monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the Russian government used social media in the 2016 election to help President Trump secure victory and hurt the Hillary Clinton campaign, the panel said in an 85-page report released on Tuesday.

The report examined the efforts of the Saint Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which has also been the target of charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“The Committee found, that the IRA sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential
election by harming Hillary Clinton’s chances of success and supporting Donald Trump at the direction of the Kremlin,” the document reads.

A White House official who listened to President Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s leader described it as “crazy,” “frightening,” and “completely lacking in substance related to national security,” according to a memo written by the whistle-blower at the center of the Ukraine scandal, a C.I.A. officer who spoke to the White House official.

The White House official was “visibly shaken by what had transpired,” the C.I.A. officer wrote in his memo, one day after Mr. Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in a July 25 phone call to open investigations that would benefit him politically.

A palpable sense of concern had already taken hold among at least some in the White House that the call had veered well outside the bounds of traditional diplomacy, the officer wrote.

“The official stated that there was already a conversation underway with White House lawyers about how to handle the discussion because, in the official’s view, the president had clearly committed a criminal act by urging a foreign power to investigate a U.S. person for the purposes of advancing his own re-election bid in 2020,” the C.I.A. officer wrote.

The document provides a rare glimpse into at least one of the communications with a White House official that helped prompt the whistle-blower’s formal complaint to the intelligence community’s inspector general detailing a broad pressure campaign on Ukraine. The complaint and a reconstructed transcript released by the White House formed the basis of the House impeachment inquiry into Mr. Trump.

The inspector general, Michael Atkinson, handed the two-page memo over to Congress last week. A person familiar with its contents described it to The New York Times. Fox News first reported details from it. Neither a lawyer for the whistle-blower nor a spokeswoman for Mr. Atkinson immediately responded to requests for comment.

The whistle-blower, who had no firsthand knowledge of the events he described, wrote in his complaint that he spoke to “multiple U.S. government officials” who said that Mr. Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

It was not clear whether the White House official he spoke to on July 26 was the second whistle-blower, who has also provided information to Mr. Atkinson, or a different person. Neither whistle-blower’s name has been made public.

Little, if any, of the whistle-blower’s complaint has been disproved, though Mr. Trump has sought to discredit him because his account was secondhand. The White House transcript largely affirmed his account of the call, and Mr. Atkinson deemed his complaint credible, saying he interviewed others who corroborated it.

The White House official “seemed keen to inform a trusted colleague within the national security apparatus about the call,” the C.I.A. officer wrote in his July 26 memo.

Much of the whistle-blower’s memo also comports with the existing public record of the call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky. The C.I.A. officer noted that he spoke to the White House official for only a few minutes, “and as a result, I only received highlights.”

The memo detailed key aspects of the conversation, including Mr. Trump’s request for investigations into former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter, and a conspiracy theory about Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election.

The whistle-blower wrote a memo describing an official who heard the call as “visibly shaken” by it.

Inside the White House's effort to contain Ukraine call fallout

By the time President Donald Trump's line with Volodymyr Zelensky went quiet, the scramble began.

The scramble and fallout from the call, described by six people familiar with it, parallels and expands upon details described in the whistleblower complaint. The anxiety and internal concern reflect a phone conversation that deeply troubled national security professionals, even as Trump now insists there was nothing wrong with how he conducted himself. And it shows an ultimately unsuccessful effort to contain the tumult by the administration's lawyers.

At least one National Security Council official alerted the White House’s national security lawyers about the concerns, three sources familiar with the matter said, a detail that had not been previously disclosed. Those same lawyers would later order the transcript of the call moved to a highly classified server typically reserved for code-word classified material. ...

Unsettled aides also immediately began quizzing each other about whether they should alert senior officials who were not on the call -- mainly those at the Justice Department, since Trump had invoked the agency’s boss, Attorney General Bill Barr, multiple times during the 30-minute talk.

The rapid increase in public support for impeaching Donald Trump began the moment House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she’d authorized an official impeachment inquiry, and has continued at least in some part because the abrupt shift in the Democratic Party’s posture toward Trump disrupted his efforts to nullify congressional oversight.

For months Trump exploited Democratic reluctance to impeach him by defying essentially every House demand for documents and testimony, knowing he’d face no consequences as long as the party remained divided. When that division evaporated, Trump at least momentarily lost control over Republicans in Congress and senior administration officials, and the information spigot turned back on. That’s what forced Trump to release the summary of his incriminating phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and declassify the whistleblower complaint that initially forced Democrats to take the Ukraine scandal seriously. It’s why the acting director of national intelligence testified in public and private, and how Democrats managed to secure bombshell testimony and evidence from former Ukraine envoy Kurt Volker.

