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chernoblank · 5 years

Note

Some day, tell us about stories incubating in WIPland, like a Neutral Evil version of you

Oh sure! I’ll do it for Chernobyl, since it’s the fandom we share.

WIPs I abandoned (enter at your own risk):

5 times two of Boris, Ulana and Valery almost had sex with each other, and the one time they did

All pairs, Abandoned at 5k

Technically I DID publish the second part of this as my latest Valana (Deer in the headlights), but it was originally divided into 5+1 parts. In each of the first 5, they fantasized very vividly about fucking the other until something made them snap and realize they’d been imagining stuff, which is very very embarrassing, and entirely inappropriate. So all the parts had smut, except some of them were imagined.

Valery fantasizing about Ulana when he asks her to go to Moscow in the bar scene

Ulana fantasizing about Valery when he hosts her in Moscow

Boris fantasizing about Valery one time they got drunk in Pripyat

Boris fantasizing about Ulana after they fight in the abandoned building

Valery fantasizing about Boris in Vienna (this was going to include an actual kiss)

And 1. Ulana and Boris get together, in the depressing aftermath

I mean, in theory I’d still love to write all this (especially especially the Vienna Valoris, possibly going all the way), and it was only abandoned last month, but the lack of feedback in the fandom (plus considering I write het) made it not worth the effort, really. Also, this fic was supposed to use a lot of ideas from the other discarded WIPs in this list.

Boris and Ulana hate sex after the abandoned building

Uloris. Abandoned only at 500 words, but I had it all mapped out until the end, very annoying

After the tense meeting in the abandoned building, they have to stay in Pripyat for one night, and Boris corners Ulana and pushes his way into her room. They fight some more, Ulana goads him into admitting he’s into Valery, it’s very dub-con that turns to very very very con in the middle of it. They are really enjoying themselves but then they notice a movement in the balcony: Valery heard fighting, thought it was maybe the KGB attacking Ulana so he tried to come in the room, saw what was happening, and stayed for the show. He is now calmly smoking a cigarette. It was going to end with B and U very mortified but also wondering what this means for the future. This was abandoned because I found a more satisfying way to write Uloris, I guess, but damn I really liked this idea.

Groundhog day AU

Valana. Abandoned at 900 words because lost motivation

This was a groundhog day AU where Valery relives April 25, 1986 over and over until he figures out what it is he has to do to stop the disaster. He tries many things, like going to Pripyat himself, trying to reach Boris (and getting ignored). Nothing works. One day he decides to just take the train to Minsk on a whim, he buys flowers for Ulana and shows up at her lab. She knows his name but thinks he’s lost his marbles, but Dmitri convinces her to at least listen to the man over coffee. I was going to have him convince her that stuff is going to happen at Chernobyl, and you know her, she jumps on her car, they have a long drive there and manage somehow to stop the stupid test. Over the course of their daytrip, he confesses the groundhog day situation, Ulana doesn’t’ believe him at first but he sure knows a lot about her and there’s a lot of familiarity there, and it was going to end with Ulana asking if they were something, in his alternate universe (they weren’t, but Valery wished they were).

It had lovely things like:

“There’s a man here to see you,” Dmitri says, sounding a little bewildered. “He has flowers.”

“What?” Ulana says, lifting her eyes from the paper she’s reading. This sounds like a joke, but Dmitri has the sense of humor of a dried cod. “Who?”

"Valery Legasov, from the Kurchatov Institute.“

"Professor Legasov?” she repeats, disbelieving.

"That’s what he said. He has flowers. For you.“

"Yes, I got that the first time. But why would he be here? We weren’t told he’d visit.”

"He’s here to see you.“

Alright: she needs to put a stop to this, because Dmitri seems to be developing a belated sense of humor, and yes, it’s true she hasn’t been out with a man in over five years, but she isn’t about to the laughing stock of her equally awkward assistant.

"Send him in,” she says. “And make yourself scarce.”

"Understood,“ Dmitri says, and winks at her.

Let’s Be Alive together, part 3

Valana. Abandoned at 4k, sigh. Loss of motivation, lack of feedback

Well, this one was always meant to exist, as I always meant to do a Valana trilogy. It was going to follow after the other 2. But yeah, almost no one reads Valana, it makes me annoyed to look at the low kudos every time I post one, so I gave up. It was also very difficult to write emotionally? I left them in a very difficult position in Part 2, and Ulana really doesn’t feel like forgiving him. I also did it from Valery’s POV and boy is he a difficult character when he’s a dick (which he was for a large part of this fic). It was all “but she’s so UNFAIR, why does she come to my house and fight with me” etc etc. I was not impressed with him. Anyway I think I was making some progress towards reconciliation, but just… gave up.

The gist of it was this: when Ulana visits Valery in Moscow, after he refuses to lie and they have their awful conversation, she has a plan B: let’s warn the operators of the other power plants about the graphite rods so that at least this mistake is never repeated again.

“Sure,” he says, as petulantly as he can manage, and crosses his arms across his chest. “Let’s hash it out. What are you suggesting, that we drive around the country to every nuclear plant with an RBMK reactor, knock on their door, and tell them, ‘By the way, did you know there’s a deadly flaw in the equipment you handle every day?’”

He has to give it to her: she doesn’t miss a beat as she answers, “Essentially, yes. Are you with me or not?”

“And Charkov and the KGB will just smile and nod as we go on our little crusade?”

“Oh, they’ll notice us. I don’t think this crusade is a return trip, Valery.”

So off they go, and I took painstaking care to map out where the RMBK reactors were and what was the best route for them to go. Essentially a long road trip where they will slowly make up (because boy is Ulana still not fond of him right now). Of course, Charkov notices what they are doing when they are on the way to the last few plants, but they are intercepted by Boris instead (this was close to Ukraine) who yells at them for being stupid and finds a way to smuggle them out of the country, at great risk, so that they aren’t caught by Charkov and co. Valery and Ulana live out a few years together, moderately happy.

The Great OT3, aka the Canadian escape

OT3 for real! Poly. Abandoned at 5k because of serious characterization problems.

Around late 1987, Valery is miserable in Moscow, a Canadian secret agent acoasts him on the street and offers to smuggle him out. He agrees on a whim. Once he arrives in Canada, he finds Ulana there, who explains that Boris arranged for this with some of his contacts (through her, as not to be implicated himself). She decided to join him on a whim too.

I described it to @pottedmusic yesterday so I’m just going to paste what I told her here with some more details.

U and V slept together at least once during the canon. V and B were veeeery close to things but never really got anywhere. V is bi and willing, but B never indicated he was anything other than het so V gave up during the series.

V and U get hitched because of cabin fever while waiting for their refugee paperwork. B was going to try to join V but he was undecided because of his family, so V and U aren’t really expecting him. But he does come, and agreements have to be made.

U isn’t thrilled about V/B but he got them out of the country so of course he has to live with them. And well, B is old and sick (but getting better, all are getting ~magically better~) so it’s not like they’re having vigorous sex every night - never mind his het sexual hang ups. I thought something with a lot of emotions, cuddling in bed, talking a lot etc. V is very patient and knows whatever time together is a gift. V and U, otoh, have much more of a sex life and B hears sometimes and doesn’t like it but also DOES, you know? I stopped a long time before I got there at all, but I was going to use the het sex to lure Boris in and make him more comfortable with the idea of Valery as a sexual being. And U and B didn’t have a sexual element in the past but were going to grow into it.

