@RiskyFlush will you please use your subscription to get more details about why they dropped the Kupperman subpoena? I think this guy is super important, but my guess is that they dropped it because a decision on it will come down too late.
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I don’t have a subscription, just internet tricks.
House Democrats on Wednesday pulled their subpoena for testimony from Charles M. Kupperman, a former top national security official of Mr. Trump, according to a court filing.
Mr. Kupperman filed an unusual lawsuit last month asking a federal judge to determine whether he should listen to Mr. Trump — who ordered him to not cooperate with House investigators — or comply with the Democrats’ subpoena.
The committee — which asked the judge overseeing the case to dismiss the lawsuit — dropped the subpoena because it believed the litigation could slow down the impeachment investigation.
“The subpoena at issue in this matter has been withdrawn and there is no current intention to reissue it,” the committee said in a court filing.
Mr. Kupperman’s lawsuit had implications that went beyond his own testimony. John A. Eisenberg, the National Security Council’s top lawyer, declined to appear for a deposition on Monday, saying he would wait until there was a resolution in Mr. Kupperman’s case and follow whatever the judge ruled.
Mr. Kupperman’s lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, also represents John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser. Democrats have not subpoenaed Mr. Bolton to testify. If they do, Mr. Cooper is likely to file a similar suit asking a federal judge to determine whether Mr. Bolton should speak with investigators.
Mr. Cooper did not return an email message seeking comment.
The decision to drop the subpoena is the latest example of how Democrats have struggled to get the advisers who dealt directly with Mr. Trump to testify. In the first month of the impeachment investigation, Democrats made great headway gaining the testimony of officials from the National Security Council and the State Department who were involved in Ukraine policy but infrequently interacted with Mr. Trump. Much of that testimony painted a damning picture of a president outsourcing America’s foreign policy to his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, but gave little insight into what the president said behind closed doors. Some Democrats and impeachment experts believe that if Senate Republicans are going to turn on Mr. Trump and convict him at an impeachment trial, investigators will need to develop new evidence related to Mr. Trump’s involvement.
— Michael S. Schmidt and Nicholas Fandos
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Sounds like they’ll be moving on articles of impeachment prior to December 12.
I am crossing my fingers them deciding it’s better to drop it than wait is good news.
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That asshole Bolton really should testify. He could raise his reputation to almost street level by doing that. I want to know who put those documents on the server, and someone has to come forward to say who did it. Eisenberg had an accomplice, and that’s the money shot in this thing (I’m slightly disappointed, because I think it’s better than 50/50 it’s Kupperman and the only person who can reveal who had access is Bolton of people who might testify).
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I bet Bolton testifies. He’s as vindictive as Trump. I can see a guy like Romney promising him a high position if he somehow binks an election and becomes POTUS. They just need someone to bite the bullet and it’s not like Bolton is a senator or something. So he won’t care if MAGA Deplorables hate him.
Bolton has one of the world’s worst reputations, and if he actually cares about it he’ll testify. I think it’s plausible he resigned related to when he found out the WB complaint was being suppressed. I don’t think it’s hard to connect the dots that the House Intelligence Committee finds out about the WB complaint on the 9th, and requests it on the 10th, the day Bolton resigned and that Trump said he fired him (I think this happened in the morning, but I can’t remember for sure).
My guess if I’m being charitable to Bolton is that he finds out about an existing WB complaint that hasn’t been turned over. He’s pissed (probably at Maguire). He asks someone if the complaint will be turned over. They say no, and he says I’m out, and my one last suggestion to you is to release that aid right effing now before it blows up in all of your faces (it was released the next day).
