I’ve been waiting for this to come up. According to Murray Waas writing in the New York Review of Books, Rudy’s excellent Ukraine adventure began not as an effort to damage Joe Biden but to discredit the case against Paul Manafort and lay the groundwork for a pardon. It will take a while to suss out the precise order of events and priorities. But this gets us back to the broader issue of Manafort’s role in all this.
Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is set to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee at 9 a.m. ET.
TPM reporter Tierney Sneed is in the hearing room for his testimony.
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Around 2:30 p.m. last Thursday, TPM investigative reporter Josh Kovensky and I were having a conversation through instant message as I edited one of his articles. In the middle of this, he suddenly wrote “HUH.”
Then: “I just had a breakthrough.”
I continued editing, and he started working on something new. I soon learned what that breakthrough was.
The story of Kovensky’s realization illustrates just how knowledgeable our reporting team is and how our members make their tireless work to report on and analyze the news possible. (So if you’re not a member, please take a moment to join.)
And read on about his big hunch.
We often hear from readers (sometimes, painfully, former readers) that they wish we covered climate change more, among other issues. And we do, too. It’s one of the most important political stories of our lifetimes.
Historically, TPM has favored news and investigations on which we can break ground where other outlets haven’t. We’ve been less likely to cover larger, slower moving, but ultimately existentially critical stories.
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We just recorded today’s episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast with David and Kate, joined by TPM Reporter Josh Kovensky. I highly recommend your listening when it comes out this afternoon. Josh has a unique handle not only on this story but the different personages involved, many of whom he’s interviewed because of his work as a reporter in Ukraine before he came to TPM. He’ll have a piece coming out later this afternoon which gives a possible answer to the State Department involvement in this caper — which, believe it or not, seems semi-exonerating for the State Department at least. Stay tuned.
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It’s long been clear that if the President is driven from office it will only be by the voters in November 2020. Trump has overseen and catalyzed a decisive pivot by the GOP toward authoritarian rule and illiberal politics. Trump will always have 30-something Republican senators who will maintain him in office no matter what crimes he commits or how he violates his oath of office. But we’ve now reached an impasse, a critical juncture at which the House of Representatives, controlled by a party that still supports the rule of law, has no choice but to dramatically intensify its oversight efforts up to and including voting on articles of impeachment against the President. The very premise of democratic government and the rule of law is under active attack by a lawless President.
Today we’re launching our annual membership drive at TPM. (TLDR? Click here and join.) If you have already subscribed and become a member, we truly appreciate it. Since 2015 you have helped us grow our membership numbers from just over 3,000 to now exactly 30,670 members. That has made us a model of what independent media organizations can do focusing on members as the news media staggers in the face of ad industry woes. It is critical that we add 2,000 new members by the end of the calendar year (bring us to 32,700 total members, to be precise). And we hope to do most or all of it during this drive. This is critical for our finances, for our team’s effort to build a robust and sustainable business model based on memberships. But it’s also about something beyond us.