I was going to have them relocate to Alberta, where there is a nuclear station, it’s suitably snowy. They would all live in the same house. Because paperwork made it easier, Valery and Ulana were a married couple (this was awkward at the beginning and is what precipitated their getting together). When Boris comes, Ulana suggests he could be her father on the paperwork, which everyone hates, but it kinda works. So they all live together.

It was going to be 1. Valery POV, mostly Valana, until Boris arrives, at which point it becomes 2. Boris POV, Valoris + Valana, and finally 3. Ulana POV, Uloris and OT3 happily ever after for 10 years.

I do love this AU a lot. I wish I had managed to find a way not to make them sound OOC. As it is, I hate everything about this and can’t even find anything worth quoting from it.

Drabbles from Discord that I was supposed to develop more, but never got around to:

Minister/Miner, first time

In a scenario similar to the ot3 above, where they are all together and live with each other, Valery and Ulana compare notes on Boris and the way they all have sex with each other

So there you go. For the ones I still like, I wish the fandom was still active (and cared about Ulana in sexual configurations)

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go-redgirl · 5 years

Text

Jim Jordan Hopes Senate Dismisses Impeachment ‘Right Away’ — ‘Facts Are on the President’s Side’

In a Tuesday interview with “Fox & Friends,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) voiced his wish that once the House sends the articles of impeachment to the Senate, that the GOP-majority Senate dismisses impeachment “right away.”

Jordan said the facts are on President Donald Trump’s side and the truth will prevail.

“We’ve already had the most unfair process I’ve ever seen on the House side,” Jordan stated. “Republicans weren’t given subpoena authority, the president had no due process, he couldn’t cross-examine witnesses, Adam Schiff prevented witnesses from answering Republican questions during depositions, so we’ve had the most unfair process I’ve ever seen — you can’t go to the Senate and say, ‘Oh, we’re only going to let the Democrats get the witnesses they want.’ I hope they don’t do that.”

He continued, “Again, all the facts are on the president’s side. I hope they dismiss this and we can get an acquittal right away, but if they go to witnesses, you’re going to have to have both sides. And we would love to hear from the whistleblower. … I hope this thing gets acquitted and gets dismissed right from the get-go. We’ll see how that all plays out.”

The Ohio representative added that impeachment has “backfired” on the Democrats.

“Of course it’s backfired on them because the American people understand facts, they understand truth and they understand that the president did nothing wrong. And furthermore, they appreciate what the president is doing in spite of the relentless attack from the left,” Jordan emphasized.

READ MORE STORIES ABOUT:

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INDIVIDUALS/COMMENTS/POSTS:

HT Don't worry Jim, there will be several GOP traitors working with the Democrats to gum up the process and needlessly drag it out.

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im davis HT • 9 hours ago

"Needlessly". I'm conflicted. It's a sham, so quick acquittal is justifiable. But oh man -- what a great opportunity to call Joe and Hunter as witnesses, expose their money laundering of US taxpayer dollars through Burisma and into their personal accounts. Keep Joe (as witness) and Bernie and Fauxca (Senators required to be present) from campaigning during first couple of primaries. Such fun could be had at Dems' expense.

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You know how the media works. They would never honestly cover it and instead attack the GOP for pursuing "conspiracy theories" and good honest public servants like Uncle Joe. Look how well they have covered up Obama's coup attempt on Trump.

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sebpersh HT • 5 hours ago • edited

Exactly. A long trial will let both sides declare victory after muddying up the waters.

What should happen is Mitch McConnell should stand up in front of the Senate, and say these two sentences then call the vote to dismiss the charges: "Even Democrats now admit that it was right to look into Burisma and the Bidens, as we saw in the House testimony. It cannot be obstruction of Congress to ask the Judicial Branch to resolve a dispute between the Legislative and Executive Branches, as the US Constitution requires."

The media would have absolutely nothing to talk about after that except those two sentences. They'd have to repeat them over and over again on their TV shows. They'd have to reprint them over and over again on their sites, newspapers, and magazines. They'd have to bring on legal experts to debate the second sentence (which would be a pretty short debate), and they'd have to replay clips of the witnesses in the House testimony saying that the Burisma thing was something worth looking into to back up the first.

President Trump, of course, would retweet out the two sentences, as would dozens of other Republicans, and Democrats would be baited into quote-retweeting them and making themselves look like fools trying to disagree, which would then also cause no shortage of legal experts and conservative fact-checkers to explain to their followers why they're wrong. Then those tweets would get retweeted.

It's hard not to imagine that such a simple, easy-to-understand defense of the two impeachment articles, would not very quickly get buried into the minds of every single voter.

Then, after a couple cycles of that, will come the Democrat circle firing squad as they all blame each other for how they messed everything up, and the story going into the impending primary season will be the incompetence and spitefulness of the Democrats, how they disgraced themselves doing a fraudulent impeachment that was so easily refuted.

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HT sebpersh • 5 hours ago

You are underestimating the media. They are at the point now that they completely disregard reality and just invent narratives to write about. They would not report what actually happened but instead take quotes from Pelosi and Schumer and Schiff and "legal scholars" and say the GOP was involved in a massive cover up to protect Trump.

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sebpersh HT • 5 hours ago • edited

Democrats will certainly try to create news to distract from the two sentences, but the media will have no choice to cover the two sentences. They will be everywhere on social media. Even Democrats will be unable to help themselves but add fuel to that fire by doing quote tweets on their Republican colleagues, and trying to squirm their way out of admitting the two sentences are 100% true, and they'll get a ton of pushback. Every American voter will hear those two sentences.

Not relevant to our immediate circumstances, but every historian will have to republish those two sentences, too sentences.

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HT sebpersh • 5 hours ago

Look how they have ignored the tape of Biden strong arming the Ukraine government forcing them to fire that prosecutor. Instead of reporting it, they call any mention of it a conspiracy theory. They have gone from being biased to becoming fiction writers.

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sebpersh HT • 2 hours ago

I hate to admit it, but there's enough ambiguity in that whole situation that the media can easily squirm out of it. The real scandal isn't the firing of the prosecutor, and no amount of showing off the video is going to convince people that it matters. Lots of people wanted that prosecutor fired. Whether they had legitimate reasons or not is too opaque to really figure out for the average voter.The real scandal is that Hunter Biden was on a foreign energy board to begin with.

By making it about the prosecutor, you are letting Democrats trick you into thinking past the sale. They've got you accepting Joe Biden having a son raking in millions or billions from all these other countries while you quibble about a complicated situation with some prosecutor that nobody really knows anything about. Most of the voters have already tuned out once you start talking about some Ukrainian prosecutor. But you say simply: "Joe Biden's son was on a foreign energy company's board while Joe Biden was in charge of our diplomacy with that country" and voters sit up and notice.

The media has no way to spin that, because you're not bringing in complicated details.Keep your message simple.

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HT sebpersh • an hour ago

The two pieces are inseparable in terms of showing corruption. It is clear Hunter Biden is totally unfit and unqualified to hold a board position. But how did he get the position? Clearly because his father runs the US foreign policy in Ukraine. If Uncle Joe used his position and our money to get a prosecutor fired who might have been looking into that arrangement, the evidence is complete

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mj858 HT • 4 hours ago

I've seen the tape of Biden "strong arming" the Ukraine government many times. The difference is... Biden did it to assist a foreign ally get a prosecutor who would actually fight corruption while Trump did it to help himself. What is so difficult for you guys to understand about this?

