Good TPM Readers, I was in the midst of writing out a post explaining how there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that that packet of pro-Trump conspiracy theories the State Department Inspector General brought up to the Hill was actually Rudy Giuliani’s work product: the packet of information he’d assembled in his trips abroad. Rudy likely piped it into the State Department. It got circulated through the Department by State appointees (this part we know). The IG had had it since May. But when he heard the events of the last week, especially Pompeo going on the warpath, the IG decided he wanted to get it out of his hands and into the hands of Congress as soon as possible.
Well, I’m robbed of my genius reconstruction of the evidence! Because now Rudy has admitted that, yeah, it’s his stuff.
Before Trump’s attempts to smear Joe Biden and undermine the Russia probe took center stage, I was captivated by the NRA’s current inner turmoil. I can’t get enough of the lawsuits, petty infighting and coup attempts. Josh Kovensky, who’s on our NRA drama beat, wrote a really insightful post about this one NRA donor who seems to be rankling the gun group’s leadership. Basically, this one man has tried to start a small insurrection of sorts among some of his fellow donors, but it’s been hard to calculate just how big this movement is. Yet, Josh explained in a Prime post why he thinks this small rebellion is actually starting to get to the NRA.
This is the kind of nuanced piece that Prime allows us to publish. Our reporters are able to connect dots for our readers and explain on a minute level the big stories we’re following.
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Monmouth has just released a poll that sounds the public on impeachment. It is similar to the others we’ve seen over recent days, though a bit more favorable to the President. On supporting an impeachment inquiry, 49% say it’s a good idea while 43% say it’s a bad idea. On removal from office, 44% say yes, 52% say no. Notably, Monmouth doesn’t appear to have given the “too soon to tell” option that shifted the numbers somewhat for CBS/YouGov and Quinnipiac.
Returning to an earlier post and point. We will not understand any of this until we properly understand the difference between ‘investigate’ and ‘fabricate’. Again, even if you basically understand what’s happening here, the misuse of the words will warp your thinking.
A few developments just now on the Australia front emerging out of the Australian press. Here is a letter the Australian Ambassador to the US wrote to Bill Barr in May 2019 offering full assistance in Barr’s effort to investigate the origins of the Russia probe. It is cc’d to Mick Mulvaney at the White House.
New piece in the Post says Bill Barr has personally been pressing various foreign countries to assist him in discrediting the Mueller probe and the U.S. officials who originally sounded the alarm about Russian interference in the 2016 election. He was in Italy doing this just last week. Bill has apparently repeatedly had President Trump press foreign leaders to cooperate with his efforts.
One thing to keep in mind. There’s little doubt that what the President appears to have done counts as within the scope of the constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors.” But it may go beyond that. The constitution actually says that the President “shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
“Bribery” doesn’t get mentioned a lot. We tend to think of it as the President receiving bribes. But it is not so restricted. And what Trump and Giuliani were up to with Zelensky seems to fit fairly well within federal bribery statutes. Of course, for impeachment, it doesn’t need to fit within the statutes. But impeachment for bribery as well as other high crimes and misdemeanors seems plausible here.
For Giuliani, federal bribery and extortion charges seem plausible, among other infractions.
We now have two polls which show a substantial shift in public opinion toward impeachment. Both show a public divided on removing the President from office but with majorities in favor of holding an impeachment inquiry, which is now underway. CBS/YouGov (an online pollster) found 55% of Americans support an impeachment inquiry, while 45% oppose. On whether Trump actually deserves to be impeached, 42% say yes, 36% say no and 22% say it is “too soon to say.” In other words, fully 64% of the public either supports or is open to supporting impeaching the President. Notably, political independents are evenly divided (49% yes, 51% no), while partisans on both sides come down predictably by big margins.