Dear Commons Community,

Mark Sandy, a longtime career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to break ranks and testify tomorrow in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, potentially filling in important details on the holdup of military aid to Ukraine.  As reported by the Washington Post:

“Mark Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell T. Vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear. The White House has called the impeachment inquiry unconstitutional and ordered administration officials not to participate.

Unlike these other OMB officials, Sandy is a career employee, not one appointed by the president. He has worked at the agency off and on for over a decade, under presidents of both parties, climbing the ranks to his current role as deputy associate director for national security programs.

“If he is subpoenaed, he will appear,” Sandy’s lawyer, Barbara “Biz” Van Gelder, said Thursday evening.

Sandy is expected to testify during a closed-door deposition, which is not open to the public. Typically, witnesses in the impeachment inquiry have been served with subpoenas immediately before their depositions are scheduled to begin, an approach Democrats say is designed to give them cover against an administration that has ordered officials not to comply with the inquiry.”

Sandy’s decision to testify is interesting mainly because he is the first individual outside the State Department sphere to do so and also because it appears he is defying a White House order not to participate in the impeachment proceedings.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has upped the ante in the impeachment case against President Trump, accusing the president of committing bribery when he withheld vital military assistance from Ukraine at the same time he was seeking its commitment to publicly investigate his political rivals. Her comments came yesterday after the first public impeachment hearing on Wednesday. As reported by the New York Times.

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry, and that the president abused his power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival — a clear attempt by the president to give himself an advantage in the 2020 election,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference in the Capitol.

The speaker’s explicit allegation of bribery, a misdeed specifically identified in the Constitution as an impeachable offense, was significant. Even as Ms. Pelosi said that no final decision had been made on whether to impeach Mr. Trump, it suggested that Democrats were moving toward a more specific set of charges that could be codified in articles of impeachment in the coming weeks. It also indicated that Democrats were working to put a simple name to the president’s alleged wrongdoing that would resonate with the public.”

This sounds like a smart move by Pelosi!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I watched the first part of the impeachment hearings yesterday and heard two very credible career government employees give testimony about the Ukraine scandal.  I was appalled by the smoke and confusion that was attempted by Republicans to shield President Trump.  Nicholas Kristof, New York Times columnist, concludes that if Trump were anyone else,he would be fired or subject to a criminal investigation.

Below is the entire column.

Read it!

Tony

—————————————————————————————–

New York Times

If Trump Were Anyone Else..

Nicholas Kristof

November 14, 2019

As the impeachment process unfolds, President Trump’s defenders will throw up dust clouds of complexity. But as the first day of open hearings suggested, it’s simple. Forget about Ukraine and diplomacy for a moment.

Suppose that a low-ranking government official, the head of a branch Social Security office, intervened to halt a widow’s long-approved Social Security payments. The widow, alarmed that without that income she might lose her home, would call the branch director to ask for help.

“I’d like you to do me a favor, though,” the director might respond. He would suggest that her Social Security payments could resume, but he’d like the widow to give him her late husband’s collection of rare coins.

Everybody would see that as an outrageous abuse of power. Whether we’re Republicans or Democrats, we would all recognize that it’s inappropriate for a federal official to use his or her power over government resources to extract personal benefits. The Social Security official could say that the payments eventually resumed, or assert that the widow’s son had engaged in skulduggery — but he’d be out of a job in an instant and would face a criminal investigation.

Likewise, imagine that a high school principal expelled the police chief’s son but offered to readmit the boy if the police department would just open a criminal investigation into his ex-wife before their child custody hearing.

Or suppose that the head of a public hospital offered to provide free medical care to employees of a construction company if it remodeled his kitchen?

Or what if I suggested to a university president that I was planning some glowing columns about his great institution and then asked for “a favor,” noting that my child was applying for admission.

In every case, we might disagree about whether to call this bribery, extortion or a quid pro quo, and might disagree about precisely which statute was violated, but there is no doubt this would be a firing offense and perhaps lead to a criminal investigation.

Shouldn’t we hold the president of the United States to as high a standard as the head of a Social Security office, a principal, a hospital director and a journalist?