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HT Tom • 2 hours ago

I think Pelosi is a traitor but she is not responsible for any GOP Senators who are Trump's enemies and willing to give Democrats aid and comfort.

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Willam Nat • 10 hours ago • edited

Senators: Listen to Jordan, he has seen this farce up close and knows what games the House Democrats have been playing.

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timalexanderdollery · 5 years

Text

New investigation suggests Republicans took ambassadorial pay-to-play to new levels

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks at CPAC 2019 in February. | Ricky Carioti/Washington Post/Getty Images

Trump expressed hope that the Senate would confirm one of his nominees. Days later, the RNC came calling for cash.

Wealthy donors being rewarded with cushy ambassador gigs is not a new development in American politics, nor is it a uniquely Republican form of pay-to-play. But as with many things pertaining to the current occupant of the White House, President Donald Trump and his Republican backers have taken things in this realm to a whole new level of unseemliness.

According to a new CBS investigation, while Trump’s nomination of San Diego billionaire/campaign donor Doug Manchester to be the ambassador to the Bahamas was held up in the Senate in early September, RNC chair Ronna McDaniel sent Manchester an email that alluded to what seems to be a corrupt quid pro quo.

“Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?” McDaniel wrote.

McDaniel’s plea for cash came just three days after Trump expressed hope on Twitter that the Senate could confirm Manchester’s nomination. (Manchester owns a home in the Bahamas and assisted with the Hurricane Dorian relief effort.)

....I would also like to thank “Papa” Doug Manchester, hopefully the next Ambassador to the Bahamas, for the incredible amount of time, money and passion he has spent on helping to bring safety to the Bahamas. Much work to be done by the Bahamian Government. We will help! @OANN

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

An RNC spokesperson told CBS that McDaniel “did not suggest to Mr. Manchester in any way that it would more quickly advance his confirmation if members of his family made a political contribution.” But the timing of her personalized email pitch to Manchester — coming as it did just days after Trump expressed hope that he would be approved as ambassador to the Bahamas — is a terrible look at best, and appallingly corrupt at worse. And suffice it to say that Manchester’s response did not help matters.

In an email sent to McDaniel that also copied staffers working for two Republican senators who sit on the Foreign Relations Committee that controlled his nomination — Rand Paul (KY) and Jim Risch (ID) — Manchester replied to McDaniel by saying his wife was donating $100,000 immediately, and he promised more if approved for the ambassadorship.

“As you know I am not supposed to do any, but my wife is sending a contribution for $100,000. Assuming I get voted out of the [Foreign Relations Committee] on Wednesday to the floor we need you to have the majority leader bring it to a majority vote … Once confirmed, I our [sic] family will respond!” he wrote, according to emails obtained by CBS. (The RNC spokesperson told CBS that Manchester’s “decision to link future contributions to an official action was totally inappropriate” and claimed the donation made by his wife was returned.)

Alas, Manchester’s nomination did not make it out of committee. According to CBS, the Risch staffer who was copied on Manchester’s email alerted the White House about the apparent pay-to-play scheme. Manchester, perhaps feeling pressure to do so, officially said he was no longer interested in becoming ambassador to the Bahamas last month.

Given that the whole episode unfolded in writing, both Manchester and the White House may have felt like there was little choice but to pull the plug. Not only is the sort of pay-to-play outlined in the emails unethical, but it’s also arguably illegal, as soliciting or receiving payments for public offices violates federal law.

Manchester isn’t the first wealthy Trump donor to land himself in hot water after donating $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Gordon Sondland, who became Trump ambassador to the European Union after donating the same amount, has become a key witness in the impeachment inquiry about Trump’s dealings in Ukraine. Sondland even put himself at risk of perjury by revising his original testimony to congressional impeachment investigators in a manner that suggests he had been trying to protect the president until testimony from other witnesses made his position untenable.

Sondland made his fortune as a hotel magnate. Manchester made his in real estate. Neither had any diplomatic experience before they were nominated to ambassador positions by Trump. Both now find themselves at the center of scandals. It’s no wonder that Democratic senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has made no longer allowing campaign donors to become ambassadors a centerpiece of her plan to revamp the State Department.

But the Manchester scandal isn’t just one about pay-to-play gone wrong — it’s also one about the ongoing shadiness of the RNC. Already this year the committee has come under fire for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars from casino mogul Steve Wynn, who last year resigned from his position as finance chairman of the RNC amid a string of allegations of sexual misconduct. That McDaniel was willing to brazenly hit up Manchester for half a million bucks while his ambassadorial nomination hung in the balance indicates that for her committee, the ends continue to justify the means.

The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

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corneliusreignallen · 5 years

Text

New investigation suggests Republicans took ambassadorial pay-to-play to new levels

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks at CPAC 2019 in February. | Ricky Carioti/Washington Post/Getty Images

Trump expressed hope that the Senate would confirm one of his nominees. Days later, the RNC came calling for cash.

“Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?” McDaniel wrote.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

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gracieyvonnehunter · 5 years

Text

New investigation suggests Republicans took ambassadorial pay-to-play to new levels

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks at CPAC 2019 in February. | Ricky Carioti/Washington Post/Getty Images

Trump expressed hope that the Senate would confirm one of his nominees. Days later, the RNC came calling for cash.

“Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?” McDaniel wrote.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

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shanedakotamuir · 5 years

Text

New investigation suggests Republicans took ambassadorial pay-to-play to new levels

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, speaks at CPAC 2019 in February. | Ricky Carioti/Washington Post/Getty Images

Trump expressed hope that the Senate would confirm one of his nominees. Days later, the RNC came calling for cash.

“Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?” McDaniel wrote.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 7, 2019

The news moves fast. To stay updated, follow Aaron Rupar on Twitter, and read more of Vox’s policy and politics coverage.