I finally finished reading the Volker deposition, and it’s no surprise the GOP is trying to spin it as a win for Trump. As a single fact worth noting, they I believe were under a 1 hour rule of questioning for the first round, and most of it was conducted by staff lawyers (the GOP whined about this). They passed back and forth between Democratic and GOP staff lawyers for the first round (Dems for an hour, GOP for an hour). Then it went to 45 minute rounds. Same thing for the second round. After the Dem third round, the GOP pretty much asked about 5 minutes of questions in their third round (if that), and then ceded back to the Dems. After that, I don’t think the GOP side had more than 10 minutes of questions for the rest of the session.
My impressions of Volker are not good. His deposition borders on embarrassing, and smacks a whole lot of trying to cover his own ass. This guy was named one of The Three Amigos for a reason. He was integral to this whole thing, and there’s zero way I buy that he didn’t know exactly what was up even though he incessantly builds in plausible deniability throughout his testimony.
The vast majority of his testimony is him incessantly ‘playing dumb’ (insert college football coach analogy) despite being a career diplomat who absolutely knows better (it’s worth noting that he noted he did this job for free). The lawyers for the Dem side call him out on this several times, but he always squirms out of it. He also tries to separate Burisma/Bidens into two separate things. He claims that Burisma was known as corrupt, so it’s okay for there to be an investigation on Ukrainians by Ukrainians, and he is also aware of Hunter Biden’s connection to the company. So, everyone is using Burisma/Bidens interchangeably because we know when that single company comes up in a wildly corrupt country that it can only mean one thing. Well, everyone, except Volker.
He also creates meaning that isn’t there for things in addition to what I wrote above, and ignores meanings that are there. He dances around everything. If I’m being charitable, he’s omitting a lot of what happened to create a narrative that doesn’t look as bad as it is. I can’t even count how many times he said he heard about or read something in the media that he should have known about outside of the media.
As I said above, he incessantly claims plausible deniability because he wasn’t looped into conversations where the worst parts happened, while his texts suggest he knew absolutely what was going on (he cleverly explained most of those away by just saying things like ‘what I meant by ‘investigations’ was corruption’). Fuck off with that. At one point on page 210, a Dem lawyer says, ‘I understand what you were trying to do and I understand you’re trying to protect yourself.’
I did catch him perjuring himself, and wonder if I should try to get in contact with people on the Intel Committee. This was in reference to the July 10 meeting, and I think how he talks about that meeting in the document is very indicative of the kind of standard omission and cleaning up he did almost everywhere else in his testimony based on what has come out in other written statements/depositions. The section in question starts on page 307 line 13 and goes through page 311 line 9.
On page 310 starting line 10 is this exchange:
Lawyer: Was there any discussion during that meeting about Giuliani’s –
Volker: No.
L: --activities in Ukraine?
V: No.
L: Okay. Anything about the investigations that we’ve been talking about?
V: No.
This meeting became infamous during Fiona Hill’s deposition. This is the meeting that Bolton abruptly stopped, and where he told Fiona Hill to tell the lawyers he’s not involved in Giuliani’s ‘drug deal’. The meeting was abruptly halted when Sondland brought up ‘investigations’. This was corroborated by Hill (in the meeting), Vindman (in the meeting), and Taylor (not in the meeting who was read out by these two of what happened in the meeting).
The fact that Volker first lied about ‘investigations’ not being brought up is problem one. Problem two is that he didn’t even remotely hint anything weird went on at this meeting. This is standard operating procedure for him, and I am very dubious about how much truth he was telling at this deposition. Keep in mind that I think he wasn’t lying overall, but I think he is very very loose with what he omits aka lying by omission. He gives ‘justifications’ for everything, but they don’t line up with the facts. He also repeatedly says he doesn’t really see anything wrong with doing an investigation on the Bidens/Burisma (hard to tell which) to show there was no wrongdoing, even though he says it’s completely debunked and that there’s nothing to see here.
Overall, the deposition is not interesting, though Schiff absolutely hammers him for a bit starting from pages 108-128. That’s worth reading, because it’s really really good and it gives you very strong insight into exactly how this deposition went with Volker explaining everything away while claiming ignorance the whole way to try to downplay how bad all of this really was.