It’s no surprise then that Trump wants to restore the status quo ante, where he contemptuously refuses to cooperate with Congress, and Congress sputters ineffectively before getting tied up in slow-moving court proceedings. In addition to the challenge this strategy poses to Democrats’ resolve, it also reflects straightforward reasoning about his own dilemma: If he’s destined to be impeached, he may as well cram as many damning facts about his own conduct into the black box of obstruction, rather than let everything spill out, and get impeached on the substance of his vast abuses of power.

He’s begun to test this theory. On Tuesday, Trump or his subordinates abruptly instructed Gordon Sondland, his ambassador to the European Union, to no-show his scheduled deposition with House investigators, just hours before it was set to begin. Sondland is a hotel executive who donated a million dollars to Trump’s inaugural committee to buy his ambassadorship, and was seemingly Trump’s point man in the plot to extort Ukraine for personal benefit. (Note, Ukraine is not an EU member, which suggests Trump enlisted Sondland for the sole purpose of circumventing proper diplomatic channels.) He can testify directly to Trump’s thinking, and reportedly has documentary evidence of the scheme in the form of text messages the State Department has thus far refused to turn over to the House.

The House’s response to this provocation will be fateful, because if Trump is allowed to restore the obstructive cycle that befuddled Democrats for the first nine months of their majority, the full scope of his corruption will remain hidden and impeachment momentum could fizzle. Because Sondland scheduled his now-canceled deposition voluntarily, Democrats took the natural next step of issuing subpoenas for his testimony and documents, which will tee up a new confrontation. But there are worrying signs that they will not use every tool at their disposal to extract information from the administration, even over Trump’s objections.

In an interview with the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent Tuesday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who leads the impeachment inquiry, suggested that the House may proceed on dual tracks by impeaching Trump for obstructing Congress, while asking courts to enforce their impeachment-related subpoenas. In the meantime, Pelosi and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal are apparently eager to expedite legislation to allow Trump to implement the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement—updating the terms of NAFTA—to demonstrate Democrats can impeach Trump and “get things done” simultaneously. They would hand Trump an unvarnished victory as he threatens to upend the separation of powers and place himself completely above the law.

Fortunately, none of this Is inevitable. It is possible that federal judges will hurriedly vindicate the House’s impeachment power and order Trump to cooperate. It is also possible that Pelosi will demand concessions from Trump, including cooperation with the impeachment inquiry, before she puts the USMCA on the floor for a vote.

But Democrats are not guaranteed to draw sympathetic judges. Their lawsuit to compel the IRS to produce Trump’s tax returns languishes today in the chambers of a judge Trump appointed to the bench just two years ago. And the House leadership has been frustratingly indulgent of nervous first-term Democrats who stood in the way of impeachment for months and now want the whole process to be over as quickly as possible. Of all Democratic chairmen, Neal has been perhaps the most reluctant to confront Trump, despite enjoying extraordinary authority to compel evidence of his wrongdoing, and his possession of evidence from a whistleblower that Trump’s political appointees have meddled in the mandatory audit all presidents are subject to by law.

Needless to say the lesson of the last two weeks is not that confronting Trump is politically risky. Democrats should widen their demands for information and pursue it on a war-footing. There is nothing binding about Trump’s instruction to Sondland, and Sondland could be made to cooperate. He is a Senate confirmed United States ambassador who is subject to impeachment in his own right. He is obligated to respond to congressional subpoenas and can not invoke privilege to cover up crimes. Congress has a long-neglected inherent power to enforce its subpoenas by detaining witnesses found in contempt. Sondland owns hotels in Democratic redoubts like Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, and Boston, MA, which makes them vulnerable to boycotts, protests, and government sanctions at multiple levels. House Democrats may not be able to target Sondland’s wallet directly, but they can make issue of the fact that he depends on the public to keep his business afloat while he mocks the public’s interest in holding its government accountable. Some of these tactics might apply to Trump’s bag man, Rudy Giuliani, who intends to defy House subpoenas as well, and may ultimately apply to others.

