Bill Taylor gave blockbuster private testimony on Tuesday that laid out Trump’s Ukraine deal in real time. Among other things he claims that Sondland told Ukrainian officials that aid money was being held up unless they investigated the Bidens. He also clearly implicated that Volker was pushing the scheme as much as Sondland. Here is the full 15 page transcript of his opening statement.
On Wednesday two dozen Trump allies in the GOP House caucus stormed the closed door Intelligence Committee hearings and disrupted an interview with a DOD official for several hours.
The New York Times reports that Ukraine knew about the aid hold in early August: “In conversations over several days in early August, a Pentagon official discussed the assistance freeze directly with a Ukrainian government official, according to records and interviews. The Pentagon official suggested that Mr. Mulvaney had been pushing for the assistance to be withheld, and urged the Ukrainians to reach out to him.”
The Washington Post reports that the Trump Administration also delayed some trade deals with Ukraine in August.
Here is a good piece on what it is like for Ukrainian soldiers fighting their war against Russia and how the aid freeze effected them psychologically: “Since taking office in May, Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has wanted the United States to take a more active role in pressuring Russia to withdraw its forces from eastern Ukraine — which the Kremlin does not even acknowledge are there — and accept a peace deal to end the conflict.”
The New York Times reports that DOJ has turned its inquiry into the origins of the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation into a criminal investigation, which will allow them to subpoena and indict people: Among other things, “Mr. Durham has also asked whether C.I.A. officials might have somehow tricked the F.B.I. into opening the Russia investigation.”
According to Politico: probing a conspiracy theory for which there is little if any evidence, according to several people with knowledge of the matter: that a key player in the Russia probe, a professor named Joseph Mifsud, was actually a Western intelligence asset sent to discredit the Trump campaign — and that the CIA, under Brennan, was somehow involved” in tricking the FBI
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Trump’s Job Approval: 40.7%
NOTE: There was a sharp drop in the approval rating one week after Pelosi formally announced impeachment, but this was followed by a slight rebound. However in the past two weeks there have been two more steep declines , possibly due to the continued Ukraine revelations and/or the Syria pull out. Trump’s approval has not been this low since the Government shutdown in January. As of now the decline severity rank is a 6, signifying an above average decline.