Indeed, the Ukraine situation is still more insidious. Trump’s bullying of Ukraine and suspension of military assistance benefited our strategic rival, Russia, and it came as Ukrainians were dying in the fight for their country’s survival after a Russian invasion.

My father grew up near Chernivtsi in what is now western Ukraine — then part of Romania — and I’m appalled to think of Ukrainians dying unnecessarily because Trump was playing politics with American assistance. In effect, Trump aided Russia and perhaps killed Ukrainians for political gain.

Remember all this as we hear Trump’s defenders try to divert attention to the whistle-blower, to Hunter Biden or to anything else. If the Republicans want to oversee an investigation of how children of American government officials monetize their parents, that’s a worthwhile effort. But I doubt Ivanka Trump agrees.

The first witnesses before the impeachment hearings were two distinguished foreign policy experts with a long commitment to public service and no history of partisanship. One, George Kent, noted that “there has been a George Kent sworn to defend the Constitution continuously for nearly 60 years.” And Ambassador William Taylor, a Vietnam veteran who was appointed acting ambassador to Ukraine by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, emphasized, “I am not here to take one side or the other, or to advocate for any particular outcome of these proceedings.”

Their testimony was blunt. President Trump withheld not only desperately needed security assistance to Ukraine but also a White House meeting with the Ukrainian president — unless he committed to investigating the Bidens.

“I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor recalled advising other ambassadors involved in Ukraine.

Taylor also revealed something new and important. On July 26, another ambassador, Gordon Sondland, telephoned Trump, who asked about “the investigations” by Ukraine. A Taylor staff member asked Sondland what Trump thought about Ukraine, and Sondland replied that Trump cared more about the investigations into the Bidens.

Republicans on Wednesday tried to suggest that perhaps the impeachment investigation was all a misunderstanding based on secondhand accounts. But that July 26 phone call suggests that Trump was directly pushing for the investigations as his top priority with Ukraine.

Trump continues to be strongly backed by House Republicans and Fox News. That’s the biggest difference from the Watergate hearings that ultimately led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. There was no Fox News then, and Republicans and Democrats alike were loyal primarily to the country and its institutions rather than to an individual.

That may no longer be true. Brace yourself in the coming weeks for smoke screens of obfuscation, but anchor yourself to this thought: What if the wrongdoing simply involved the head of a Social Security office, a principal, a hospital director or a journalist? Why allow a president to get away with what would be a firing offense for anyone else?

Top 25 Colleges Return on Investment – 40 Years Later

Dear Commons Community.

A new report from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce calculates return on investment (ROI) on colleges forty years after graduation.  “A First Try at ROI,” ranks 4,500 two- and four-year colleges that primarily offer bachelor’s or associate degrees or certificates by their return on investment 10 and 40 years after enrollment. To measure ROI, the study uses net present value, which estimates how future earnings are valued in the present. The measure, calculated using data from the College Scorecard, essentially weighs the cost of paying for college against what students could potentially earn down the line.

The report offers detailed data about specific institutions: Colleges that mainly award bachelor’s degrees pay off over the long term, even though students typically take on more debt to attend four-year institutions than do those who go to two-year ones. And a credential from a two-year college or a certificate program has some of the highest return on investment in the short term, or a decade after enrollment.

If you go to the report website, you can enter any college in the study and find out its return on investment.

Give it a look!

Tony

John Bolton

Dear Commons Community,

Former national security adviser John Bolton blasted Donald Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and son-in-law Jared Kushner during a private speech last week and suggested his former boss’ approach to U.S. policy on Turkey is motivated by personal or financial interests.  As reported by NBC News:

“According to six people who were there, Bolton also questioned the merits of Trump applying his business acumen to foreign policy, saying such issues can’t be approached like the win-or-lose edict that drives real estate deals: When one doesn’t work, you move on to the next. The description was part of a broader portrait Bolton outlined of a president who lacks understanding of the interconnected nature of relationships in foreign policy and the need for consistency, these people said.

Bolton has kept a low public profile since he left the administration on Sept. 10, and Democrats’ efforts to have him testify in the House impeachment inquiry into the president have stalled. But his pointed comments, at a private gathering last Wednesday at Morgan Stanley’s global investment event in Miami, painted a dark image of a president and his family whose potential personal gain is at the heart of decision-making, according to people who were present for his remarks.

