Let's make this quick, because this is
an appetizer, a snack before the real meal of The Presidential Events
of 2019.
December was a surprisingly uneventful
month, or better to say, one particular series of events drew an
overwhelming amount of media attention to it, and we'll cover it at
the end.
The President's Finances and the
Courts
A federal appeals court ruled that
Trump's
banks, including Deutsche and Capital One, needed to comply with
congressional subpoenas for his financial information.
He
appealed to the Supreme Court and Ginsburg
issued a temporary block on the lower court ruling.
The Supreme Court bundled
that case with two others regarding the presidents financial records,
and scheduled a hearing for March 2020.
The Department of Justice, after ending
a nearly two decade moratorium on the death penalty, asked
the Supreme Court if it could rush four executions.
The Supreme Court said that the
DOJ must follow proper procedure.
Another judge blocked the White
House's plan to redirect Pentagon funds to pay for the border wall.
A second judge concurred. A House Committee requested that the
Inspector General of the
Department of Defense investigate whether a $400 million contract was
an example of corruption.
Foreign Policy
North
Korea removed nuclear disarmament from the table
because the White House did not live up to its end of the deal. The
country conducted tests at a previously dismantled site.
In response, Trump
threatened Kim Jong Un.
At a
NATO
conference Trump fought with French President Emmanuel Macron over
the value of the alliance and of Turkey's relevance in it.
After the release of a video in which Macron,
Boris Johnson, Mark Rutte, and Justin
Trudeau
appeared to mock the President for his extended press conferences,
the President abruptly left the NATO meeting early.
Russia Investigation
Even
before the release of a report investigating the origins of the
Russia investigation by the Inspector General, Attorney
General William Barr began attacking its conclusions.
The Department of Justice IG, Michael Horowitz, debunked
the conspiracy that the FBI's investigation into the President was
motivated by political animus.
He did say the FBI
made procedural mistakes throughout the investigation, but that they
were not partisan attempts to bias the process.
Bill
Barr immediately objected, and undercut the IG.
The
President lied about the report's conclusion,
saying that the IG proved the Russia Investigation “... was an
attempted overthrow...”. The FBI director, Christopher Wray, said
in an ABC news interview that he respected the report and approved of
the IG's message. “The
inspector general did not find political bias or improper motivations
impacting the opening" of the investigation.
The President attacked Wray after the interview as a deep state
operative, and hinted
at jail time for former FBI director James Comey.
Wrapping
up his assistance in the Russia Investigation, Rick
Gates was sentenced to forty-five days in jail,
while disgraced former National
Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, will be sentenced on January 28th.
Rallies, Lies, Insults, and War
Crimes
At a
rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania the
President lied and smeared Lisa Page, and called FBI agents scum.
At a different rally in Michigan, after being impeached, the
President implied Rep. Debbie Dingell's late husband, former Rep.
John Dingell, was in hell.
After
Time magazine named climate activist Great Thunberg their Person of
the Year, the President attacked the sixteen-year-old in a tweet
saying, “Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go
to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”
The
President commonly denies knowing people he is well acquainted with
as soon as they might threaten his supposed brand. He's demonstrated
the tactic with Manafort,
Epstein, Parnas, Sondland and more.
If Rudy Giuliani ever goes to jail he'll try it again. In December
Trump
denied knowing the friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew. Like
most of the other cases, there were photos.
The
President does know a good war crime when he sees one though, and
invited Eddie Gallagher, the Navy Seal accused of war crimes, to
Mar-a-Lago.
Secret testimony about the investigation into Eddie Gallagher was
leaked to the times, and they published interviews in which
Gallagher's
platoon members called him “freaking evil.”
Other
Roughly
two-thirds of a million Americans will lose access to food stamps
because of new restrictive work requirements
enacted by the White House.
The
Medicare
Chief asked the public to reimburse her for over $47,000 in jewelry
stolen
during a work related trip.
The
national
deficit rose 12% in two months, mostly related to the Republican Tax
Cut,
and Trump's ballooning military budgets.
Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine and his
Associates
The House began the process of
impeaching the President in December. While they were doing this,
the President's personal lawyer traveled to Ukraine.
His
associates, Lev
Parnas and Igor Fruman, were charged already, and likely to see
further indictments.
Further investigations revealed that Parnas
spoke frequently with The Hill's John Solomon while the latter was
writing smears against Ambassador Yovanovitch.
Parnas
hid a one million dollar payment he received from Russia,
when speaking to federal investigators. The House Intelligence
Committee also revealed
that Parnas spoke to Republican Representative Devin Nunez who is the
ranking member on the House
Intelligence Committee.