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November 7, 2019 Document Drop
George Kent, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau in U.S. State Department deposition from October 13, 2019:
Wait, that’s not what he said in the deposition…
My guess is that’s related to the Toronto meeting that he talked almost zero about.
November 8, 2019 Document Drop
Dr. Fiona Hill, in her words, ‘senior director who was overseeing all of the interactions across the interagency pertaining to Europe, our European allies, including also the European Union and NATO, and also including Russia, Turkey, and the subject at hand, Ukraine’ October 14, 2019 Deposition:
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman, NSC Director of European Affairs October 29, 2019 Deposition:
Can you elaborate on this? How confident are you? What’s the latest you think they’ll vote eto impeach?
I actually had a date wrong, it was December 10, and also a little substance error. I found another article that said the final arguments were fast tracked to December 10 to decide on Kupperman’s subpoena. If they were dropping that subpoena, it stands to reason they think they’ll be wrapped up on their investigation before December 10 (not sure if the final arguments could result in a bench decision that day, but there would certainly be appeals that would probably go well into January).
I think the latest they’ll vote is just prior to the Christmas recess, and I saw some stuff that makes it seem like that’s what they’re going for. I think it’s insane to wait that late, but that’s just me. McConnell claimed that he expects a 6 day a week 6 week trial in the Senate, and that would mean that a trial (at the latest) would be wrapped up right around the first primary if they vote before Christmas. I don’t really have an opinion about whether they’ll start a trial before the Christmas recess unless they vote prior to Thanksgiving. That was their original plan, but they have been holding what they’re planning very close to the vest.
I personally do not think they will vote before McGahn’s decision is in which won’t be later than the end of November based on what the Judge said. That puts it unlikely to be voted on prior to Thanksgiving, in my opinion. They’re going to win on McGahn, and it will probably be less than 10 days for the SC to decide whether to weigh in (based on things I’ve seen, it seems unlikely they will). So, if the appeal decision happens around the 25th or so, they’ll already have a decision on McGahn prior to Kupperman’s first round decision on December 10 (at the earliest).
That’s my guess for why they dropped the Kupperman subpoena. They’ll get a decision on McGahn (probably even from SC) before that case is up, and McGahn completely supersedes any argument of someone well below McGahn’s position. The idea behind the McGahn case is that if you get to compel him, no one else can stand up to any executive privilege claims. After writing that, the timing here may have less to do with when they want to file articles of impeachment and be more related to them being able to open a bunch more cans of worms out of the McGahn decision (if the cans of worms thing is on, the inquiry could extend significantly longer).
Cliffs: I originally thought that they would vote on them no later than right before Christmas, but they could be using the McGahn decision to compel a lot more testimony related to other stuff (it’s currently very unclear whether they are willing to do multiple inquiries or are just trying to do it all now). I do not think they will vote before Thanksgiving due to wanting to wait for the McGahn decision which should be all the way through the SC by probably December 5 (as long as they decline to hear it). If the SC does want to hear McGahn (and it’s draw out to February or something), then I think right before Christmas as the latest for a vote is still on.
If the House votes to impeach, the Senate has to have a trial right? Mitch can’t just put this on the backburner and pretend it’s not happening can he?
This is good.
Okay nunn, you have persuaded me. I am on your train.
He can technically do a lot of things, but he has publicly stated and told his Senate colleagues that he will definitely have a trial and that he expects it to last 6 weeks using a 6 day work week. Whether he will actually do that is another story, but he said it.
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The one thing to add to that is that if the SC decides to hear the McGahn case I think they will move voting on articles of impeachment prior to Christmas (was in the Cliffs but not the main). I’ve always felt their pace was going to be dictated on the McGahn case (prior to Ukraine scandal), and it’s probably taken 6 weeks longer than they originally anticipated it would when they won their first round in what I think was July.
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