The Trump-Ukraine “transcript,” explained

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/25/20883420/full-transcript-trump-ukraine-zelensky-white-house

The biggest takeaway from the summary: it sure looks like a quid pro quo

It’s important to note, at the outset, that this call summary is not quite a verbatim transcript of what Trump and Zelensky said. It’s written like a transcript, with direct quotations assigned to each leader, but it is not an authoritative transcription of an audio recording — as a note on the first page makes clear.

סרבן הגט הנודע הגיע מהכלא היישר למאה שערים

https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1035857

מאיר גורודצקי, סרבן הגט הראשון שהורשע בהליך פלילי ונשפט שוחרר היום מבית הכלא בבאר שבע לאחר למעלה מ-19 שנה - מבלי שנתן גט והגיע היישר מבית הכלא לשכונת מאה שערים בירושלים • גורודצקי הגיע לבית הכנסת אותו עזב לפני עשרים שנה בית הכנסת הוותיק של חב"ד במאה שערים.

These GOP defenses of Trump called 'disastrous'

How Trump's Obsession With a Conspiracy Theory Led to the Impeachment Crisis

https://time.com/5691641/trump-conspiracy-fears/

The warning signs were there. In a tweet or offhand remark, President Donald Trump would touch on what he said Ukraine had done to him during the 2016 election. Top Administration officials got an earful. Foreign leaders were treated to the stories. Occasionally his rants would unspool on live TV. “And Ukraine!” Trump shouted down the line to a Fox News host on June 19, the night after he formally announced his re-election bid. “Take a look at Ukraine!” he went on, as the host tried to move to other subjects.

Few people, even those closest to him in the White House, grasped exactly what the President of the United States seemed to believe: that Ukraine, a nation consumed over the past five years by a crippling armed conflict with Russia, had found a way to conspire against him during the 2016 election, and to collude with his rival, Hillary Clinton, by hiding the Democratic National Committee’s email server and feeding her allies dirt about Trump. It was an idea Tom Bossert, his first homeland-security adviser, described as a “completely debunked” conspiracy theory. Few saw in his Ukraine outbursts anything more than the effusions of a cable-news showman.

It took a complaint from an intelligence-community whistle-blower, released late last month, to reveal the weight of Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy theory and just how far the President has gone to support the notion that a vast network of enemies inside and outside his own government has been working against him. Trump has tried to mobilize the vast resources of his presidency–from Attorney General William Barr and the U.S. Justice Department to America’s national-security apparatus–and a team of investigative irregulars, led by his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. This band of conspiracy cops has traveled the globe in a disorderly hunt for proof of the conspiracy Trump says is arrayed against him.

Intelligence Inspector General to GOP: - refutes Trump supporters' nonsense

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/whistleblower-inspector-general-trump-ukraine-impeachment-conspiracy.html

Last Thursday, Sean Davis of the conservative news site The Federalist broke an explosive revelation. The Intelligence Community had secretly changed a requirement in its whistle-blower statute to allow whistle-blowers to report secondhand allegations, whereas firsthand knowledge had been required before. This suspicious rule change allegedly allowed the whistle-blower to accuse President Trump of misconduct despite lacking firsthand knowledge of said conduct. The shocking exposure of yet another Deep State plot quickly became the foundation for Trump’s defenders as they fanned out across the media.

“The hearsay rule was changed just a short period of time before the complaint was filed,” claimed Senator Lindsey Graham. The whistle-blower “has no firsthand knowledge,” charged Congressman Jim Jordan on CNN, and when host Jake Tapper noted that firsthand knowledge is not required to file a complaint, Jordan shot back that this was only “because they changed the form. You used to.” Meanwhile, Trump demanded, in all caps, “WHO CHANGED THE LONG STANDING WHISTLEBLOWER RULES JUST BEFORE SUBMITTAL OF THE FAKE WHISTLEBLOWER REPORT?”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy claimed, “Just days before the Ukraine whistleblower came forward, the IC secretly removed that requirement from the complaint form,” and promised that Republicans would “not rest until we have answers.”

They had answers. They just didn’t like them. Actual experts in intelligence law immediately pointed out that Davis’s reporting was false and was based on a simple misreading of a change in the wording of a form.

Then yesterday, the Intelligence Community’s inspector general, Trump appointee Michael Atkinson, posted a short statement online correcting Davis. Using heavily bureaucratized language and the patient and polite tone city officials use to assure the local gadfly that the water department is not sending alien nodes through his plumbing, the I.G. made a few basic points. First, the rules governing whistle-blowers have not changed. At all.

The latest on Trump's impeachment inquiry

Justice Department's inspector general: "Whistleblowers need to be able to report what they see"

Grassley, a top Republican from Iowa, broke with Trump yesterday when he said that the whistleblower who raised concerns about Trump’s dealings with the Ukrainian government “ought to be heard out and protected.”

