The Prime Minister of Italy has shot down a big chunk of the Barr/Trump conspiracy theory about a Deep State plot against President Trump that allegedly gave birth to the Russia probe. Giuseppe Conte says Italy had nothing to do with the Russiagate probe or investigation. He goes on to discuss the extraordinary detail that Barr asked Italian intelligence officials to confirm or explain the actions of U.S. intelligence officials. In other words, Barr has told foreign intelligence leaders that he does not believe his own country’s intelligence officials and and gone to Italy to ask if U.S. intelligence officials are telling the truth.
If you missed it last night, check this out. When Parnas and Fruman were arrested at Dulles airport on their way to Vienna, they were apparently going there to help with logistics on an interview Viktor Shokin (the fired Ukrainian prosecutor) was going to do on Hannity.
NYT: “Republicans close to the White House are increasingly concerned that a bloc of senators could emerge, including some they suspect might not run for re-election, to break with the president.”
Here are the nine GOP senators who have not signed on to Sen. Lindsey Graham’s tepid resolution condemning the impeachment process in the House:
We’re now able to send some posts to different groups of members. So this post is visible only to logged in TPM Inside members. With that new ability we’re going to open up and expand how we do our weekly Inside Briefings. This week’s briefing will be at 1 p.m. eastern on Thursday. TPM Reporter Josh Kovensky and I will be taking your questions on the latest developments on the Trump/Ukraine scandal and on it, with a special emphasis on the Ukraine side of the story, which Josh has special insight into.
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We recently had our second TPM event of the year, this time in New York City. We have at least four TPM events planned for next year at locations around the United States. Either at the event or in response to our on-going drive to sign up new members, we have heard from a lot of existing members asking if there’s some way they can do more, some way to support TPM at a higher level. Well, yes, there is. It’s called Inside.
We are getting close to the number of total TPM members we need by the close of the year. Inside is the last part of the equation. We only need 300 existing members to upgrade to Inside, just 1% of the total which now stands at 31,723.
If you’re considering coming to one or more of our TPM events next year it basically pays for itself. (You get two complimentary tickets to every TPM event.) But there’s a lot more than that. Of course, you get everything you get with Prime and Ad Free. Your Inside subscription also creates two subscription credits which TPM distributes to TPM Readers who cannot afford a Prime membership. The center of an Inside subscription is access to our weekly Inside briefings, weekly teleconferences with outside experts and/or TPM reporters where we discuss and take your questions the big stories of the day.
We like to think of Inside as our 360, all-in membership. It’s everything you get from Prime and AF. It strengthens our community by creating memberships for TPM Readers with financial need; it gets you complimentary tickets to all TPM events and access to our weekly Inside Briefings. Of course the best and most overarching reason to join Inside is that it helps turbocharge the reporting our team every day and which we are trying to intensify as the Ukraine scandal widens and deepens.
Of course, if you are a Prime or Prime AF member, you are 100% solid with us. Your membership is what is funding TPM. But if you have the resources and the interest we nothing would make us happier than for you to become an Inside member. You support TPM, you open access for TPM Readers who can’t afford a membership and you join us for our weekly Briefings. If you’d like to sign up, just click right here to upgrade. If you’d like to hear more just click the read more link at the bottom of this post.
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Check out the copy of the prepared remarks, obtained by TPM, which Lt. Col Alexander Vindman will deliver tomorrow to the House Impeachment inquiry. They shed new light on many fronts in the story. But they appear to directly contradict the account of EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland on key points.
As I mentioned last week, Sondland stands out here as neither ethical or moral enough to see that this plot was wrong and limit his involvement accordingly nor experienced enough at being evil to lie about it effectively.
And there it is. I mentioned earlier today that as the first witness who was on the notorious July 25th Trump-Zelensky call, Alex Vindman could clear up whether there were any material omissions in the rough transcript of the call. It turns out there were. They don’t appear to be ones that dramatically change the content of the call. But according to the Times, Vindman testified that “the White House transcript of a July call between President Trump and Ukraine’s president omitted crucial words and phrases.”
For Inside members, I wanted to give you a quick reminder that TPM investigative reporter Josh Kovensky and I will be holding a briefing tomorrow at 1 p.m. Eastern. We will be briefing you on and taking your questions about the latest developments in the Trump/Ukraine scandal.
Tomorrow will be a very big news day. Sometimes the best way to capture it is in our own internal staff update for the morning crew, which I quote here:
Tim Morrison deposition in House impeachment inquiry — he’s a key witness
House vote on impeachment resolution — Matt will cover the vote but there could be spillover
Hearing on McGahn subpoena at 2 p.m. that Tierney will cover
Hearing on Kupperman testimony at 3 p.m. that Tierney will likely not be able to get to
If you haven’t had a chance to register for this week’s briefing you can do so here.
Remember, even if you can’t tune into our Inside Briefings live you can still watch the recorded version in your Inside Briefing portal. They usually post the evening after the call. And we will now be posting them in the Editor’s Blog for Inside members as well.