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teeky185 · 5 years

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Faced with an unwelcome offer from former National Security Adviser John Bolton to testify in an impeachment trial if subpoenaed, Senate Republicans responded with righteous anger toward Democrats, dry deference to the facts of the impeachment process—and, in the case of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a request to call his office on the matter.Few GOP lawmakers, however, responded with a simple answer as to whether a figure at the heart of the impeachment case against President Trump should offer his account of events under oath.In fact, just one—Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)—said outright that the jurors in the impeachment trial should hear from Bolton. “He has firsthand information,” Romney told reporters on Monday. “And, assuming that articles of impeachment reach the Senate, I'd like to hear what he has to say.”Bolton’s surprise announcement came at an inopportune moment for the Senate GOP, which seemed poised to head into an impeachment trial this month under the terms preferred by Trump and his allies—namely, a short proceeding featuring no new witnesses. Since the House’s vote to impeach on Dec. 19, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has sat on the articles of impeachment, saying she’d send them to the Senate when and if the ground rules of the trial seemed fair, in a bid to put pressure on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Bolton, who left the White House on less than cordial terms in September, is one of just a few essential missing links in the story of Trump’s apparent campaign to withhold U.S. security aid to Ukraine in hopes of getting that government to investigate his political rivals. According to Bolton’s aides, who testified to House impeachment investigators, the national security chief bristled at the push, going so far as to call it a “drug deal” he wanted no part of.Whatever misgivings Bolton may have had about Trump’s conduct, his reluctance so far to testify—and his coyness on the subject, complete with teases to his forthcoming tell-all book—has been a source of deep frustration on Capitol Hill. He declined to testify during the House’s impeachment inquiry, pointing to an ongoing court case meant to resolve whether or not a former aide, Charles Kupperman, could defy a presidential directive to not cooperate with Congress, even if under subpoena. House Democrats ultimately never issued a subpoena for Bolton’s testimony. On Monday, Bolton declared in a post on his political action committee’s website that it “does not appear possible that a final judicial resolution” of the constitutional question at hand will be rendered before the Senate trial, so he said he would cooperate with a subpoena if issued by the Senate.Until Bolton’s announcement, there was a growing sense on Capitol Hill that Pelosi would have to relinquish the articles—and control of the process to McConnell—this week. Bolton’s move changed that calculus, and while GOP senators evinced some frustration with him, most of the anger was directed at Pelosi. “One of the dangers of Speaker Pelosi sitting on these articles indefinitely,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), “is, I think we will see—unless someone does something—an endless attempt to keep adding stuff to the articles. ‘Oh well what about this, oh well what about that, but what about this’… the American people deserve a resolution here.” And Sen. John Barasso (R-WY), the No. 3 member of the Senate GOP leadership, said the call for Bolton’s testimony showed how “desperate” the Democrats were and “how poorly a job they did in the House of establishing a credible case.”Democrats may have held off on a subpoena for Bolton but undoubtedly wanted to secure his testimony. And some Senate Republicans said they’d be fine with Bolton testifying—if it were on the House side.“I don't have any opposition if the ambassador's willing to testify and the House is willing to convene and do that, then they're more than welcome to do that,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). “What I don't want to do is all of a sudden open it up to where we effectively have the impeachment inquiry on the Senate side… I’m encouraging the House to do the job they should have done to begin with.”But Democrats from both sides of the Capitol sought to put the pressure squarely on Republicans—four of whom would need to join all Democrats in a vote to approve a subpoena for Bolton—rather than entertain the idea that the House simply do it. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), who led the impeachment inquiry, told reporters on Monday that he wouldn’t foreclose the possibility he would subpoena Bolton but made clear it was the Senate’s responsibility first. “He really should testify in the Senate trial,” said Schiff. Aside from Romney, however, several of the senators who could conceivably vote with Democrats to approve a Bolton subpoena deferred to process, attempting to punt a discussion on the merits of hearing Bolton’s account of the Ukraine story until the trial formally begins. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said she wanted to see the Senate proceed as it did during the impeachment of Bill Clinton, during which senators first voted to open a trial and later voted on calling of additional witnesses. Pressed as to whether she wanted to see Bolton testify, Collins told reporters the decision would be made later. Another like-minded lawmaker, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AL), echoed Collins’ remarks. "I think we need to do what they did the last time they did this,” Murkowski told reporters Monday night, “and that was to go through a first phase, and then they reassessed after that,"Still other Republicans already seemed exasperated by Bolton’s maneuvers. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who has traveled to Ukraine and spoke to key players in the saga at various points, said it was possible Bolton might have exculpatory information on Trump’s conduct but declared that Democrats and the media would blow it out of proportion if he did ultimately testify.“Having been involved, having spoken with John Bolton myself on this issue, I don't know what additional information he might have,” said Johnson. “I don't think it'd be particularly revealing.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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Behind the Ukraine Aid Freeze: 84 Days of Conflict and Confusion https://nyti.ms/39qrLdQ

Drip...drip...drip

“Trump’s demands sent shock waves through the White House& Pentagon,created deep rifts within the senior ranks of his administration...and ended only after Trump learned of a damning whistleblower report”

Senate should have all relevant witnesses!!

Also lets not forget that Ukraine is Ina hot war with Russia as Zelensky did a prisoner exchange yesterday of Ukrainian citizens from the Donbass region. Many prisoners are still being held in the Crimea region and countless other have been killed.

The more details we get, the worse the picture becomes. A coordinated quid pro quo, an executive branch out of control, a legitimate funding process undermined , and of course at the top of this pyramid, a man possessed with himself and nothing else.

Behind the Ukraine Aid Freeze: 84 Days of Conflict and Confusion

The inside story of President Trump’s demand to halt military assistance to an ally shows the price he was willing to pay to carry out his agenda.

By Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and Mark Mazzetti | Published Dec. 29, 2019 | New York Times | Posted December 30, 2019 |

WASHINGTON — Deep into a long flight to Japan aboard Air Force One with President Trump, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, dashed off an email to an aide back in Washington.

“I’m just trying to tie up some loose ends,” Mr. Mulvaney wrote. “Did we ever find out about the money for Ukraine and whether we can hold it back?”

It was June 27, more than a week after Mr. Trump had first asked about putting a hold on security aid to Ukraine, an embattled American ally, and Mr. Mulvaney needed an answer.

The aide, Robert B. Blair, replied that it would be possible, but not pretty. “Expect Congress to become unhinged” if the White House tried to countermand spending passed by the House and Senate, he wrote in a previously undisclosed email. And, he wrote, it might further fuel the narrative that Mr. Trump was pro-Russia.

Mr. Blair was right, even if his prediction of a messy outcome was wildly understated. Mr. Trump’s order to hold $391 million worth of sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, night vision goggles, medical aid and other equipment the Ukrainian military needed to fight a grinding war against Russian-backed separatists would help pave a path to the president’s impeachment.

The Democratic-led inquiry into Mr. Trump’s dealings with Ukraine this spring and summer established that the president was actively involved in parallel efforts — both secretive and highly unusual — to bring pressure on a country he viewed with suspicion, if not disdain.

One campaign, spearheaded by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, aimed to force Ukraine to conduct investigations that could help Mr. Trump politically, including one focused on a potential Democratic 2020 rival, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The other, which unfolded nearly simultaneously but has gotten less attention, was the president’s demand to withhold the security assistance. By late summer, the two efforts merged as American diplomats used the withheld aid as leverage in the effort to win a public commitment from the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to carry out the investigations Mr. Trump sought into Mr. Biden and unfounded or overblown theories about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.

Interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials, congressional aides and others, previously undisclosed emails and documents, and a close reading of thousands of pages of impeachment testimony provide the most complete account yet of the 84 days from when Mr. Trump first inquired about the money to his decision in September to relent.

What emerges is the story of how Mr. Trump’s demands sent shock waves through the White House and the Pentagon, created deep rifts within the senior ranks of his administration, left key aides like Mr. Mulvaney under intensifying scrutiny — and ended only after Mr. Trump learned of a damning whistle-blower report and came under pressure from influential Republican lawmakers.

In many ways, the havoc Mr. Giuliani and other Trump loyalists set off in the State Department by pursuing the investigations was matched by conflicts and confusion in the White House and Pentagon stemming from Mr. Trump’s order to withhold the aid.

Opposition to the order from his top national security advisers was more intense than previously known. In late August, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper joined Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, for a previously undisclosed Oval Office meeting with the president where they tried but failed to convince him that releasing the aid was in interests of the United States.

By late summer, top lawyers at the Office of Management and Budget who had spoken to lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department in the weeks beforehand, were developing an argument — not previously divulged publicly — that Mr. Trump’s role as commander in chief would simply allow him to override Congress on the issue.

And Mr. Mulvaney is shown to have been deeply involved as a key conduit for transmitting Mr. Trump’s demands for the freeze across the administration.

The interviews and documents show how Mr. Trump used the bureaucracy to advance his agenda in the face of questions about its propriety and even legality from officials in the White House budget office and the Pentagon, many of whom say they were kept in the dark about the president’s motivations and had grown used to convention-flouting requests from the West Wing. One veteran budget official who raised questions about the legal justification was pushed aside.