The latest: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted today that he was on the July 25 phone call between President Trump and the Ukrainian leader.

Alleged serial pedophile Malka Leifer ordered released to house arrest

https://www.timesofisrael.com/alleged-serial-pedophile-malka-leifer-ordered-released-to-house-arrest/

A court on Wednesday ordered that an Israeli woman wanted in Australia for alleged serial crimes of pedophilia be released to house arrest.

The ruling by Jerusalem District Court Judge Ram Vinograd came a week after a judge at the same court cast doubt on the evidence against Malka Leifer and ordered the convening of a psychiatric panel to determine whether she is feigning mental illness to avoid extradition.

At the request of prosecutors, Vinograd agreed to put off Leifer’s release to her sister’s home in Bnei Brak until Friday.

Leifer, 52, faces 74 counts of child sex abuse from her time as the principal of the Adass Israel girls’ school in Melbourne. Australia filed for extradition in 2014, but the process has stalled several times, with a district psychiatrist changing his legal opinions regarding Leifer’s mental fitness, allegedly due to pressure from Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman.

Kol V’oz, an organization that combats child abuse in Jewish communities around the globe, condemned the ruling as “an absolute travesty” and said it brought “shame” on Israel.

“Malka Leifer will now be released to the care of her sister at an address within around 500 meters of two schools and six synagogues,” it said in a statement.

“If Leifer is genuinely unwell, she should be held in a medical facility or jail where she can be appropriately cared for until her extradition to Australia is approved.”

Dassi Erlich, one of Leifer’s accusers, said she was left “reeling” by the ruling, which she described as a “massive betrayal of justice.”

Leifer was recruited from Israel to work at the Adass Israel ultra-Orthodox girls school in Melbourne In 2000. When allegations of sexual abuse against her surfaced eight years later, members of the school board purchased the mother of eight a plane ticket back to Israel, allowing her to avoid being charged.

After authorities in Melbourne filed charges against her, Australia officially filed an extradition request in 2012. Two years later, Leifer was arrested in Israel but released to house arrest shortly thereafter.

Judges deemed her mentally unfit to stand trial and eventually removed all restrictions against her, concluding that she was too ill to even leave her bed.

She was rearrested in February 2018 following a police undercover operation that cast doubts on her claims regarding her mental state, and has remained in custody since. The operation was launched after the Jewish Community Watch organization hired private investigators who placed hidden cameras in Emmanuel, a Haredi settlement in the northern West Bank where Leifer had been living, that showed the alleged sex abuser roaming around the town without any apparent difficulty.

Three Jerusalem district psychiatrists determined in legal opinions submitted to the court that Leifer has been feigning mental illness, but the chief district psychiatrist, Dr. Jacob Charnes, has changed his determination three times and most recently recommended that a new psychiatric panel be convened to make an updated determination.

Column: Trump’s Ukraine scandal may have just thrown Joe Biden a lifeline

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-10-01/donald-trump-impeachment-ukraine-scandal-biden

One of the defining dynamics of politics today is negative partisanship. As Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster wrote in 2017, “Negative partisanship explains nearly everything in American politics today.” The idea is simple: Republicans vote less for Republicans than they do against Democrats — and vice versa. Hillary Clinton lost because more people in several key states voted against her than voted against Trump.

Hence the possibility that an attempt to destroy Biden could one day be remembered as his lifeline.

TRUMP'S 'CIVIL WAR' QUOTE TWEET IS ACTUALLY GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT, SAYS HARVARD LAW PROFESSOR

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-civil-war-tweet-grounds-impeachment-1462044

IMPEACHMEN

President Donald Trump's recent tweet quoting a longtime evangelical pastor who warned of a "Civil War" if Democrats seriously pursue removing him from office could actually be grounds for impeachment, one Harvard Law professor said.

"If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal," Trump tweeted on Sunday night.

The tweet was a quote from Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor who gave the comment during an appearance on Fox & Friends Weekend. Trump added his own parenthetical aside to Jeffress' quote, in which the president asserted that Congress won't be successful in their impeachment efforts.

The president's tweet was immediately met with backlash, and Harvard Law professor John Coates argued that the social media post itself is an "independent basis" for lawmakers to remove him from the White House.

"This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment - a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power," Coates wrote on Twitter on

HISTORIAN WARNS TODAY'S AMERICA LOOKS 'EERILY SIMILAR' TO PERIOD BEFORE THE CIVIL WAR, COMPARES MOVEMENT CONSERVATIVES TO SLAVEHOLDER ELITE

https://www.newsweek.com/historian-trump-civil-war-impeachment-movement-conservatives-slaveholders-1462240

Trump, facing impeachment by the House over the Ukraine-Biden affair, tweeted comments made on Fox News by the evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress that the president's removal "will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal."

