Thursday, November 21, 2019
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
NYT Nov 5, 2019: Sondland text message in early September to Taylor said president was clear there was no quid pro quo
A crucial witness in the impeachment inquiry reversed himself this week ...
That admission, included in a four-page sworn statement released on Tuesday, directly contradicted his testimony to investigators last month, when he said he “never” thought there was any precondition on the aid. ...
Mr. Sondland had said in a text message exchange in early September with William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, that the president had been clear there was no quid pro quo between the aid and investigations of the Bidens. But Mr. Sondland testified last month that he was only repeating what Mr. Trump had told him, leaving open the question of whether he believed the president. ...
“I presumed that the aid suspension had become linked to the proposed anticorruption statement,” Mr. Sondland said.
In his closed-door interview last month, Mr. Sondland portrayed himself as a well-meaning and at times unwitting player who was trying to conduct American foreign policy with Ukraine with the full backing of the State Department while Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, repeatedly inserted himself at the behest of the president. He also said repeatedly that he could not remember things, including details about the Sept. 1 meeting, according to the 375-page transcript of his testimony.
“And you had never thought there was a precondition to the aid?” one of the Republican investigators asked Mr. Sondland. “Is that correct?”
“Never,” Mr. Sondland said, adding that he “was dismayed when it was held up, but I didn’t know why.”
More here.
Marie Yovanovitch, Obama's US Ambassador to Ukraine, blocked visas for Ukrainian law enforcement in 2018 before Trump fired her in 2019
Ukrainian law enforcement officials believe they have evidence of
wrongdoing by American Democrats and their allies in Kiev, ranging from
2016 election interference to obstructing criminal probes. But, they
say, they’ve been thwarted in trying to get the Trump Justice Department
to act.
Kostiantyn Kulyk, deputy head of the Prosecutor General’s
International Legal Cooperation Department, told me he and other senior
law enforcement officials tried unsuccessfully since last year to get
visas from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev to deliver their evidence to
Washington.
“We
were supposed to share this information during a working trip to the
United States,” Kulyk told me in a wide-ranging interview. “However, the
[U.S.] ambassador blocked us from obtaining a visa. She didn’t
explicitly deny our visa, but also didn’t give it to us.”
One
focus of Ukrainian investigators, Kulyk said, has been money spirited
unlawfully out of Ukraine and moved to the United States by businessmen
friendly to the prior, pro-Russia regime of Viktor Yanukovych.
Ukrainian
businessmen “authorized payments for lobbying efforts directed at the
U.S. government,” he told me. “In addition, these payments were made
from funds that were acquired during the money-laundering operation. We
have information that a U.S. company was involved in these payments.”
That company is tied to one or more prominent Democrats, Ukrainian
officials insist.
In another instance, he said, Ukrainian
authorities gathered evidence that money paid to an American Democrat
allegedly was hidden by Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau
(NABU) during the 2016 election under pressure from U.S. officials. “In
the course of this investigation, we found that there was a situation
during which influence was exerted on the NABU, so that the name of [the
American] would not be mentioned,” he said.
More here.
Ukraine Foreign Minister denied a week ago that Sondland linked aid to opening an investigation of Biden
“Ambassador Sondland did not tell us, and certainly did not tell me,
about a connection between the assistance and the investigations. You
should ask him,” Prystaiko said about Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to
the European Union. ... “I have never seen a direct relationship between investigations and
security assistance,” Prystaiko was quoted as saying by Interfax. “Yes,
the investigations were mentioned, you know, in the conversation of the
presidents. But there was no clear connection between these events.”
More here.
Still my favorite illustration of quid pro quo comes from Ann Coulter's observation about Hillary
Hillary's main claim to fame is that she was married to the horny hick,
and then stood by him when he was impeached for the most embarrassing
sex scandal in history. By feminist logic, that meant Hillary was owed the presidency. Quid pro 'ho.
April 22, 2015, here.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Queen of Bribery: Donors to Clinton Foundation got special, expedited access
Still selling the Lincoln bedroom:
Crown Prince Salman of Bahrain requested a meeting with Secretary of
State Clinton, he was forced to go through the Clinton Foundation for an
appointment. Abedin advised Band that when she went through “normal
channels” at State, Clinton declined to meet. After Band intervened,
however, the meeting was set up within forty-eight hours.
More here.
Anal cancer cases and deaths explode in USA 16 years after Supreme Court overturns anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas
The United States is experiencing a “dramatic and concerning” rise in the rate of new anal cancer cases and deaths from the disease . . . The incidence of squamous cell carcinoma of the anus — the most common type of anal cancer — rose 2.7 percent PER YEAR over a recent 15-year period, while anal cancer mortality rates increased 3.1 percent PER YEAR during that time [emphasis added]. At this rate, the disease can be considered as one of the fastest accelerating causes of cancer incidence and mortality in the U.S. ... “It’s really hard to understand what might be causing the rise in incidence and mortality,” [the study’s lead author Ashish Deshmukh] added.
Political correctness kills, as does Nemesis. They might actually be the same thing.
More here.
LGBT activist pissed off Census Bureau finds same sex households are only 1 percent of total in USA
“It’s significant progress and we are excited about it, but we’re really missing quite a lot of community data,” said Meghan Maury, policy director for the National LGBTQ Task Force. ... [C]ensus officials raised concerns that mistakes stemming from people who did correctly identify their gender may have inflated the number of same-sex couples in the country.
More here.
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Vindman lied again: Said his boss Morrison was not available to report his concerns, but Morrison says he got edits to the Ukraine call from Vindman the very same day
That means Vindman by-passed his boss. Looks like following chain of command is only aspirational with Vindman.
Vindman is so important in his own mind that he's testified Ukraine asked him three times in 2019 to be THEIR Defense Minister
Ukraine must think Vindman is more Ukrainian than American.
Now why would they think that?
Now why would they think that?
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