True story this. In one of my U.S. History Courses (indeed all of them but I may not be cudgeling my memories with sufficient vigor) I was asked one question I didn’t know the answer to, didn’t even have a good guess-

What political innovation was imported from Australia in 1888?

The answer is the secret ballot, sometimes called the blanket ballot because it listed all candidates regardless of Party (Yup, leaving opposing Candidates off the ballot used to be a thing), labeled Party Identification (Yup, misleading Voters about your affiliation used to be a thing), oh, and above all it was secret so nobody knows how you voted because beating up the opposition was a thing too.

I of course answered, “Kangaroos!” If political innovation was not in the question I would have been technically correct and I misremember if it was simply implicit in the nature of the test but I didn’t quibble because I was already ruining the curve for everybody else and they hated me for it.

What? You don’t read your whole History book at the beginning of the Semester? You’re missing the flow of the narrative.

Anyway, I think we can all agree on what a “Kangaroo Court” is and if you don’t understand the reference look it up yourself.

Barely past noon only halfway through my daily reads and I’m already super cranky.

A big tell in Trump’s own legal brief exposes McConnell’s coverup
By Greg Sargent, Washington Post
Jan. 21, 2020

Now that Mitch McConnell has rolled out the rules for President Trump’s impeachment trial, the full dimensions of the Senate majority leader’s efforts to cover up Trump’s bottomless corruption are coming into view. They’re worse than expected, which is really something given McConnell’s long-running devotion to shielding Trump from accountability.

As it happens, the formal legal brief that the White House just released in Trump’s defense itself illustrates the true nature of this attempted coverup as clearly as anyone could ask for.

McConnell’s rules, which are in a draft resolution, appear designed to make it politically as easy as possible for GOP senators to facilitate Trump’s coverup. After opening statements and questioning from senators, the Senate will vote on whether any subpoenas for new witnesses and documents will be permitted.

If 51 GOP senators then vote “no,” that would be it. Senators would not have to vote specifically on whether to subpoena former national security adviser John Bolton or acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney.

Nor would senators have to vote on whether to subpoena any of the specific documents and evidence that the administration refused to turn over to the House impeachment inquiry. It would be politically harder to vote against specific demands, and McConnell’s rules appear designed to spare GOP senators from that.
…
Trump’s legal team has submitted a lengthy brief in his defense that is packed with the same old nonsense. It insists Trump pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine out of genuine concern over corruption, a reference to Biden’s work as vice president to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor, supposedly to protect his son Hunter.

That narrative is fabricated. And the notion that Trump was genuinely concerned about this invented corruption, as if it were just pure coincidence that Trump also worried he might face Biden in 2020, is laughable on its face.

What’s notable in the White House brief, however, is its treatment of Trump’s conditioning of political acts — a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid — on Zelensky doing his bidding.

The brief argues that two of the people who spoke directly to Trump about the freezing of military aid both exonerated him. That’s a reference to Ambassador Gordon Sondland, who personally conveyed the extortion demand to Ukraine but said he only “presumed” the money was conditioned on announcing investigations and testified Trump told him “no quid pro quo.”

It’s also a reference to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who asserted Trump personally told him he’d “never” demand such a quid pro quo, after Johnson had expressed deep concern about the frozen aid.

But note how the document references Sondland and Johnson: It repeatedly describes them as the only two people on record who discussed this with Trump.
…
This is the “central fact” in this case. But the very use of the phrase “on record” gives away the entire sordid game.

Here’s why. The whole reason Sondland and Johnson are the only people “on record” — that is, the only people who directly discussed the frozen aid with Trump who testified to the House impeachment inquiry — is because Trump blocked all the other people who also discussed this with him from testifying.

Mulvaney froze the aid at Trump’s direction. Bolton privately argued with Trump over it. They both defied House demands for their testimony — at Trump’s direction. And if GOP senators vote against hearing any witnesses, they will be carrying out Trump’s bidding once again.

And so, Trump’s own brief itself underscores the truth about the coverup — that it’s all about keeping all of these other witnesses with direct knowledge of Trump’s freezing of the aid off of “the record.” It’s all about keeping them from sharing what they know under oath.

