We now know who will prosecute the impeachment case against President Donald Trump in his Senate trial. Speaker Pelosi has predictably selected Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY). Additionally, she chose Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), Val Demings (D-FL), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Jason Crow (D-CO). It will be fascinating to see how they divvy their responsibilities up, and I’m particularly interested in learning who will be discussing Lev Parnas.
I’ve written about Parnas repeatedly in the past. It’s hard to identify a shadier character, and he’s not necessarily of much use as a fact witness due to his complete lack of credibility. But his documents and electronic communications are another matter, and he’s been turning them over to Congress as fast as he can get them released by the Feds who seized them when they arrested Parnas and his partner Igor Fruman back in October 2019 for making illegal campaign contributions with Russian money.
A new batch landed on the nation’s lap on Tuesday, and they included everything from death threats against a sitting U.S. ambassador by a Republican congressional candidate, to confirmation that a Ukrainian prosecutor had agreed to “find” dirt on Hunter Biden in exchange for the removal of that ambassador, to written proof that Giuliani (with the assistance of lawyer Victoria Toensing) sought an audience with newly-elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for the purpose of helping Trump is his capacity as the president’s private attorney.
Philip Bump of the Washington Post explains why it’s significant that Giuliani wasn’t a government employee and wasn’t claiming to be serving the nation’s interests when he wrote to Zelensky. Giuliani was explicit that the president has different attorneys who are responsible for managing “official” business.
Document from Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani, released by House investigators. (House Intelligence Committee)
This is also a problem because the president has stated that he didn’t authorize Giuliani to do any of this:
Asked about Giuliani’s planned trip in an interview with Bill O’Reilly in November, the president denied awareness of what his lawyer was up to.
“I know that he was going to go to Ukraine and I think he canceled the trip. But Rudy has other clients, other than me,” Trump said. Asked if Giuliani was going to Ukraine on his behalf to try to find negative information about Biden, Trump said, “No, I didn’t direct him, but he is a warrior, he is a warrior.”
Giuliani told the Times he was going for Trump. He told Zelensky he was going for Trump. But in November, once the impeachment inquiry was well underway, Trump dismissed the idea.
There’s a lot more to unpack here than I can cover in a single blog post, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t add one last revelation from Parnas’s latest document dump. Even before Parnas was arrested in October 2019, the president was very aware that he had some legal problems.
The documents also reveal that when Parnas and Fruman came under scrutiny in the impeachment inquiry (but before his arrest), Trump personally approved his former lawyer John Dowd’s representation of the pair. That’s according to an email from Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow.
Do you remember what Trump said about Parnas after he was arrested and people immediately found many pictures of the two together?
US President Donald Trump on Thursday told reporters that he doesn’t know two Ukrainian associates of Rudy Giuliani arrested on campaign finance charges — despite being pictured with both of them.
The previous evening Florida-based businessmen Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman — clients of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani — were arrested on charges of campaign finance violations involving a pro-Trump PAC and Republican candidates.
“I don’t know those gentlemen. Now it’s possible I have a picture with them because I have a picture with everybody, I have a picture with everybody here,” Trump said, according to a pool report.
“But somebody said that there may be a picture or something at a fundraiser or somewhere. But I have pictures with everybody.”
“I don’t know them. I don’t know about them. I don’t know what they do but I don’t know, maybe they were clients of Rudy. You’d have to ask Rudy, I just don’t know,” continued the president.
There’s really only one defense available to Trump, and that’s the one Nixon tried out after he’d already been drummed out of office. In 1977, British journalist David Frost interviewed Nixon and asked him about his illegal activities. Nixon famously responded, “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
If the Republican senators agree, then he’ll be acquitted.
Look, is there REALLY anyone out there (with an IQ above 75) who doubts that Der Trumper conditioned the release of the Ukraine aid upon ginning up an official “investigation” into Biden & Son? Is there actually a single Repub senator who doesn’t think that Trumper’s Ukraine shakedown hasn’t (already) been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, despite whatever hollow nonsense (“hearsay!” “conclusions!” “presumptions!”) they bellow into the mic? The case is proven, although it’s always nice to have more documents.
The (first) real problem here is that today’s elected “conservatives” don’t think that Trumper & Giuliani’s scheme was wrong, and don’t think that the Dems will have the same ability to use these tactics against Repub candidates in the future—that this is simply all political gain for Repubs, another way for they alone to pollute voters and game elections. In short, another illegitimate means by which they can hold onto their (illegitimate) power. This is the foundation of fascist thought as it operates in a (failing) democracy.
