monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

The NYT is out to get Trump. That should not be their job.

They are biased, they omit facts favorable to Trump.

In short, they print the crap you haters live for.

I've only heard Fox and Breitbart say nice things about her.

Bias? Um, what "facts" are favorable to Trump?

But in the face of Trump's unceasing war on half the country

If anyone here has a personal relationship with Michael Bloomberg (snip)

Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, asked officials in the budget office after President Trump’s July 25 call with the Ukrainian president whether there was a legal justification for withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine, according to two people briefed on an internal White House review.

The discussions, which took place via email in August, came after the hold on the $391 million had already been put in place. Mr. Mulvaney also asked the officials at the Office of Management and Budget how long the aid could be withheld, three people familiar with the review said.

The emails, which were first reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, were surfaced during a review by the White House Counsel’s Office that is examining the events surrounding the Ukraine call. They raise the question of whether Mr. Mulvaney was seeking after the fact to justify the hold, which is central to Democrats’ impeachment investigation into whether Mr. Trump abused his office for political gain, or whether his request was routine.

An administration official on Sunday played down the significance of Mr.
Mulvaney’s inquiry, saying that anytime the budget office holds money, it produces a legal justification document. Mr. Mulvaney, the official said, was simply asking to review that document.

The person also hinted at growing tension between the budget office and the White House Counsel’s Office, which the person said had never raised questions about the legality of the hold in real time.

“To be clear,” said Rachel Semmel, a budget office spokeswoman, “there was a legal consensus at every step of the way that the money could be withheld in order to conduct the policy review. O.M.B. works closely with agencies on executing the budget. Routine practices and procedures were followed.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

The overarching purpose of the review by the counsel’s office was to clarify the actions of White House officials involved in the call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, and it has helped officials establish a timeline around the withholding of the aid and the call. It originally centered on why John A. Eisenberg, a deputy White House counsel, decided to place a rough transcript of the call in a computer system typically reserved for higher-level secret documents.

On the call, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Zelensky to “do us a favor” and investigate a political rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine had interfered in the 2016 election. The White House has released a rough transcript of the call.

So far, the review has included interviews with a number of White House aides and officials on the National Security Council. The White House Counsel’s Office has also reviewed the system that carries official emails to look for information related to the withheld aid.

Mr. Mulvaney has previously told associates that the aid was released after budget officials raised alarms that the deadline for doing so was approaching.

Officials close to both Mr. Mulvaney and the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone — who have been at odds since the beginning of 2019 — expressed frustration that some of the details of the review had leaked.

VIENNA — They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. One had been indicted on federal bribery charges. The other was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the F.B.I.

And they had one more thing in common: Both had been singled out by Rudolph W. Giuliani and pressed to assist in his wide-ranging hunt for information damaging to one of President Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

That effort culminated in the July 25 phone call between the American and Ukrainian presidents that has taken Mr. Trump to the brink of impeachment and inexorably brought Mr. Giuliani’s Ukrainian shadow campaign into the light.

(...)

• Energy secretary briefed president on Old Testament kings
• Perry: ‘God’s used imperfect people all through history’

Donald Trump met with ridicule when in August he claimed to be “the chosen one”, his apparently messianic self-confidence clashing with a press corps sceptical of the sincerity of his own religious beliefs as well as his behaviour and record in office. He subsequently said he’d been joking.

But his energy secretary, Rick Perry, thinks the president should take himself seriously.

“God’s used imperfect people all through history,” Perry told the Fox News host Ed Henry in a video clip widely shared on Monday. “King David wasn’t perfect, Saul wasn’t perfect, Solomon wasn’t perfect.

“And I actually gave the president a little one-pager” – a possible reference to the short and colourful briefing notes Trump is reported to prefer – “on those Old Testament kings, about a month ago.

“And I shared it with him, I said, ‘Mr President, I know there are people that say, y’know, ‘You said you were the chosen one.’ And, I said: ‘You were.’

“I said, ‘If you’re a believing Christian, you understand God’s plan for the people who rule and judge over us on this planet and our government.’”

Discussing the interview on air, Henry said Perry “thinks at this moment and this time, Donald Trump was sent by God to do great things”.

Henry said Perry also “pointed out to me he believes Barack Obama was sent by God as well, for that moment and that time”.

The notion that Trump is a ruler of less-than-perfect Christian values sent to benefit the godly – a second King Cyrus, perhaps – is common on the religious right.

His own religious commitment seems questionable in the extreme but the thrice-married, porn star- and Playmate-paying, pussy-grabbing, customer-defrauding, disability-mocking, race-baiting, Nazi-sympathising, oft-bankrupt, impeachment-threatened president counts evangelical Christians as a key bloc of support.

Perry, a former governor of Texas and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who like other senior Trump aides has found himself under the shadow of the impeachment inquiry, will step down as energy secretary in December.

The White House has released a rough transcript of the call.

In an interview, Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that he had sought information helpful to Mr. Trump from a member of Mr. Firtash’s original legal team. But, Mr. Giuliani said, “the only thing he could give me was what I already had, hearsay.” Asked if he had then directed his associates to meet with Mr. Firtash, Mr. Giuliani initially said, “I don’t think I can comment,” but later said, “I did not tell Parnas to do anything with Firtash.”

He added, though, that there would be nothing improper about seeking information about the Bidens from the oligarchs. “Where do you think you get information about crime?” he said.

But Chuck Rosenberg, a legal expert and a United States attorney under President George W. Bush, said the “solicitation of information, under these circumstances, and to discredit the president’s political opponent, is at best “crass and ethically suspect.”

He added: “And it is even worse if Mr. Giuliani, either directly or through emissaries acting on his behalf, intimated that pending criminal cases can be ‘fixed’ at the Justice Department. The president’s lawyer seems to be trading on the president’s supervisory authority over the Justice Department, and that is deeply disturbing.”

Mr. Bondy, the lawyer for Mr. Parnas — who was arrested with Mr. Fruman last month on campaign finance-related charges and has signaled a willingness to cooperate with impeachment investigators — said in a statement that all of his client’s actions had been directed by Mr. Giuliani.

“Mr. Parnas reasonably believed Giuliani’s directions reflected the interests and wishes of the president, given Parnas having witnessed and in several instances overheard Mr. Giuliani speaking with the president,” the lawyer said. Mr. Parnas, he added, “is remorseful for involving himself and Mr. Firtash in the president’s self-interested political plot.”

You claim it is "biased" solely based on the words "dig up dirt".

Nothing in the anti-Trump witch-hunting crusade is free of bias.

The only way to get beyond bias would be if legislators would start proposing policies and explaining honest analyses of how the policies will work in order to solicit consent from the GOP.

Quote:

Nothing in the anti-Trump witch-hunting crusade is free of bias.

Ha-ha-haaa! No detectable bias there!

Quote:

The only way to get beyond bias would be if legislators would start proposing policies and explaining honest analyses of how the policies will work in order to solicit consent from the GOP.

The story is not about legislative policy, for christ's sake. Your entire post is superfluous — the points you raise have nothing to do with the investigation of possible criminal conduct by Trump's associates working at his behest.

I am against witch-hunting whether it is directed against Trump or anyone else.