Let me share some very preliminary thoughts on the documents and text messages released by the House Intelligence committee from Lev Parnas.

I stress preliminary. I’ve gone through them once. In Josh Kovensky‘s and Matt Shuham’s write up they caught a number of references, the import of which wasn’t clear to me until I understood the full context.

10:23 p.m.: Warren has dominated this debate so far. That seems unquestionable to me. But winning on points doesn’t always translate into the race itself. Biden has also had a good night simply because no one is really attacking him and he’s making the points he wants to make. He’s ahead. Maybe not in Iowa but nationwide. So in terms of the race itself I think this debate is going well for both of them.

10:08 p.m.: Do not miss my colleagues’ debate live blog which apparently I can’t join.

10:02 p.m.: The debate about the Warren-Sanders conversation was messy. Warren’s comments were similar to her press release: state quickly and unequivocally that Sanders did say it (and by implication is lying) and then quickly pivot to other general comments. Sanders’ answers were weird in large part because he sort of tried to change what was being discussed. That seemed shifty. On balance Warren got the better part of the exchange. But I think it could have gone a lot worse for Sanders. Warren closed the discussion with this which was very strong.

very powerful conclusion here from Warren pic.twitter.com/HyHdvjKHqC

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 15, 2020

9:24 p.m.: There were some decent answers on the foreign policy discussion. But Blitzer framed it in a very confusing and misleading way. Combat troops? Does that mean the U.S. Navy in the Gulf? Qatar, Bahrain? By framing it around Iran’s demand for a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East he had people answering whether they supported something like the British withdrawal in like 1971. That’s not what any of these candidates are talking about with the possible exception of Sanders. And I don’t think he really is either.

9:13 p.m.: Warren’s answer was the best on the foreign and defense policy questions so far tonight.

A week before his scheduled sentencing, former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn is seeking to withdraw his guilty plea.

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Before tonight’s debate, give our latest podcast a listen. We dig into the growing feud between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. After that, we look ahead to the impending impeachment trial. Listen here, or on your preferred podcast platform.

One of the truisms of the last three years — most often spoken by Democrats — is that everyone has an interest in preventing future Russian interventions in U.S. elections because next time it could be Republicans who are the target rather than Democrats. Alas, this was false, is false and for the foreseeable future will continue to be false.

We should know this, and if you didn’t know it yesterday’s news that Russian intelligence operatives have been hacking into servers in Ukraine as part of President Trump’s impeachment defense should clarify the matter. Josh Kovensky has more details here. But the gist is that in early November, just as the impeachment effort began to build steam, GRU operatives began hacking into various subsidiaries of Burisma Holdings, apparently looking for emails or other documents that could embarrass the Bidens or otherwise assist President Trump’s impeachment defense.

The weird thing when a Trump advisor totally is making sense: “The President is never going to have [Giuliani] in the Senate trial, starting with the problem that he’s a potential witness.”

Read about Rod Rosenstein’s heads up to Jeff Sessions about the raids on Michael Cohen’s homes and workplace.

Did we learn anything from 2016?

From the reactions to a report that Russian government-affiliated hackers targeted a Ukrainian gas company at the center of conspiracy theories around Vice President Joe Biden, apparently not.

We’re getting word now that Speaker Pelosi is telling her members to expect a vote Wednesday on sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate. Tierney Sneed is outside the House Democratic caucus meeting on the Hill, we will have her report shortly.