“The brief reveals the secret sauce to the coverup — to try to keep others who directly communicated with the president from going on the record,” Ryan Goodman, a law professor at New York University, told me.

As it is, the argument that Sondland and Johnson exonerated Trump is nonsense. In the same call where Trump supposedly told Sondland “no quid pro quo,” Trump also told him to convey to Zelensky that he must do Trump’s bidding, even as Trump continued withholding the money.

“The brief carefully relies on these third-person accounts to claim what the president did or did not say,” Goodman told me. “The irony is the Sondland call is actually one of the most incriminating parts of the record. When Sondland told other officials of this very call, it set off alarm bells.”

And Johnson’s statements actually undercut Trump’s case, because Johnson’s concern about what Trump had done itself illustrated how indefensible it was. There is zero reason to accept Trump’s phony denials to Johnson or Sondland at face value: The extortion demand actually was conveyed to Zelensky by Sondland, who was acting at Trump’s direction throughout, and Trump himself directly expressed it to Zelensky on July 25.

What this all shows is that, if GOP senators vote as McConnell hopes, they’ll actually be voting to never hear from the people with the most direct knowledge of the very conduct Trump and his defenders say was entirely above reproach. After all, Trump blocked them from speaking to the House as well.

Those GOP senators will be voting to carry Trump’s coverup all the way through to completion.

I’m skipping Cartnoon and putting this up in its time slot because I think we’ll have plenty to be outraged about this afternoon.

Oh, and this is the most important piece.

Trevor

First of all, MLK Jr. with Roy Wood Jr..

Ok, Impeachment.

Stephen

His get was Tom Steyer-

And, because we are collecting wealthy Democratic Presidential Candidates, I give you Andy Yang-

Seth

And again, first of all, Amber Ruffin on MLK Jr..

Pretty On Topic as usual.

And his big get? Michael Moore.

Now I’m not saying there are many new crimes (with the definite exclusion of the ongoing Obstruction which has continued) in this summary, but we do have new information about them and the important point is this-

These are new facts and documents, corroborating in every detail the testimony of the witnesses before the House Intelligence Committee AND they have all been revealed since the Articles of Impeachment were approved by the House.

The original piece from The Bulwark is here- The New Evidence Against Trump Since He Was Impeached by Kim Wehle, January 21, 2020. It’s a bit long for this page but full of linky goodness and pretty much a must read.

So much criming, so little time.

Raw Story has a summary of the summary which, while not comprehensive, is a good deal shorter by Travis Gettys.

Here’s all the new evidence discovered about Trump’s Ukraine corruption — since he was impeached
By Travis Gettys, Raw Story
January 21, 2020

New evidence emerged over the holidays, when the public is distracted, showing Trump’s knowledge of the Ukraine quid pro quo and awareness of the scheme’s illegality.

Two days after the articles of impeachment passed, 300 pages of new emails were made public showing White House officials directed the Department of Defense to block military aid to Ukraine, and made clear the order came from the president.

Those documents also showed worried White House officials then worked to cook up a justification for the pause, after the whistleblower complaint came out, because they feared Trump’s order would violate the Impoundment Control Act.

Documents released by an indicted associate of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani shows the president was directly involved in his personal attorney’s efforts to conduct foreign policy on his behalf in Ukraine in violation of longstanding foreign policy against the country.

Giuliani, working for Trump, then worked to oust Ukrainian ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, who was maybe placed under surveillance by his associate Lev Parnas and Robert Hyde, a Republican congressional candidate.

Parnas appeared last week on MSNBC and CNN, and he told broadcasters the Ukraine scheme involved Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General William Barr and Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

That matches testimony by EU ambassador Gordon Sondland, who told the impeachment inquiry that “everybody was in the loop,” and notes from Trump’s July 25 call to Ukraine president also mentioned Barr was involved.

Foreign efforts to interfere with the U.S. election were shown Jan. 13 to remain ongoing, after a cybersecurity company reported that Russia’s government hacked Ukrainian oil company Burisma Holdings — which is at the center of the Trump scheme.

