Teresa Hanafin, who writes “Fast Forward” for the Boston Globe, posted the following:
The latest in the impeachment inquiry, aka “Through the Looking-Glass.”
Today congressional investigators hear from Michael McKinley,former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The career diplomat resigned last week, reportedly because of objections to how Ukraine policy was being handled.
Yesterday, George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, told lawmakers that he and other Ukraine experts were shoved aside in dealing with Ukraine policy by Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, back in May.
Who took over the Ukraine portfolio? In a highly unusual move, Trump, via Mulvaney, put EU ambassador Gordon Sondland,Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry in charge — who called themselves the “three amigos” — and then inserted his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, into the process.
As The New York Times points out, the parade of witnesses who have given depositions recently have told a consistent story: That Trump tried to manipulate US policy in Ukraine to serve his political interests, circumventing career diplomats and policy experts, moves that raised alarms in the White House and throughout the executive branch.
Meanwhile, the stonewalling continues: Giuliani, VP Mike Pence, and officials with the Pentagon and the Office of Management and Budget — on orders from Trump — all notified the House yesterday that they will defy congressional subpoenas and refuse to hand over documents that investigators have requested.
And this video clip would be funny if it weren’t so disturbing: A CNN reporter reminds Lindsey Graham, GOP senator from South Carolina and a top Trump lackey, that 20 years ago he declared that ignoring a congressional subpoena is an impeachable offense. Even before she finishes her question, Graham starts softly moaning, apparently in pain over his hypocrisy. He then blurts out, “Nothing’s changed,” and ducks into an office. So apparently he believes Trump should be impeached. As soon as he makes that announcement, I’ll let you know.
Pence and Pompeo are on their way to Turkey to try to convince president Recep Tayyip Erdogan to stop his military attacks in northern Syria. (Erdogan at first said he wouldn’t meet with them, but apparently has changed his mind.) We assume that Erdogan will tell them that he invaded Syria because Trump told him he could, but we’ll see.
Erdogan certainly isn’t going to be persuaded by the weak sanctions Trump imposed, which one US investment strategist called “window dressing.” In fact, Turkey’s currency and stock markets both rose yesterday because investors were relieved that the sanctions weren’t very harsh.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
What a book deal these people will get. They can write from their jail cells.
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Federal law now prohibits criminals from profiting on books about their crimes. It’s the criminals like Trump, not yet convicted, who can profit on books falsely presenting their spectacular failures and criminal activity as enormous successes.
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Bob There they go again . . . those silly laws. CBK
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“[M]eet it is I set it down/That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain,” says Hamlet.
Imagine the chagrin of the long, long list of high-powered corporate executives, politicians, and members of royal families who had availed themselves of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficked teenaged prostitutes, many of them under the age of consent, when Epstein was arrested again. They had thought that Acosta had made the problem go away by giving Epstein a sweetheart deal, and receiving, for his pains, an appointment by Trump to the position of Labor Secretary.
When, eventually, the definitive history of Trump’s crimes is written, its author will be faced with a question: should he or she tell the story chronologically, or should it be divided into separate chapters on money laundering, stiffing creditors, loan fraud, sex crimes, tax evasion, treason (serving as an asset of a foreign power), obstruction of justice, misppropriation of charitable funds, violation of the emoluments clauses of the Constitution, violation of campaign finance laws, and crimes against humanity (kidnapping, separation of parents and children, negligent homicide, denial/obstruction of legal rights such as the right to seek asylum)? Decisions, decisions.
Much of this, ofc, will never be known because powerful people have a considerable interest in burying the details, including ones in the law enforcement and intelligence services who failed, for so long, to bring this mobster, Trump, to account.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/06/23/donald-trump-rape-lawsuit/
Now, what sort of person knows about all, or most, of this and gives it a pass? Welcome to the Republican Limbo Party in 2019. How low, how low, how low will we go?
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cx: Imagine the chagrin of the long, long list of high-powered corporate executives, academics and public intellectuals, celebrity lawyers, politicians, and members of royal families who had availed themselves of Jeffrey Epstein’s trafficked teenaged prostitutes, many of them under the age of consent, when Epstein was arrested again.
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Bob,
New York recently passed a law eliminating the statute of limitations for people who were sexually abused as minors.
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Awesome!!!! This should be national.
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Gee, I left out incitement to terrorist acts (telling his aides to have border patrol officers shoot legal asylum seekers).
So hard to keep up. Yes, he is a part-time president, but his diseased brain teems with maleficence, often over tweets at 2:00 in the morning.
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Hahaha I love your depiction of the historian’s choices in how to tell this story. I’m thinking he might need readers to download a series of interconnecting animated charts!
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Bob
Democracy: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
The Religious Right: “Divided, we fall.”
Trump: “What’s in it for me? And can someone look up ‘Whistleblower” in the phone book?”
Oligarchs: “Climate change? . . . but I don’t own the whole world yet.”
Felicity Huffman: “A week can seem like a lifetime.”
Fifty-two percent: “Lock them up; and make America great again.” CBK
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Pompeo was the subject of the recent State Department’s webpage praising Christian leadership.
I presume Pompeo’s visit to Erdogan is window dressing, trying to shore up voter support among evangelicals, Catholics and other religious denominations who voted 60-80% for Trump.
The “Christians” e.g. Pompeo, Pence (a Koch puppet), and the Federalist Society have a single goal- authoritarian government in America. Vote Christian, “the religious are under attack”,… is the sales pitch.
The Kurds were sacrificed for Vlad which shows how little the “Christian” sales pitch has to do with GOP oligarch reality.
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“Erdogan will tell them that he invaded Syria because Trump told him he could,”
And Trump did that in no uncertain terms.
This is the problem with all these US military interventions: once you are in a country, it’s extremely difficult to pull out.
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