Chris Wallace reported this morning on Fox News that two other names you’ll know have been working with Rudy Giuliani on his mission to strong-arm Ukraine into intervening in the 2020 election and help exonerate Paul Manafort: the husband and wife team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. The two are frequent Hannity guests and at various points have been reported to be either joining or working with the President’s legal team. In this sense, working with Giuliani — the President’s so-called “private lawyer” — makes a fair amount of sense.
But there’s a bit more to this.
First, thank you so much for being a member and part of our TPM community.
Today is the last day to purchase tickets for a very special event we’re putting together on the evening of October 10th in New York City. If you’re in the greater New York area or will be that evening, I hope you can join us. It will be an evening of conversation and community with food and an open bar as we discuss the future of the Democratic party during and after the Trump era.
Among our guests will be Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible; Waleed Shahid, the communications director of Justice Democrats and a veteran of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cynthia Nixon and and Bernie Sanders campaigns; Aditi Juneja of the Resistance Manual and Protect Democracy; and Lara Putnam, Chair of the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh and one of the leading academics studying activism in the Trump era.
We’ll have food and an open bar at an intimate space in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood not far from TPM headquarters. This event is exclusively for TPM members and their family and friends. It will be an illuminating, thought-provoking evening of discussion and a great opportunity to meet the TPM staff and fellow TPM members.
You can purchase tickets here. As a member you will also have received an email yesterday evening with links and details about the event. We can’t wait to see you.
By my last count, I subscribe to around 50 podcasts — more than enough captivating chatter to occupy my New York City commutes and jogs around the neighborhood. So when I came to TPM in the winter of 2017, I jumped at the opportunity to help bring yet another podcast into the world.
TPM’s own audio efforts have evolved over the years, from an interview show where Josh talked one-on-one with interesting guests to a weekly discussion between editors and writers on the stories we’re obsessed with at the time. What began as a passion project recorded on a couch in our New York City office’s break room has grown into a legitimate audio production operation. We’ve built out part of our office into a studio — with soundproofing panels, professional software and cozy over-ear headphones.
This is where you come in. Without TPM’s community of members, we could not invest in these new ways of bringing you the news. If you enjoy the podcast, you can support our efforts by joining TPM as a member.
So please take the time to join today, if you’re not already a member. And if you have any ideas about what you want to hear on the podcast, please drop us a line.
We had a strong first week of our drive. But we’re only part of the way there. Please take a moment today to subscribe and become a member. You just have to take a moment, take out your card and do it now. Just click right here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.