Those carrying out Mr. Trump’s orders on the aid were for the most part operating in different lanes from those seeking the investigations, including Mr. Giuliani and a number of senior diplomats, including Gordon D. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, and Kurt D. Volker, the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia.

The New York Times found that some key players are now offering a defense that they did not know the diplomatic push for the investigations was playing out at the same time they were implementing the aid freeze — or if they were aware of both channels, they did not connect the two.

Mr. Mulvaney is said by associates to have stepped out of the room whenever Mr. Trump would talk with Mr. Giuliani to preserve Mr. Trump’s attorney-client privilege, leaving him with limited knowledge about their efforts regarding Ukraine. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he learned of the substance of Mr. Trump’s July 25 call weeks after the fact.

Yet testimony before the House suggests a different picture. Fiona Hill, a top deputy to Mr. Bolton at the time, told the impeachment inquiry about a July 10 White House meeting at which Mr. Sondland said Mr. Mulvaney had guaranteed that Mr. Zelensky would be invited to the White House if the Ukrainians agreed to the investigations — an arrangement that Mr. Bolton described as a “drug deal,” according to Ms. Hill.

Along with Mr. Bolton and others, Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Blair have declined to cooperate with impeachment investigators and provide information to Congress under oath, an intensifying point of friction between the two parties as the Senate prepares for Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial.

At the center of the maelstrom was the Office of Management and Budget, a seldom-scrutinized arm of the White House that during the Trump administration has often had to find creative legal reasoning to justify the president’s unorthodox policy proposals, like his demand to divert Pentagon funding to his proposed wall along the border with Mexico.

In the Ukraine case, however, shock about the president’s decision spread across America’s national security apparatus — from the National Security Council to the State Department and the Pentagon. By September, after the freeze had become public and scrutiny was increasing, the blame game inside the administration was in full swing.

On Sept. 10, the day before Mr. Trump changed his mind, a political appointee at the budget office, Michael P. Duffey, wrote a lengthy email to the Pentagon’s top budget official, with whom he had been at odds throughout the summer about how long the agency could withhold the aid.

He asserted that the Defense Department had the authority to do more to ensure that the aid could be released to Ukraine by the congressionally mandated deadline of the end of that month, suggesting that responsibility for any failure should not rest with the White House.

Forty-three minutes later, the Pentagon official, Elaine McCusker, hit send on a brief but stinging reply.

“You can’t be serious,” she wrote. “I am speechless.”

‘We Need to Hold It Up’

For top officials inside the budget office, the first warning came on June 19.

Informed that the president had a problem with the aid, Mr. Blair called Russell T. Vought, the acting head of the Office of Management and Budget. “We need to hold it up,” he said, according to officials briefed about the conversation.

Typical of the Trump White House, the inquiry was not born of a rigorous policy process. Aides speculated that someone had shown Mr. Trump a news article about the Ukraine assistance and he demanded to know more.

Mr. Vought and his team took to Google, and came upon a piece in the conservative Washington Examiner saying that the Pentagon would pay for weapons and other military equipment for Ukraine, bringing American security aid to the country to $1.5 billion since 2014.

The money, the article noted, was coming at a critical moment: Mr. Zelensky, a onetime comedian, had called ending the armed conflict with Russia in eastern Ukraine his top priority — a move that would likely only happen if he could negotiate from a position of strength.

The budget office officials had little idea of why Mr. Trump was interested in the topic, but many of the president’s more senior aides were well aware of his feelings about Ukraine. Weeks earlier, in an Oval Office meeting on May 23, with Mr. Sondland, Mr. Mulvaney and Mr. Blair in attendance, Mr. Trump batted away assurances that Mr. Zelensky was committed to confronting corruption.

“They are all corrupt, they are all terrible people,” Mr. Trump said, according to testimony in the impeachment inquiry.

The United States had been planning to provide $391 million in military assistance to Ukraine in two chunks: $250 million allocated by the Pentagon for war-fighting equipment — from sniper rifles to rocket-propelled grenade launchers — and $141 million controlled by the State Department to buy night-vision devices, radar systems and yet more rocket-grenade launchers.

With the money having been appropriated by Congress, it would be hard for the administration to keep it from being spent by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The task of dealing with the president’s demands fell primarily to a group of political appointees in the West Wing and the budget office, most with personal and professional ties to Mr. Mulvaney. There was no public announcement that Mr. Trump wanted the assistance withheld. Neither Congress nor the Ukrainian government was formally notified.

Mr. Mulvaney had first served in the administration as the budget director, after three terms in the House, where he earned a reputation as a firebrand conservative.

The four top political appointees helping Mr. Mulvaney execute the hold — Mr. Vought, Mr. Blair, Mr. Duffey and Mark Paoletta, the budget office’s top lawyer — all had extensive experience in either congressional budget politics or Republican and conservative causes.

Their efforts would cause tension and at times conflict between officials at the budget office and the Pentagon, some of whom watched with growing alarm.

A Question of Legality

The single largest chunk of the federal government’s annual discretionary budget, some $800 billion a year, goes to the Pentagon, spy agencies and the Department of Veterans Affairs. The career official in charge of managing the flow of all that money for the budget office is an Afghanistan war veteran named Mark Sandy.

After learning about the president’s June 19 request, Mr. Sandy contacted the Pentagon to learn more about the aid package. He also repeatedly pressed Mr. Duffey about why Mr. Trump had imposed the hold in the first place.

“He didn’t provide an explicit response on the reason,” Mr. Sandy testified in the impeachment inquiry. “He simply said we need to let the hold take place — and I’m paraphrasing here — and then revisit this issue with the president.”

From the start, budget office officials took the position that the money did not have to go out the door until the end of September, giving them time to address the president’s questions.

It was easy enough for the White House to hold up the State Department portion of the funding. Since the State Department had not yet notified Congress of its plans to release the money, all it took was making sure that the notification did not happen.

Freezing the Pentagon’s $250 million portion was more difficult, since the Pentagon had already certified that Ukraine had met requirements set by Congress to show that it was addressing its endemic corruption and notified lawmakers of its intent to spend the money.

So on July 19, Mr. Duffey proposed an unusual solution: Mr. Sandy should attach a footnote to a routine budget document saying the money was being temporarily withheld.

Approving such requests is routine; Mr. Sandy processed hundreds each year. But attaching a footnote to block spending that the administration had already notified Congress was ready to go was not. Mr. Sandy said in testimony that he had never done it before in his 12 years at the agency.

And there was a problem with this maneuver: Mr. Sandy was concerned it might violate a law called the Impoundment Control Act that protects Congress’s spending power and prohibits the administration from blocking disbursement of the aid unless it notifies Congress.

“I asked about the duration of the hold and was told there was not clear guidance on that,” Mr. Sandy testified. “So that is what prompted my concern.”

Mr. Sandy sought advice from the top lawyers at the budget office.

A Pivotal Day

For a full month, the fact that Mr. Trump wanted to halt the aid remained confined primarily to a small group of officials.

That ended on July 18, when a group of top administration officials meeting on Ukraine policy — including some calling in from Kyiv — learned from a midlevel budget office official that the president had ordered the aid frozen.

“I and the others on the call sat in astonishment,” William B. Taylor Jr., the top United States diplomat in Ukraine, testified to House investigators. “In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened.”

