And it’s not even noon:
This morning a federal appeals court has agreed with a federal district court that Congress must have access to Trump’s financial records, including his tax returns. I believe there’s no where else for Trump to go except to SCOTUS. And I’d be willing to bet money that SCOTUS won’t touch this.
Former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch showed up this morning to testify to the House, in spite of attempts by the State Department, which still employes her, to block her. She is testifying behind closed doors, but she’s testifying. One suspects she is pissed.
Gordon Sondland, the Trump donor and ambassador to the EU who is up to his eyebrows in the Ukraine scandal, also has agreed to testify next week in spite of being ordered not to. One suspects he is cutting his losses.
Trump has yet to tweet about these developments, but he did tweet about the Kurds again. He must be getting hell from a lot of people.
….We have one of three choices: Send in thousands of troops and win Militarily, hit Turkey very hard Financially and with Sanctions, or mediate a deal between Turkey and the Kurds!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 10, 2019
The choice, moron, was not to greenlight a Turkish invasion of Kurdish territory. And what excuses will you have when all those ISIS fighters are set free? Neocon Max Boot is so put out with Trump that he’s defending Barack Obama.
Two scholars of the Middle East, Michael Doran and Michael A. Reynolds, suggested in the Wall Street Journal that the fault was really President Barack Obama’s for aligning with the Kurds in 2016 — despite the success of that strategy and the lack of any realistic alternatives.
See also New revelations about Trump test Pelosi’s narrow impeachment strategy.
In the past 24 hours alone, The Washington Post reported that Trump sought to enlist then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in the fall of 2017 to work with Rudolph W. Giuliani to help stop the prosecution of a Turkish Iranian gold trader represented by the former New York mayor and current Trump lawyer, according to people with knowledge of the request.
The Financial Times reported that Michael Pillsbury, one of Trump’s China advisers, said he had received information on Hunter Biden during a visit to Beijing shortly after Trump called on China to investigate the former vice president’s son. Pillsbury later offered a conflicting account.
And then there were the two Guiliani associates who were arrested trying to leave the country. They’ve been indicted for violating campaign finance laws and also appear to be mixed up in the Ukraine mess.
In solely focusing on Ukraine, Democrats could miss the opportunity to build a stronger case against the president — one that has the potential to sway Senate Republicans who will decide whether to convict Trump if the House votes to impeach.
“We’re basically getting like three new impeachable offenses a day, so it suggests that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg on what’s happening,” said Daniel Pfeiffer, a former Obama strategist who hosts “Pod Save America” and has been pushing Democrats to expand their probes.
It seems to me that a many things are suddenly unraveling very fast.
