is fantastic news. Nothing would be more glorious than an all out circular firing squad! Mulvaney's just not doing a very good job at his own cover story is all.
Gothmog
(145,231 posts)MFGsunny
(2,356 posts)Timing is everything. Razor's edge right here!
Let justice prevail.
Rob WA
(16 posts)Pelosi is doing the right thing, not only for the party, but for the country. I think that people like Bolton will be effective frozen out of further government roles as questions about Ukraine will always do him. None of them (Mulvaney, Pompeo, Bolton) can have any comfort working for a volatile, incoherent, vindictive person prone to unsubstantiated blame for others. They are certainly his roads, but it's not to say they don't understand self-preservation.
AllyCat
(16,187 posts)Kid Berwyn
(14,904 posts)The fact he wants Ukraine TO INVENT FAKE NEWS ABOUT THE BIDENS and hurt our nations security shows TRUMP IS A TRAITOR.
Sorry for shouting. I want to put the em-FASS-iss on the right arse.
Mickju
(1,803 posts)BlancheSplanchnik
(20,219 posts)sorry for yelling.