In
addition, the Committee
released phone records that demonstrated that Parnas spoke with
Giuliani at the same time he was talking to Solomon,
and that both repeatedly called the White House on days oddly
correlated with major events in Trump's attempt to demand an
investigation by Ukraine into Joe Biden. Specifically, Giuliani
called the Office of Management and Budget, but when asked for
comment, Trump said it was “no big deal.”
While
in Ukraine, Giuliani
tweeted that impeachment was a farce because no aid was withheld
(though it was),
and that Trump pressured Zelensky because Joe Biden engaged in
criminal corruption in Ukraine (for which no one has presented any
evidence). On his return Giuliani reminded everyone that the
President was behind his makeshift investigation, saying that Trump
asked him to brief the Justice Department and Republican Senators.
The
Wall Street Journal reported that the
President asked Giuliani “What did you get?” to which the former
mayor replied, “More than you can imagine.”
Giuliani began to promote
wild conspiracies,
and confessed to the New
Yorker that, “... I needed Yovanovitch out of the way.”
He told CNN
that the president was “very supportive” of his work in Ukraine.
He admitted on Fox
News that he “forced her out,” in another reference to Marie
Yovanovitch.
To flame out the year he
spread wild conspiracies about George Soros in a New York Magazine
interview.
Impeachment
The
impeachment process concluded in the House Intelligence committee
with the release of two reports: one written by the Democrats, and
another by the Republicans. The
first concluded that the President abused his power to pressure
Ukraine for political favors.
The latter claimed there was
nothing wrong with the President withholding funding to an ally to
force them to announce an investigation into his political foe.
While
some Republicans
weaponized conspiracy theories about the 2016, specifically that
Ukraine interfered against Trump,
the Republican
led Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation into the matter has
turned up nothing.
While
many current and former Trump officials have refused to testify even
when issued a subpoena by the House, a
District Court Judge ruled that former White House counsel, Don
McGahn, needed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee.
Withe
the impeachment inquiry moving ahead, the Judiciary Committee
prepared to consider the evidence. They
invited the White House to participate in a hearing, but the
Administration refused to participate.
The Committee used the Intelligence
Committee's report
as their starting point, particularly the statement that, “[T]he
impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and
acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government,
solicited the interference
of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit
his reelection.”
The Judiciary
Committee heard evidence from both the Republican and Democratic
counsel of the Intelligence committee, along
with
testimony from four constitutional lawyers.
The Committee crafted two
articles of Impeachment: one for an abuse of power, and other for
obstructing a legitimate investigation by Congress.
The
Committee approved them 23 to 17, and sent them
to the House. The
full House voted 230 to 197 to impeach the President,
with one former Republican (now an independent) voting with the
Democrats, and two Democrats voting with the Republicans. Senate
Democrats asked for Senate Majority Leader if they could subpoena
four witnesses for the trial, and Mitch
McConnell said no. In response, Nancy
Pelosi indicated she would delay sending the articles of impeachment
to the Senate, while the House
Judiciary Committee indicated it was open to adding additional
articles of impeachment.
Many
professionals have decried the President both before and after his
election. During the month of December over
seven hundred historians, including the Pulitzer prize winning
authors Ron Chernow and David Blight, wrote in support of impeaching
the President.
Meanwhile a major mainstream evangelical
magazine published an editorial in favor of impeachment.
Seventeen
of the Watergate prosecutors wrote an op-ed saying that Trump had
committed impeachable offenses.
Some
other details came out regarding the Ukrainian investigation during
the month. President
Zelensky criticized Trump for blocking aid while Russia was invading
Ukraine.
Emails released from the Office of Management and Budget revealed
that
the department demanded the Pentagon freeze military aid to Ukraine
90 minutes after the infamous phone call between Trump and Zelensky.
A
number of OMB officials worried that the plan was illegal.
Finally,
the whole exercise in impeachment would be exceptional regardless,
but Trump added some of his signature flavor. Trump
invited Russia's envoy to a White House photo op, the exact thing
which he has withheld from Ukraine until they publicly investigate
Joe Biden.
He retweeted
an article which revealed the name of the whistleblower.
And he promoted
an article where Putin argued that impeachment was unjustified.
In conclusion:
First,
that President Trump directed a scheme to pressure Ukraine into
opening two investigations that would benefit his 2020 reelection
campaign, and not US national interests.
Second, President
Trump used his official office and the official tools of US foreign
policy, the withholding of an Oval Office meeting, and $391 million
in security assistance, to pressure Ukraine into meeting his demands.
And fourth,
despite the public discovery of this scheme which prompted the
president to release the aid, he has not given up. He and his agents
continue to solicit Ukrainian interference in our election, causing
an imminent threat to our elections and our national security.
Soon to follow, The Presidential Events
of 2019.
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