Bolton served as Trump’s national security adviser for 17 months. The Ukraine scandal began to unfold about a week after his contentious departure. Trump said he’d fired him, though Bolton said he had resigned.

Multiple people who attended Bolton’s private speech in Miami did not recall him mentioning Ukraine but said he told attendees that he had kept a resignation letter in his desk for three months. Bolton declined to comment for this article.

Bolton is a potential linchpin witness in the inquiry into Trump’s efforts to elicit help from the Ukrainian government to investigate the family of former Vice President Joe Biden, given his central role in the White House during that time. The impeachment inquiry moves to public testimony this week.

Current and former administration officials have testified about Bolton’s strong opposition to the Ukraine pressure effort, which was led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and allegedly involved withholding military aid and a presidential meeting until the Ukrainian government publicly committed to investigations, including into 2016 U.S. election interference and a business associated with Biden’s son Hunter.

Bolton’s lawyer teased his client’s value last week in a letter to House Democrats that noted that the former national security adviser had been present for “many relevant meetings and conversations” on Ukraine, including some that have yet to be disclosed to investigators. His lawyer, Charles Cooper, said Bolton is willing to testify if a federal court approves it, essentially ruling that he can defy the White House’s position that he can’t speak to Congress.

Bolton, a long-time foreign policy hawk who also served in the administration of President George W. Bush, expressed support in his private remarks for Trump’s stance against China on trade, people present said. But Trump and Bolton had a litany of policy differences — on Iran, North Korea, Syria and, apparently, Ukraine.

Bolton told the gathering of Morgan Stanley’s largest hedge fund clients that he was most frustrated with Trump over his handling of Turkey, people who were present said. Noting the broad bipartisan support in Congress to sanction Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan purchased a Russian missile defense system, Bolton said Trump’s resistance to the move was unreasonable, four people present for his speech said.

Bolton said he believes there is a personal or business relationship dictating Trump’s position on Turkey because none of his advisers are aligned with him on the issue, the people present said.

The Trump Organization has a property in Istanbul, and the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump attended the opening with Erdogan in 2012. Though it’s a leasing agreement for use of the Trump name, Trump himself said in a 2015 interview that the arrangement presented “a little conflict of interest” should he be elected.

During an Oct. 6 phone call with Erdogan, Trump agreed to pull back U.S. troops from northeast Syria so Turkish forces could launch an attack against America’s Kurdish allies in the area. The presence of U.S. forces had deterred Erdogan from invading Syria, which he had threatened to do for years. Trump’s decision, followed by an order for all U.S. troops to exit Syria, was widely criticized even among the president’s Republican allies and was seen by many as a gift to the Turkish leader.

Erdogan is set to visit the White House today.

Like other former Trump advisers, Bolton said regardless of how much evidence is provided to Trump that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, the president refuses to take any action because he views any move against Moscow as giving credence to the notion that his election is invalid, the people present for Bolton’s remarks said.

At one point in his closed-door remarks, Bolton was asked what he thinks will happens in January 2021 if Trump is re-elected, people present for his remarks said. Bolton responded by taking a swipe at Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump — both of whom are senior White House advisers — and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, three people familiar with his remarks said.

Bolton said Trump could go full isolationist — with the faction of the Republican Party that aligns with Paul’s foreign policy views taking over the GOP — and could withdraw the U.S. from NATO and other international alliances, three people present for his remarks said.

He also posited that Kushner and Ivanka Trump could convince the president to rewrite his legacy and nominate a liberal like Lawrence Tribe — a Harvard Law professor who has questioned Trump’s fitness for office and was a legal adviser to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign — to the Supreme Court, the people present for Bolton’s speech said.

Bolton said, with an eye roll that suggested he doesn’t take them seriously, that Kushner and Ivanka Trump could do so in an attempt to prove they had real influence and were in the White House representing the people they want to be in social circles with home in New York City, the people present for his remarks said.

Those present said that at that point, the audience appeared shocked.”