That same day, aides on the House Foreign Affairs Committee received four calls from administration sources warning them about the hold and urging them to look into it.

A week later came Mr. Trump’s fateful July 25 call with Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Bolton, the national security adviser, had recommended the call take place in an effort to end the “incessant lobbying” from officials like Mr. Sondland that the two leaders connect.

Some of Mr. Trump’s aides had thought the call might lead Mr. Trump to lift the freeze. But Mr. Trump did not specifically mention the hold, and instead asked Mr. Zelensky to look into Mr. Biden and his son and into supposed Ukrainian involvement in the 2016 election. Among those listening on the call was Mr. Blair.

Mr. Blair has told associates he did not make much of Mr. Trump’s requests during the call for the investigations. He saw the aid freeze not as a political tool, but as an extension of Mr. Trump’s general aversion to foreign aid and his belief that Ukraine is rife with corruption.

Just 90 minutes after the call ended, and following days of email traffic on the topic, Mr. Duffey, Mr. Sandy’s boss, sent out a new email to the Pentagon, where officials were impatient about getting the money out the door. His message was clear: Do not spend it.

“Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction,” Mr. Duffey wrote in his note, which was released this month to the Center for Public Integrity.

This caused immediate discomfort at the Pentagon, with a top official there noting that this hold on military assistance was coming on the same day Ukraine announced it had seized a Russian tanker — a potential escalation in the conflict between the two nations.

On that same day, Mr. Sandy, having received the go-ahead from the budget office’s lawyers, took the first official step to legally impose what they called a “brief pause,” inserting a footnote into the budget document that prohibited the Pentagon from spending any of the aid until Aug. 5.

By that point, officials in Ukraine were getting word that something was up. At the same time, the effort to win a commitment from the Ukrainians for the investigations sought by Mr. Trump was intensifying, with Mr. Giuliani and a Zelensky aide, Andriy Yermak, meeting in Madrid on Aug. 2 and the diplomats Mr. Sondland and Mr. Volker also working the issue.

And inside the intelligence community, a C.I.A. officer was hearing talk about the two strands of pressure on Ukraine, including the aid freeze. Seeing how they fit together, he was alarmed enough that by Aug. 12 he would take the extraordinary step of laying them out in detail in a confidential whistle-blower complaint.

A ‘POTUS-level Decision’

Keeping a hold on the assistance was now a top priority, so officials moved to tighten control over the money.

In a very unusual step, the White House removed Mr. Sandy’s authority to oversee the aid freeze. The job was handed in late July to Mr. Sandy’s boss, Mr. Duffey, the political appointee, the official ultimately responsible for apportionments but one who had little experience in the nuts and bolts of the budget office process.

As the debate over the aid continued, disagreements flared. Two budget office staff members left the agency after the summer. Mr. Sandy testified that their departures were related to the aid freeze, a statement disputed by budget office officials.

Pentagon officials, in the dark about the reason for the holdup, grew increasingly frustrated. Ms. McCusker, the powerful Pentagon budget official, notified the budget office that either $61 million of the money would have to be spent by Monday, Aug. 12 or it would be lost. The budget office saw her threat as a ploy to force release of the aid.

At the White House, which had been looped into the dispute by the budget office, there was a growing consensus that officials could find a legal rationale for continuing the hold, but with the Monday deadline looming, it was a “POTUS-level decision,” one official said.

Complicating matters, another budget battle was escalating. Mr. Vought was attempting to impose cuts of as much as $4 billion on the nation’s overall foreign aid budget. It was an entirely separate initiative from the Ukraine freeze, and was quickly abandoned, but helped the White House establish that its concern about aid was not limited to Ukraine.

By the second week of August, Mr. Duffey had taken to issuing footnotes every few days to block the Pentagon spending. Office of Management and Budget lawyers approved each one.

Mr. Trump spent the weekend before the Pentagon’s Aug. 12 deadline at Bedminster, his New Jersey golf resort.

In a previously unreported sequence of events, Mr. Mulvaney worked to schedule a call for that day with Mr. Trump and top aides involved in the freeze, including Mr. Vought, Mr. Bolton and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel. But they waited to set a final time because Mr. Trump had a golf game planned for Monday morning with John Daly, the flamboyant professional golfer, and they did not know how long it would take.

Late that morning, Ms. McCusker checked in with the budget office. “Hey, any update for us?” she asked in an email obtained by Center for Public Integrity.

Mr. Duffey was still waiting for an answer as of late that afternoon. “Elaine — I don’t have an update,” he wrote back. “I am attempting to get one.”

The planned-for conference call with the president never happened. Budget office lawyers decided that Ms. McCusker had inaccurately raised alarms about the Aug. 12 date to try to force their hand.

In Bedminster with Mr. Trump, Mr. Mulvaney finally reached the president and the answer was clear: Mr. Trump wanted the freeze kept in place. In Washington, the whistle-blower submitted his report that same day.

The National Security Team Intervenes

Inside the administration, pressure was mounting on Mr. Trump to reverse himself.

Backed by a memo saying the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the State Department all wanted the aid released, Mr. Bolton made a personal appeal to Mr. Trump on Aug. 16, but was rebuffed.

On Aug. 28, Politico published a story reporting that the assistance to Ukraine had been frozen. After more than two months, the issue, the topic of fiery internal debate, was finally public.

Mr. Bolton’s relationship with the president had been deteriorating for months, and he would leave the White House weeks later, but on this front he had powerful internal allies.

On a sunny, late-August day, Mr. Bolton, Mr. Esper and Mr. Pompeo arrayed themselves around the Resolute desk in the Oval Office to present a united front, the leaders of the president’s national security team seeking to convince him face to face that freeing up the money for Ukraine was the right thing to do. One by one they made their case.

“This is in America’s interest,” Mr. Bolton argued, according to one official briefed on the gathering.

“This defense relationship, we have gotten some really good benefits from it,” Mr. Esper added, noting that most of the money was being spent on military equipment made in the United States.

Mr. Trump responded that he did not believe Mr. Zelensky’s promises of reform. He emphasized his view that corruption remained endemic and repeated his position that European nations needed to do more for European defense.

“Ukraine is a corrupt country,” the president said. “We are pissing away our money.”

The aid remained blocked. On Aug. 31, Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, arranged a call with Mr. Trump. Mr. Johnson had been told days earlier by Mr. Sondland that the aid would be unblocked only if the Ukrainians gave Mr. Trump the investigations he wanted.

When Mr. Johnson asked Mr. Trump directly if the aid was contingent on getting a commitment to pursue the investigations, Mr. Johnson later said, Mr. Trump replied, amid a string of expletives, that there was no such demand and he would never do such a thing.

Around the same time, White House lawyers informed Mr. Trump about the whistle-blower’s complaint regarding his pressure campaign. It is not clear how much detail the lawyers provided the president about the details of the complaint, which noted the aid freeze.

Mr. Trump was scheduled to travel to Poland on Sept. 1 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, and had planned to get together with Mr. Zelensky. Some administration officials hoped meeting the new Ukrainian president in person would change Mr. Trump’s mind.

But a hurricane was bearing down on the United States, and Mr. Trump sent Vice President Mike Pence in his place. When Mr. Zelensky raised the issue with the vice president, Mr. Pence said he should speak with Mr. Trump.

Behind the scenes in Warsaw, Mr. Sondland, the American envoy who was Mr. Trump’s point person on getting the Ukrainians to agree to the investigations, had a blunter message. Until the Ukrainians publicly announced the investigations, he told Mr. Yermak, the Zelensky adviser, they should not expect to get the military aid. (Mr. Yermak has questioned Mr. Sondland’s account.)