More generally, though, Democrats should just try things they were unwilling to try before the impeachment process began. Irrespective of whether Trump’s efforts to obstruct the impeachment inquiry will have an effect on public opinion, the public deserves to learn the facts Trump is trying to hide, and the one battle-tested way to draw them out is to overwhelm the Republicans with shows of determination and make them blink.

Those same lawyers would later order the transcript of the call moved to a highly classified server typically reserved for code-word classified material. ...

What is surely most worrisome for Trump in the poll is its indication that his once-impregnable base could be giving way. It found that 28 percent of Republicans support the inquiry and 18 percent would like to see him removed from office.

Yes, those who back the idea of a congressional investigation are still a minority within the president’s party, but a rapidly growing one, their numbers up by 21 points since a Post-ABC poll from July, when the issue at hand was the findings of the special counsel’s Russia investigation. The revelation of Trump’s Ukraine call has shifted the dynamic across the political spectrum. The increase in support for an impeachment probe has been roughly the same among Democrats, Republicans and independents.

That is encouraging. If slightly. I really would prefer not to conclude that so many American citizens are raving dunderheads.

John Durham broadens scope of Russia origins inquiry into events in 2017

After months of investigating, U.S. Attorney John Durham has broadened his team to include additional agents and resources as the timeline they are examining has extended, according to Fox News.

The investigation of the investigators, led by Attorney General William Barr and Durham as his right-hand man, had targeted the beginning of the Trump-Russia counterintelligence investigation to the 2016 election. It has been elongated to include at least the spring of 2017, when former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel after former FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump and leaked the contents of some of his memos to the media.

Durham's team has been focusing so far on the FBI's reliance on informants, some of whom, such as Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, made contact with members of the Trump campaign. Durham may also be looking into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses.

The former top prosecutor in Ukraine who originally claimed to have dirt on Joe Biden said in a Tuesday radio interview in Kyiv that discussions with Rudy Giuliani began far earlier than previously known.

Ex-prosecutor general of Ukraine Viktor Lutsenko said that Giuliani first invited him to New York City to discuss “Ukrainian interference in the 2016 elections” and the Bidens in October 2017.

That puts Giuliani’s earliest reported contact with Ukraine nearly a year earlier than previously thought, and means it came when special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation was in full swing. It also places the initial contact between Giuliani and Ukraine at around the time of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s indictment in October 2017.

means it came when special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russian investigation was in full swing.

This is a circus and these people are clowns

One of the rare times coldjoint gets it right.

Turkey has boosted its military positions on the border with Syria after saying it is ready for a long-threatened operation that could target Kurdish forces long allied to the US.

Dozens of military vehicles were sent to the area following a US troop withdrawal from north-eastern Syria.

President Trump defended his move again on Tuesday, saying the Kurds had not been abandoned, calling them "special".

His controversial decision was widely condemned at home and abroad.

Turkey regards the Kurdish militias, which dominate the US-allied Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), as terrorists, and the US pullout was seen as paving the way for an offensive.

Convoys of trucks with armoured personnel carriers and tanks were seen heading to the Turkish border town of Akcakale on Tuesday night. Images of buses carrying personnel were shown by state news agency Anadolu.


Mr Trump said his pullout - described as a "stab in the back" by Kurdish forces who helped defeat Islamic State (IS) in Syria - affected "only 50 soldiers" of some 1,000 US troops in the country.

In a series of tweets, Mr Trump softened his tone, praising Turkey as a trade partner and Nato ally, hours after saying he would "destroy and obliterate" its economy if the country went "off limits".

"We may be in the process of leaving Syria, but in no way have we abandoned the Kurds, who are special people and wonderful fighters," Mr Trump said, adding that the US was helping the Kurds "financially [and with] weapons".

"Any unforced or unnecessary fighting by Turkey will be devastating to their economy and to their very fragile currency," the president said as he described the relationship between the two countries as "very good".

Turkey v Syria's Kurds explained
Who are the Kurds?
Why the battle for northern Syria matters
In a statement, the Pentagon said "unfortunately, Turkey has chosen to act unilaterally" and that the US personnel were removed "to ensure their safety" but that they were not being sent out of Syria.

Turkey says it wants to set up a 480km (300 mile) long and 30km deep "safe zone" along its border with Syria, to resettle up to two million of the more than 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey.

Meanwhile, the White House confirmed that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would visit the US on 13 November at the invitation of President Trump.

Erdogan will invade the Kurdish regions of Syria and Kim will continue to develop missiles because they both know Trump is too weak and spineless to stop them.