The second problem is that 40-some percent of voters today also very likely know that Trump committed the shakedown, but they don’t care, either. And they certainly couldn’t care less that (ever more solid) majorities of their fellow citizens think Trumper is wholly unfit, and that it’s essential he be removed form office. Basically, they have no problem with the norms of democracy being shredded, as long as the shredding aids Team Conservative. There is thus no longer any solid foundation of democratic principles that it can be said are shared by all Americans. And frankly this has been the case for quite some time, but the Ukraine shakedown is simply the final, irrefutable confirmation of the situation.
What exactly the incompetent white electorate is actually getting out of National Trumpalism is (I confess) a mystery to me. Yes, they can vicariously enjoy the harassment of Latino immigrants and refugees, especially children. And some may enjoy that they can publicly utter racially-charged hate speech with (somewhat) greater abandon. They can also feel moral satisfaction that plutocrats have greater ability to pollute the nation, wreck the climate and further advance the sixth great extinction. But one has to admit that these are pretty ephemeral benefits to their actual standard of living and future prospects. And these Der Trumper has done very little to (positively) alter, since his policies are mostly routine “conservatism”–albeit with a satisfyingly heavy dose of spite and even greater irrationality.
In the final analysis, Weimar Germany and the Nazi Party obviously could not co-exist. Nor can American democracy and the “conservative” movement. That is what the upcoming senate trial (and November election) will prove conclusively. The decades of 2000-2020 will be marked by historians as those in which democracy was destroyed by American “conservatism”.
Maybe! But historians don’t mark 1840-60 as the decades in which democracy was destroyed by pro-slavery interests, and they don’t mark 1910-30 as the decades in which democracy was destroyed by the Anti-Saloon League and the KKK.
I’d say the the implacability of the American (Southern) reactionaries in 1840-60 necessarily resulted in the Civil War, which (through total Union victory) culminated in a second American (constitutional) revolution, producing the 13-15th Amendments. As for the 1930s and the Great Depression, democracy probably came within a hairsbreadth of collapsing, and FDR could have ended it had he seem fit to adopt (Hiterian/Trumpian) demagoguery.
But you are right to challenge me based on the nation’s history–I should have said “conservatism” will either destroy American democracy, or “conservatism” will itself be destroyed. But one or the other will (ultimately) have to happen, they can no longer co-exist.
When you look at the people on both sides of that, it does appear we are headed in that direction. Do you think this will result in violence? (As in armed camps)
“armed camps”.
Well, the “conservative” movement already has numerous alt-right gun-nuts that are openly calling for that on our wonderful “social media” platforms. Further, our widespread national gun-nuttery makes it clear we are a nation of barbarians, whose members have been permitted to procure enormous home arsenals of high-powered weaponry. And National Triumpism has given aid and comfort to all these violent rightwing extremists. So there will certainly be an increase in political violence in the American future, especially if a Dem were to defeat the White Cult leader. Political violence is an endemic feature of condoning an openly fascist movement and permitting it to freely operate within a nation.
But organized military campaigns or established “camps” of irregular militias are likely out of the question, absent some sort of repeat secessionist movement—which one can’t see happening in an age of Social Security and Medicare payments, not to mention payments on the elephantine national debt. The existence of the enormous standing US military, both air, land and naval forces and national guard (none of which existed in 1860), not to mention militarized urban police forces, likely makes this impossible.
So the conflict will be more of a guerilla war, with some states, mostly Red/Purple ones, seeing greater amounts of violence. We can see this in embryo in today’s NC and VA, where white gun-nut irregulars and militias have the critical mass to coalesce and threaten (or commit) random acts of armed political violence, after which they disperse and blend into a sympathetic partisan “conservative” citizenry.
And of course the election of a Dem prez will result in an increase in underground domestic right-wing terror activity against Blue citizens and “targets”, that’s a given. Just my 2 cents.
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Someone mentioned that Parnas hasn’t given a lot of detail or proof behind any of his talk.I heard him on RM and was not particularly enthralled with what he has to say absent something more to prove the case. But maybe there is more there.
There is a chance there will be no witnesses, since the Dems may not want to give up the Bidens to these assholes to browbeat. It is going to be interesting.