An Abrupt Reversal

By late summer, top lawyers at the budget office were developing a proposed legal justification for the hold, based in part on conversations with White House lawyers as well as the Justice Department.

Their argument was that lifting the hold would undermine Mr. Trump’s negotiating position in his efforts to fight corruption in Ukraine.

The president, the lawyers believed, could ignore the requirements of the Impoundment Control Act and continue to hold the aid by asserting constitutional commander in chief powers that give him authority over diplomacy. He could do so, they believed, if he determined that, based on existing circumstances, releasing the money would undermine military or diplomatic efforts.

But divisions within the administration continued to widen; Mr. Bolton was opposed to using an argument proffered by administration lawyers to block the funding. And pressure from Congress was intensifying. Mr. Johnson and another influential Republican, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, were both pushing for the aid to be released.

On a call with Mr. Portman on Sept. 11, Mr. Trump repeated his familiar refrain about other nations not doing enough to support Ukraine.

“Sure, I agree with you,” Mr. Portman responded, according to an aide who described the exchange. “But we should not hold that against Ukraine. We need to release these funds.”

Democrats in the House were gearing up to limit Mr. Trump’s power to hold up the money to Ukraine, and the chairmen of three House committees had also announced on Sept. 9 that they were opening an investigation.

Still, White House officials did not expect anything to change, especially since Mr. Trump had repeatedly rejected the advice of his national security team.

But then, just as suddenly as the hold was imposed, it was lifted. Mr. Trump, apparently unwilling to wage a public battle, told Mr. Portman he would let the money go.

White House aides rushed to notify their counterparts at the Pentagon and elsewhere. The freeze had been lifted. The money could be spent. Get it out the door, they were told.

The debate would now begin as to why the hold was lifted, with Democrats confident they knew the answer.

“I have no doubt about why the president allowed the assistance to go forward,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “He got caught.”

______

Adam Goldman, Edward Wong and Peter Baker contributed reporting.

A few interesting comments from readers on #Ukrainegate and the impeachment of Donald J Trump:

"The Trump White House is thoroughly corrupt. Ms. Pelosi was right -- all roads lead from Trump to Putin. It is important now that the House hold off on triggering the Senate Kangaroo Court until further evidence is uncovered, as it has here. And perhaps someone -- I'm looking at you, Mr. Bolton -- will grow a spine and testify."

LAURAF, GREAT WHITE NORTH

" In this article you call Trump's holding back of aid to Ukraine as 'leverage'. I call it bribery or extortion and it should have been called that in the Articles of Impeachment. But what I don't get is why all these supposedly 'honorable people, Pompeo, Mulvaney, Bolton and others cited here have not resigned in mass or demand to testify against there corrupt boss. They may have been shocked or outraged, but without their open testimony it means nothing. And don' tell me because it is because of executive privilege or that they are waiting for a judge to say it is OK. Rather it is aiding in a cover up and their failure to step forward must be seen that way." ROBERT, NC

"I voted for the Republican Party presidential candidate from 1968 up to 2008. I was ready to vote for McCain in 2008 until he appointed Sarah Palin as his running mate. I am not ready to say Trump worked with Putin to get elected, but Putin has to be very pleased. We have lost much of our stature in the world. The shenanigans pulled by Trump relating to coercing Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden is terrible. Our nation's stature will take decades to repair, if ever and if we as citizens reelect him again it will never be repaired, at least in my lifetime and the lifetime of my sons. I admit that Biden should have known better to have his son accept a Board seat on a Ukrainian gas company, but to hold back federal funding to dig up dirt is deplorable. Trump's actions can only be described as coercion for political purposes." SBANICKI, MICHIGAN

" It's head-shaking, mind boggling to think that the 'very stable genius" residing in The White House can actually pull this off. He's not of course, it's his minions and sycophants. If he is a genius, he is a genius at getting others to do the dirty work and to keep pushing, pushing, pushing back, pushing forward, blazing a path to destruction. And he's had decades of experience in this sort of play. He loves it and it's sad that it's come to tear the country asunder. And more sad is the unquietening fear that he will continue to succeed." JOSEPH, WASHINGTON DC

"Gee, I wonder where this corrupt administration got the idea of going around congress and diverting congressionally approved funds to accomplish some whim of the Presidents. Well, they had already done it to fund his border wall and got away with it, so why not try it again? Now, he'll get away with this albeit at the cost of an impeachment if the Emperor of the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has his way. The question is how much more corruption by this President has been covered up by his helpful enablers?"

PAUL RICHARDSON, LOS ALAMOS

"Now I more fully understand why McConnell and the entire Republican Party want to block any and all actual witnesses at impeachment hearings. This President is guilty as charged."

DAVID, OHIO

"There is a group out there, maybe 10-15%, that are negatively influenced by the continuing chaos that is Trump's decision making. His base looks away, but that 10-15% are disgusted with his cavalier, self serving style. Though little of this reporting seems to move the needle with his supporters; ultimately it will have an impact with Independent voters. Though I doubt this will dramatically influence Senate Republicans in the near term, I think it will show at the ballot box in November 2020. I relish every bit of this reporting/ disclosure. Trump's angry Tweets seem to support that he feels the heat."

DAVID HOFFMAN, GRAND JUNCTION

"It is beyond belief that anybody could possibly defend this blatant corruption and abuse of power. The fact that an entire political party (Republicans) have chosen to serve as co-conspirators and defend this behavior is even more difficult to believe. I suspect that unless we're fortunate enough to flip the Senate and the Executive in 2020, we'll be stuck with this type of mafiosa government for the foreseeable future."

RICHARD WILSON, BOSTON MA

"The corruption, the criminality, the incompetence, the complicity, the utter disrespect for law — each is worse than the others. Every staffer, advisor, Congressman, Senator, Attorney General, Republican Party supporter — every single individual American who does not stand up and shout against this stinking abuse of power, is a party to this administration’s assault on the very fiber of our government."

WITNESS, HOUSTON

"Actually, I suspected Bolton was at the bottom of the Whistleblower complaint based on some of his alleged comments. Bolton, while I don’t like him, knew what was going on was wrong and extracted himself from it. He needs to speak up." ABOLSON

"After having read this, the phrase "a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing" runs through my head regarding Trump and Ukraine. Could it really be really as simple as Trump doing Putin's bidding? What other interpretation makes any sense? (Rhetorical?)"FRED, UP NORTH

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thisdaynews · 5 years

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Trump team weighs ambassador pick for Ukraine as ties fray

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/trump-team-weighs-ambassador-pick-for-ukraine-as-ties-fray/

Trump team weighs ambassador pick for Ukraine as ties fray

The murky circumstances of Yovanovitch’s ouster lie at the heart of Democrats’ probe of Trump’s conduct toward Ukraine. The investigation is likely this week to lead the House of Representatives to impeach a president for the third time in U.S. history.

Among those being considered to replace Yovanovitch is retired Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, a 40-year Army veteran who now serves as director of the Pentagon-affiliated George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany, according to several people familiar with the search. The president likes Dayton, a Senate aide said, and the former general is “willing to take on the job.”

U.S. policy toward Ukraine has been in turmoil following revelations about the president’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate his political foes.

Several key U.S. diplomats testified in the impeachment inquiry against Trump in damaging ways, making it hard for them to be seen as speaking on the president’s behalf.