I dunno. Think we need some witnesses? Moscow Mitch McConnell doesn’t and his draft rules forbid inclusion of the Testimony and Documents from the House proceedings.

So basically they prevent the House Managers from presenting any evidence at all.

When you grow up you develop “Object Permanence”. This is the knowledge that just because you’re not looking at something doesn’t mean it went away, the whole point of the Peek-A-Boo Game.

I’m past playing Peek-A-Boo except with the extremely gullible (which isn’t in the Dictionary, you could look it up) and babies. Moscow Mitch evidently needs a refresher. Just because you suppress the facts doesn’t mean they won’t come out and then you’ll be exposed as the Conspirator and Traitor you are.

That applies equally to every Republican Senator.

As I pointed out when I was trashing Matt Bai for posting a profoundly racist editorial in the Times (which should be held to account for even publishing that garbage), Jennifer Rubin is no Liberal of any sort.

Distinguished person of the week: Lev Parnas
By Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post
Jan. 19, 2020

Parnas’s stash of evidence includes a letter from Giuliani seeking a meeting with Ukraine’s president with Trump’s knowledge and consent, a note that an announcement to investigate Biden was the price of releasing any aid, and texts concerning the effort to fire then-Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The Post reported Friday evening on the release of even more documents: “Documents released by House Democrats Friday evening show text exchanges between Parnas, an associate of Giuliani, and Robert Hyde, a Connecticut Republican who is running for Congress, that indicate a third, unidentified individual was tracking the movements and activities of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.”

The documents also implicate Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), who denied memory of speaking with Parnas, until the documents were about to be released. “The text messages corroborate Parnas’s previous claims that he arranged conversations with the Ukrainian prosecutors for the Nunes aide,” The Post reported. “And they deepen questions about how much Nunes knew about the pressure campaign — even as he served as one of Trump’s most vociferous defenders during the House impeachment hearings.” Nunes will have to explain why he concealed his office’s involvement in the schemes the committee on which he sat was investigating.

Parnas provides us with documentary evidence of the plot to extract from the Ukrainians an investigation into Biden. Most important, by coming forward, Parnas also effectively puts the Senate on notice: There’s a lot of evidence out there, so ignore it at your own peril.

Thanks to Parnas, it is becoming nearly impossible to deny Trump’s central role in the scheme.

I hope you got a chance to watch the Maddow interview. It’s devastating. MSNBC are kind of being pricks about releasing an embeddable copy and we’re woring on it.

Parnas, whatever his legal and moral failings, has shown more guts and moral backbone than former national security adviser John Bolton as well as the slew of current and former Trump officials who refuse to provide testimony and documents that may determine Trump’s guilt — if not in the minds of sycophantic Republicans senators, then in the minds of voters. Parnas reminds us that trials are about truth-telling and that it is never too late to prevent a miscarriage of justice.

For coming forward with details and documents, Parnas makes it harder for Trump to maintain his implausible denials and for Republicans to hide from the facts. For all that, we can say, well done, Mr. Parnas.

Look, he’s guilty.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

He has committed crimes. In this regrettably limited instance Bribery, Extortion, and Violating the Impoundment Act.

Those are CRIMES!

Jury Tampering doesn’t make it Justice.

Umm… do the math?

President Trump made 16,241 false or misleading claims in his first three years
By Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, Washington Post
Jan. 20, 2020

Three years after taking the oath of office, President Trump has made more than 16,200 false or misleading claims — a milestone that would have been unthinkable when we first created the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement he has uttered.

We started this project as part of our coverage of the president’s first 100 days, largely because we could not possibly keep up with the pace and volume of the president’s misstatements. We recorded 492 claims — an average of just under five a day — and readers demanded that we keep it going for the rest of Trump’s presidency.

Little did we know what that would mean.

In 2017, Trump made 1,999 false or misleading claims. In 2018, he added 5,689 more, for a total of 7,688. And in 2019, he made 8,155 suspect claims.

In other words, in a single year, the president said more than total number of false or misleading claims he had made in the previous two years. Put another way: He averaged six such claims a day in 2017, nearly 16 a day in 2018 and more than 22 a day in 2019.

