I know that I am not the only person who felt uneasy about the spectacle that took place last night on television as The New York Times’ editors sat around a table deciding who us peons should support for the Democratic nomination for president. Let me try to explain why I felt uneasy. Read More
I updated you last night on the latest Parnas document dump. They are hard to make sense of – particularly the new information about apparent surveillance of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch. So now that I have a better understanding of the details I wanted to walk you through them. They’re important.
On the first round we got those WhatsApp text messages from Robert Hyde to Lev Parnas, apparently passing on updates about surveillance he was running on Yovanovitch. We later learned that Hyde has a history of erratic behavior and was actually involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility a month or so after the texts were sent. So we had to consider the possibility that these claims were simply made up, wildly embellished or even the product of delusions.
Last night’s document dump makes clear that there was at least some truth to the claim Ambassador Yovanovitch was being surveilled by some group of feral Trumpers.
JoinThe House released a bundle of new Parnas documents this evening. I’ve been working my way through them at home. The most interesting to me are copies of exchanges between Robert Hyde — the landscaper from Connecticut — and an unidentified man in Belgium, or at least texting from a Belgian country code cell number.
It all goes back to Manafort. Josh Kovensky has the story.
President Trump’s decision to put Ken Starr, Alan Dershowitz and Robert Ray on his impeachment defense team is a good illustration of Trump’s mindset and strategy and the very different approach of Mitch McConnell.
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There’s an interesting catch here from Marcy Wheeler. I’m not sure I entirely agree with her on what it means. But I think she’s on to something. It has to do with Lev Parnas’ explanation of his efforts to get U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch fired. It’s a bit in the weeds but a pretty big deal.
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The Republican majority in the Senate has maintained for weeks that it wants to conduct impeachment proceedings following the precedent set by the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. Now President Trump’s legal team appears to be following suit. Multiple outlets are reporting this morning that Trump’s team will include Ken Starr, the independent counsel who led the investigation into Clinton, and Robert Ray, who eventually took over the probe. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following.
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There’s a lot of big new information in the various documents given to Congress by Lev Parnas. His interview with Rachel Maddow is a little fuzzier. There’s at least a lot there that seems spun to the hopes of his current audience, which is largely people opposed to Donald Trump. This is hardly surprising. Parnas appears to be a conman, basically. He’s trying to save himself. So we should be cautious about any claims not backed by corroborating evidence, of which there is quite a lot. But here’s one passage worth watching in the second part of his interview that aired tonight on Maddow’s show.
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On Thursday, the full Senate got its first taste of what the next several weeks of their lives are going to look like.
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