One, William Taylor, is the top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv; another, Gordon Sondland, is Trump’s ambassador to the European Union. A third diplomat is gone altogether: Kurt Volker, the unpaid special envoy for Ukraine negotiations, quit as the scandal broke.

Officials in Kyiv and Washington are hoping a new ambassador can stabilize a relationship that remains fragile and rife for exploitation by a hostile Kremlin.

“There is such a personnel void now on these issues that I do think the nomination of an ambassador, especially one that is political but acceptable to the foreign policy establishment and bureaucracy at the State Department, would be very helpful,” said Daniel Vajdich, a former top Senate aide who specializes in Ukraine.

Ukraine has just selected a new ambassador to the U.S., according to Ukrainian media reports and a person familiar with the appointment. Volodymyr Yelchenko, who currently serves as Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Nations, is set to take over from Valeriy Chaly, who wrote an op-ed criticizing Trump’s position on Crimea during the election.

The Trump administration official acknowledged the challenges of pursuing a “normal” Ukraine policy “because of the huge political attention and spotlight” due to impeachment. But the official stressed that the two sides have common interests.

“They see absolutely eye-to-eye with the president on Nord Stream,” the official said, referring to the controversial Russia to Europe Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project that both Kyiv and Washington oppose.

The Ukrainians also are “genuinely appreciative of the lethal aid” the U.S. has provided them in their war with Russia, this official said. Trump is pleased that Zelensky met recently with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in an effort to resolve the conflict, the official added.

If anything, though, the Democrats’ impeachment drive seems to be deepening Trump’s own animus toward Ukraine. It also has barely dented the president’s appetite for material he can wield against his domestic rivals.

And, even as Zelensky and Putin met last week in Paris, making only limited progress, Trump welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to the Oval Office in an unusual departure from standard diplomatic protocol.

Trump’s meeting with Lavrov came as the president’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, returned from an amateur sleuthing trip to Kyiv, touting dubious if not outright fantastical claims about Joe Biden, the president’s leading 2020 rival.

Trump also failed to invite Zelensky to the White House ahead of the Paris talks, disappointing Ukrainian officials and their U.S. allies, who had been hoping for an invitation—or even just an encouraging tweet, according to several sources—as a show of support against Moscow.

It’s difficult to extract solid answers from the administration as to who, exactly, is currently in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

Both Taylor, who remains the top U.S. diplomat in Kyiv; and Sondland, who temporarily assumed an outsized role on Ukraine policy, have found themselves marginalized after their congressional testimony, two people familiar with the issue said.

Trump has directly criticized a top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, for his testimony before House lawmakers. And there’s no sign that the administration is looking to replace Volker, who not only gave up the envoy job but also lost a lucrative position as head of the McCain Institute.

The Trump administration official who spoke to POLITICO noted that Pompeo has become more deeply involved in Ukraine policy, thus his expected January visit to the country.

The State Department did not reply to requests for comment Monday.

Another plausible candidate to replace Yovanovitch is Philip Reeker, the acting assistant secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs. Reeker is a career Foreign Service officer who also testified in late October.

In a little-noticed moment from his closed-door deposition to House investigators on Oct. 26, Reeker testified that the search for a new ambassador was “ongoing.”

“I believe, having talked to the Counselor Brechbuhl, who I think has sort have been spearheading that, they are narrowing down on names,” Reeker said when asked about the status of the search. Ulrich Brechbuhl, a former West Point classmate of Pompeo’s, is one of the secretary of State’s top aides and closest confidants.

“I know he and I had one meeting where he floated a number of names that had emerged in their discussion, some of whom I was — some of the names I was familiar with,” Reeker said. Asked whether it wouldn’t be surprising if a name emerged “in the next several months,” Reeker replied: “I think that’s fair to say, yes.”

Reeker also revealed that he was originally approached to replace Yovanovitch in the winter of 2018, but that it ultimately fell through and Taylor was selected on an interim basis instead.

Dayton and the Marshall Center did not return requests for comment, but the retired Army officer is potentially a good fit. A Russian speaker, Dayton has direct experience in Kyiv, having been tapped last November by then-Defense Secretary James Mattis as a senior U.S. defense adviser to Ukraine. And he is familiar with the challenges involved in training and equipping a foreign military force. According to his online biography, his last assignment while on active duty was as U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Former State Department official Daniel Fried said Dayton is “well-regarded” and “experienced,” and would be a “sound choice” for the role if nominated.

One of Dayton’s recent projects at the Marshall Center—courses for Ukrainians on anti-corruption and defense reform that have been widely praised, according to former Pentagon official Michael Carpenter—could align with official U.S. policy goals.

Foreign policy professionals differ on whether the next ambassador should be a political appointee or a member of the career Foreign Service, as Yovanovitch was. Dayton, as a retired military officer but not a veteran diplomat, would be more like the model used in South Korea, where Trump appointed a longtime Navy admiral.

Appointing a career diplomat would send an encouraging signal to the Foreign Service in the wake of the impeachment inquiry, and a career diplomat would likely have an easier time getting through the confirmation process. But given Trump’s long-held suspicion of career government employees, an appointee chosen from the outside is more likely to have his confidence.

“A political ambassador in and of itself is not a bad thing,” said a senior Democratic Senate staffer, when asked about lawmakers’ latest thinking on the subject. “We just think the White House will have a hard time finding a Republican who doesn’t have ties to Rudy Giuliani or Parnas or Fruman.”

The Soviet-born businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman helped Giuliani dig up dirt on Biden and pushed for Yovanovitch’s early removal. Giuliani told The New Yorker that he believed he “needed Yovanovitch out of the way” because “she was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”

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Pro-Russia party looms large at Latvia elections | News | DW

Latvians were voting Saturday in a general election that could see a pro-Kremlin-populist coalition come to power, as the Baltic state celebrates the centenary of its independence from the Tsarist Russian empire after the World War I.

With a quarter of voters remaining undecided on the eve of the election, according to independent polling firm SKDS, the result is still wide open.

But the center-left and pro-Moscow Harmony party enjoys strong support among Latvia’s ethnic Russian minority, which makes up about a quarter of the country’s 1.9 million population.

Harmony, which was formerly allied with the United Russia party of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is expected to put in another good showing after winning the majority of votes in the last three elections. It did not enter government solely because it failed to find any other party to form a coalition.

This time around, however, it could find the necessary ally in the KPV LV, a populist party led by former stage actor Artuss Kaimins, who has retained popularity with voters despite his being detained over corruption allegations in June.

A willing partner

The KPV LV — which translates as “Who owns the state? — has suggested it is willing to work with any other parties, saying it had “no red lines.”

Polls show that a relatively new rightist party, the New Conservative Party, which opposes Russian being considered a national language in Latvia, is also likely to enter parliament. The Russian language dominated during Latvia’s periods under Soviet rule from 1940-41 and 1944-1991. The current national language is Latvian but there have been attempts by Russian speakers to re-establish their tongue at an official level alongside it.

Read more: Latvia pushes majority language in schools, leaving parents miffed

Latvia, an EU and NATO member, is currently ruled by a center-right coalition of the Unity party, the Union of Greens and Farmers and the National Alliance, but opinion polls have shown it losing ground.

Saturday’s election in Latvia, which sees 16 parties vying for 100 parliamentary seats, is being monitored by a team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Polling stations are to close at 1900 UTC and final results are expected early on Sunday.