As of Jan. 19, his 1,095th day in office, Trump had made 16,241 false or misleading claims. Only 366 days to go — at least in this term.

You think it’s impossible? We re-elected W after it was clear he was a murdering, torturing, War Criminal!

In 2018 and 2019, October and November ranked as the months in which Trump made the most false or misleading claims: October 2018: 1,205; October 2019: 1,159; November 2019: 903; and November 2018: 867.

In 2018, Trump barnstormed the country in an effort to thwart a Democratic takeover of the House. The two biggest false-claim days were before the election: Nov. 5: 139, and Nov. 3: 128.

The key reasons for last year’s surge in October and November was the uproar over a phone call on July 25 in which Trump urged Ukraine’s president to announce an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election rival — and the ensuing House impeachment inquiry. Almost 1,000 of the false and misleading claims made by the president deal with the Ukraine investigation, even though it only became a category four months ago.

The president apparently believes he can weather an impeachment trial through sheer repetition of easily disproved falsehoods.

For instance, nearly 70 times he has claimed that a whistleblower complaint about the call was inaccurate. The report accurately captured the content of Trump’s call and many other details have been confirmed. Nearly 100 times, Trump has claimed his phone call with the Ukrainian president was “perfect,” even though it so alarmed other White House officials that several immediately raised private objections.

Three claims about the Ukraine investigation have now made it onto our list of Bottomless Pinocchios. (It takes 20 repeats of a Three- or Four-Pinocchio claim to merit a Bottomless Pinocchio, and there are now 32 entries.) Besides the claim about the whistleblower, the two other claims on the Bottomless Pinocchio list are that Biden forced the resignation of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating his son Hunter Biden and that Hunter Biden scored $1.5 billion in China after hitching a ride on Air Force Two with his father.

He’s an Unindicted Co-conspirator in Financial Fraud too. Just saying.

Trump crossed the 10,000 mark on April 26. From the start of his presidency, he has averaged nearly 15 such claims a day.

About one in five of these claims are about the economy or jobs.

As Trump approaches a tough reelection campaign, his most repeated claim — 257 times — is that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. He began making this claim in June 2018, and it quickly became one of his favorites. The president can certainly brag about the state of the economy, but he runs into trouble when he repeatedly makes a play for the history books. By just about any important measure, the economy today is not doing as well as it did under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson or Bill Clinton — or Ulysses S. Grant. Moreover, the economy is beginning to hit the head winds caused by Trump’s trade wars, with the manufacturing sector in an apparent recession.

About one in six of Trump’s claims are about immigration, his signature issue — a percentage that increased in early 2019 when the government was partly shut down over funding for his promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. In fact, his second-most-repeated claim — 242 times — is that his border wall is being built. Congress balked at funding the concrete barrier he envisioned, so he has tried to pitch bollard fencing and mostly repairs of existing barriers as “a wall.” (Almost all of the 100 miles that have been completed replaced previous barriers.) The Washington Post has reported that the bollard fencing is easily breached, with smugglers sawing through it, despite Trump’s claims that it is impossible to get past.

Trump has falsely said 184 times that he passed the biggest tax cut in history. Even before his tax cut was crafted, he promised that it would be the biggest in U.S. history — bigger than Ronald Reagan’s in 1981. Reagan’s tax cut amounted to 2.9 percent of the gross domestic product, and none of the proposals under consideration came close to that level. Yet Trump persisted in this fiction even when the tax cut was eventually crafted to be the equivalent of 0.9 percent of gross domestic product, making it the eighth-largest tax cut in 100 years. This continues to be an all-purpose applause line at the president’s rallies.

On 176 occasions, Trump has claimed the United States has “lost” money on trade deficits. This reflects a basic misunderstanding of economics. Countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates.

The president’s constant Twitter barrage also adds to his totals. Nearly 20 percent of the false and misleading statements stemmed from his itchy Twitter finger.

Trump’s penchant for repeating false claims is demonstrated by the fact that the Fact Checker database has recorded more than 400 instances in which he has repeated a variation of the same claim at least three times.

I will give him this, he is working to up his average and it’s not an easy thing to do. Last Cannonball was 103 MPH.