Shocked indeed!  I wish I was there to hear Bolton’s talk.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

At least one branch of the federal government is not afraid of the firearms industry and the National Rifle Association (NRA).  Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Remington Arms Co’s bid to escape a lawsuit by families of victims aiming to hold the gun maker liable for its marketing of the assault-style rifle used in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre that killed 20 children and six adults.  The justices turned away Remington’s appeal of a ruling by Connecticut’s top court to let the lawsuit proceed despite a federal law that broadly shields firearms manufacturers from liability when their weapons are used in crimes. The lawsuit will move forward at a time of high passions in the country over the issue of gun control.  As reported by Reuters.

“The family members of nine people slain and one survivor of the Sandy Hook massacre filed the lawsuit in 2014. Remington was backed in the case by a number of gun rights groups and lobbying organizations including the powerful National Rifle Association, which is closely aligned with Republicans including President Donald Trump. The NRA called the lawsuit “company-killing.”

The Dec. 14, 2012 rampage was carried out by a 20-year-old gunman named Adam Lanza, who shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and fired on the first-graders and adult staff before fatally shooting himself as police closed in.

The United States has experienced a succession of mass shootings in recent decades, including several that have staggered the public such as the 2017 attack at a Las Vegas concert that killed 58 and one at a nightclub in Orlando in 2016 that killed 49. Assault-type rifles have been a recurring feature in many of the massacres.

The U.S. Congress has not enacted new gun control laws in the wake of the mass shootings largely because of Republican opposition.

The plaintiffs have argued that Remington bears some of the blame for the Sandy Hook tragedy. They said the Bushmaster AR-15 gun that Lanza used – a semi-automatic civilian version of the U.S. military’s M-16 – had been illegally marketed by the company to civilians as a combat weapon for waging war and killing human beings.

The plaintiffs said that Connecticut’s consumer protection law forbids advertising that promotes violent, criminal behavior and yet even though these rifles have become the “weapon of choice for mass shooters” Remington’s ads “continued to exploit the fantasy of an all-conquering lone gunman.” One of them, they noted, stated, “Forces of opposition, bow down.”

Remington argued that it should be insulated from the lawsuit by a 2005 federal law known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which was aimed at blocking a wave of lawsuits damaging to the firearms industry.

The case hinges on an exception to this shield for claims in which a gun manufacturer knowingly violates the law to sell or market guns. Remington has argued that the Connecticut Supreme Court interpreted the exception too broadly when it decided to let the case go ahead.

Though the case does not directly implicate the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the NRA told the justices in a filing that the lawsuit could put gun manufacturers out of business, making the right meaningless.

A state trial court initially threw out the claims but the Connecticut Supreme Court revived the lawsuit in March, prompting Remington’s appeal.”

This is a small but significant decision for sane gun control and bad news for the NRA.

Tony

Donald Trump and Nikki Haley

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday I almost blogged about Nikki Haley’s new book, With All Due Respect, until I read several excerpts and realized that I was not in agreement with one of her basic premises that White House staffers owe allegiance to the President.  I was uncomfortable with this position thinking that all members of the federal government owe their first allegiance to the country.   Today, Michelle Cottle, a member of the New York Times editorial board, has an opinion piece that takes a similar position.  Cottle’s premise is that it’s not that top White House aides sought to undermine President Trump, it’s that they thought they had to.  Below is Cottle’s entire piece.  I agree with her position fully.

Tony

New York Times

Nikki Haley Ignores the Real Problem in the White House

By Michelle Cottle

November 12, 2019

Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, has been causing quite a stir with her new memoir, in which she recounts how, during her time in the Trump administration, other top officials lobbied her to help them undermine the president.

In “With All Due Respect,” Ms. Haley writes that Rex Tillerson, then the secretary of state, and John Kelly, then the White House chief of staff, considered some of Mr. Trump’s policies so harebrained that they ignored his directives and began recruiting other aides to derail his agenda.

“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” she writes. “Tillerson went on to tell me the reason he resisted the president’s decisions was because, if he didn’t, people would die.”

Ms. Haley makes clear that what disturbed her was Mr. Tillerson’s and Mr. Kelly’s arrogance. “It was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn’t know what he was doing.”