Heather Cox Richardson, a history professor at Boston College who is an expert in 19th century America, laid out on Twitter what she described as the "eerily similar" parallels after Trump's controversial civil war tweets.

"The parallels between the consolidation of elite slaveowners' power from 1830-1860 and the rise of Movement Conservatives from 1954-2019 are eerily similar," Richardson said, remarking that they both took power by "denigrating black Americans."

"Their racial dogwhistles won voters and they began to pass laws that moved wealth upward. The more those laws hurt regular people, the more they doubled down on racism against all POC, and then turned on 'Feminazis,' all of whom they said threatened white men's liberty.

"As they got richer and lost popular support, they came to believe they were the nation's natural leaders who should rule even as people turned against their policies. They stayed in power by gaming the system: gerrymandering, voter suppression, and a compliant SCOTUS.

"But that is now crumbling. When Trump threatens civil war, he is not just talking about saving his own hide; he is calling for his supporters to rally around race and gender so they protect the oligarchy that has been gathering power for a generation or more."

How Donald Trump Triggered an Unprecedented Impeachment Fight

https://time.com/5686822/trump-biden-ukraine-call-favor/

The accusation Trump faces is grave. The President allegedly pressured Zelensky to reopen investigations into previously dismissed and widely debunked accusations involving Joe Biden, the former Vice President. Before making the call, Trump took extraordinary steps to withhold aid approved for Ukraine by majorities of both parties in Congress. These and other actions by Trump so alarmed an intelligence-community official detailed to the White House that the official filed a whistle-blower complaint. By law, the complaint would be forwarded to Congress. The Administration blocked it.

The implications go beyond the fate of a presidency to the heart of our democracy. Trump stands accused of using America’s vast wealth and the presidency’s unmatched sway to hold onto power for himself. In this era of hyperpartisan politics, the impeachment process will test the mechanisms of accountability built into our system of government by the Founders, who anticipated many things–but could not have envisioned Trump.

The President, for his part, responded to the House’s action with characteristic fury, denying wrongdoing and accusing his critics of “presidential harassment.” Trump was in New York City for the meeting of the U.N. General Assembly when the dam broke. Speaking to reporters on his way to a meeting with the President of Iraq, he said, “Listen, it’s just a continuation of the witch hunt.” In shifting statements as the Ukraine story unfolded, Trump has offered different rationales for the withheld aid but insisted there was no quid pro quo. His allies have sought to reframe the scandal as a “deep state” plot by hysterical Trump antagonists, and to deflect attention from the allegations of corruption by the Bidens, which numerous independent observers have determined to be unfounded, the Ukrainian government has denied and Biden decries as a smear.

The Whistleblower's Complaint on Trump and Ukraine Has Been Released. These Sections Will Receive the Most Scrutiny

https://time.com/5687055/whistleblower-complaint-allegations/

The whistleblower complaint detailing concerns over President Donald Trump’s July phone call with the Ukrainian president alleges that the President “is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”

In addition to the July phone call, the complaint, which was released by the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning, details an alleged effort by White House officials to keep records of the call secret and efforts to follow up with Ukrainian officials about the call. The whistleblower described the President’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, as a “central figure” in the effort to pressure Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election, and that Attorney General William Barr “appears to be involved.” (Giuliani has defended his work and denied wrongdoing while the Department of Justice has denied that Barr has communicated with Ukraine).

Drain the swamp? Trump has named more lobbyists to Cabinet than Bush or Obama did in 8 years

https://www.salon.com/2019/09/19/drain-the-swamp-trump-has-named-more-lobbyists-to-cabinet-than-bush-or-obama-did-in-8-years/

President Trump has named more former lobbyists to Cabinet positions in his first three years in office than Barack Obama or George W. Bush did over eight years, The Associated Press reports.

“Trump’s actions upon taking office also demonstrate — despite the tough campaign rhetoric attacking Washington, D.C.’s ‘revolving door’ — not only an unwillingness to take on special interests, but a continued expansion of the influence of lobbyists on his administration,” the group said in a statement. “Trump has abjectly failed to ‘drain the swamp.’ To the contrary, he has repeatedly turned to industry insiders and lobbyists to advise him.”

Republicans are hanging their defense of Donald Trump on the thinnest of threads

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/26/politics/lindsey-graham-donald-trump-ukraine/index.html

Know who got this all exactly right? Lindsey Graham. In 1999 -- when he said this: "A president doesn't even have to be convicted of a crime to be impeached. Impeachment is about restoring honor and integrity to the office."