Ms. Haley went further in an interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News that aired Sunday, lecturing her former colleagues on how they should have handled such disputes. “Instead of saying that to me, they should have been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan,” she said. “It should have been, go tell the president what your differences are and quit if you don’t like what he’s doing. But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing, and it goes against the Constitution and it goes against what the American people want. And it was offensive.”

Rather than being upset that top aides were conspiring to undermine Mr. Trump, she really should be more concerned that we have a president whom top aides saw as a threat to the country.

It’s tempting to dismiss Ms. Haley — who is thought to harbor presidential ambitions — as an opportunist trying to sound high-minded while still remaining in the good graces of Mr. Trump and, more important, of the Republican voters who adore him. In recent interviews, she has struggled to at once criticize and rationalize some of Mr. Trump’s more outrageous behavior. For instance, she told CBS that, while she considered it “not appropriate” when the president told four Democratic congresswomen, three of them born in the United States, to “go back” to their home countries, she said she could “appreciate where he was coming from” in his frustration with their criticisms.

Ms. Haley has also staked out a dubious defense of the president in the impeachment investigation. “So, do I think it’s not good practice to talk to foreign governments about investigating Americans? Yes,” she told The Washington Post. “Do I think the president did something that warrants impeachment? No, because the aid flowed. And, in turn, the Ukrainians didn’t follow up with the investigation.”

As Ms. Haley sees it, the president may have tried to subvert national security for his own political end, but he failed, so where’s the harm?

On one key point, however, Ms. Haley is correct: If Mr. Tillerson and Mr. Kelly believed that Mr. Trump posed a serious threat to the national interest, they should have refused to continue enabling him, resigned and gone public with their concerns.

The same could be said of the other professed “adults in the room” who have told themselves that they serve the public by moderating Mr. Trump’s worst impulses.

It’s not as though Ms. Haley is the first person to tell of Trump aides working to contain their boss. In 2017, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Tillerson to help drop a criminal investigation of a Turkish-Iranian gold trader who was a client of Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. Mr. Tillerson refused to interfere with a criminal probe and immediately conveyed his concerns to Mr. Kelly, according to multiple news reports.

Apparently this was not a first for Mr. Tillerson. “So often,” he said at a public appearance in December, “the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it.’ And I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’”

In his 2018 book “Fear,” Bob Woodward detailed how Gary Cohn, then the president’s top economic adviser, removed a letter from Mr. Trump’s desk to prevent the president from pulling the United States out of a trade agreement with South Korea. Mr. Cohn later plotted a similar theft to prevent Mr. Trump from withdrawing from Nafta.

Mr. Woodward also wrote of an episode from April 2017 in which Mr. Trump called Jim Mattis, then the secretary of defense, and ordered the assassination of Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, in retaliation for Mr. Assad’s chemical attack on his own people. Mr. Mattis ignored the president’s order and had the Pentagon draw up options for airstrikes — which is what Mr. Trump eventually went with.

Mr. Woodward termed such efforts “an administrative coup d’état.”

Then there’s Anonymous, the White House insider who wrote an Op-Ed essay for The Times in September 2018, followed by a book to be released later this month, positioning the author as part of a noble “resistance” within the administration. These officials supported many of the president’s policies, Anonymous wrote in the essay:

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

This kind of thinking may help the Tillersons and Kellys sleep better at night. But it is a weak excuse for propping up a president who continues to erode democratic norms and the rule of law.

Gary Edson, a former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, recently noted in The Atlantic that “by prioritizing their political agenda over the danger Trump poses, the members of the putative resistance within the administration put party and personal gain before principle and country.”

As for Anonymous’s claim that some aides even considered invoking the 25th Amendment but were loath to spark a constitutional crisis, Mr. Edson is not impressed: “Of course, that is precisely what Trump himself has now done. Yet, the anonymous author still hides in the shadows, just as congressional Republicans hide behind process, both implicitly propping up a morally bankrupt regime.”

If members of the Trump administration need a role model in courage, they don’t need to listen to Ms. Haley. They can look to the administration officials stepping forward to testify before Congress in the impeachment investigation. People like Bill Taylor and Alexander Vindman have put their reputations, careers and personal safety on the line to bring Mr. Trump’s misbehavior out of the shadows.

They are precisely the kind of truth tellers that Ms. Haley should be praising.

Dear Commons Community,

One of the saddest aspects of the Ukraine investigation and impeachment deliberations has been the silence of so many Republican lawmakers.   With public impeachment hearings set to begin this week, a group calling itself  Republicans for the Rule of Law is urging GOP lawmakers to stand up to President Donald Trump as some in the party did to President Richard M. Nixon during Watergate.  As reported by the Huffington Post.

“History Is Watching” is the title of a new commercial from Republicans for the Rule of Law, a GOP group led by conservative Bill Kristol and critical of Trump. The spot highlights comments from Republican lawmakers such as Rep. Lawrence Hogan (R-Md.) who took on Nixon during the hearings.

“When Nixon abused the power of the presidency, there were those who defended the president,” the voiceover notes. “Others defended the Constitution.”

The ad is set to run on Wednesday morning ― the day of the first public hearings ― in Washington during “Fox & Friends,” reputed to be Trump’s favorite show, and promoted digitally in the home districts of GOP lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee.

Chris Truax, the group’s spokesperson, said Republicans who stood against Nixon were “remembered for their courage and integrity.”

“History has not been kind to their colleagues who buried their heads in the sand and refused to acknowledge the facts,” he said. “Republicans should study the lessons of Watergate very closely.”

Too many Republicans have buried their heads in the sand and have betrayed their country in favor of their party.

Tony

Lev Parnas

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times is reporting this morning that Lev Parnas, one of Rudy Giuliani’s associates has flipped and has said that he told the incoming Ukrainian leadership earlier this year to announce an investigation into the Bidens in exchange for U.S. military aid.  As reported:

“Parnas allegedly traveled to Kyiv just before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was inaugurated in May and told the incoming government to announce an investigation into President Donald Trump’s political rival Joe Biden, otherwise the U.S. would freeze military aid to the country, the Ukrainian-American businessman’s attorney Joseph A. Bondy told The New York Times in a report published Sunday.

Also contingent on the investigation announcement reportedly was Vice President Mike Pence’s attendance at Zelensky’s inauguration ceremony, according to Bondy. Pence never ended up attending Zelensky’s inauguration, according to the Times.

The remarks to the newspaper are one of the first signs that Parnas has flipped on Trump and his personal attorney in the impeachment investigation surrounding the United States president’s attempted extortion of Ukraine. The warning to Ukrainian leadership was allegedly at the direction of Giuliani, whom Bondy said Parnas believed to be acting under Trump’s instruction.

The business associate said Nov. 4 that he would be willing to testify in the House impeachment probe, a change of heart after Parnas refused to comply with House committees’ requests in October. The reconsideration came after Trump denied to reporters that he knew Parnas.

Parnas and fellow Soviet-born business associate Igor Fruman were arrested in October on charges of using a shell company to make straw donations to a pro-Trump election committee and other Republican candidates like former Rep. Pete Sessions (Texas). They pleaded not guilty, though the indictments did not mention any issues related to the impeachment investigation.

Giuliani has said that Parnas and Fruman assisted him in pursuing unsubstantiated allegations that Biden pushed for a Ukrainian prosecutor’s ouster to benefit his son Hunter, who used to serve on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. But Giuliani has denied that Parnas delivered a warning to incoming Ukrainian leadership at his direction, according to the Times.

Giuliani himself is under investigation over allegations of illegally engaging in foreign lobbying in connection with the Ukraine scandal. That investigation stemmed from the probe into Parnas and Fruman, though Giuliani has denied any wrongdoing.

Fruman’s attorney John M. Dowd told the Times that the two were only seeking a meeting with Zelensky and that there was no discussion of withholding military aid or setting up terms.

Trump suspended nearly $400 million in congressionally approved U.S. military aid to Ukraine just before his July 25 call with Zelensky, in which he pressured him to investigate the Bidens as well as false claims that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election instead of Russia.”

Another domino is about to fall!

Tony

Dawn Marie Picciano Divano

Dear Commons Community,

Today we honor all the men and women who served in our armed forces. 

We are a better nation because of them.

Tony