Trump Corruption

The Hill reports: Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was asked by a Fox Business Network host on air if he had drunk “a little merlot with dinner” and was told he sounded “a little slurry.” The interaction took place as Lewandowski appeared on the network to talk about the latest news from the ongoing impeachment inquiry by House Democrats. …

The New York Daily News reports: Rudy Giuliani is off the rails, according to a cheeky ad that popped up in the New York City subway Tuesday. The satirical ad, which was spotted on at least one A train Tuesday afternoon, touts the ex-New York mayor-turned-Trump attorney’s “crazy” legal services, including “back-channel deals” and “cable news appearances.” The blue-banner ad …

Bloomberg reports: Ukraine’s recently departed president, Petro Poroshenko, says that Joe Biden never asked him to open or close any criminal cases, adding to the list of Ukrainian officials saying they saw him do nothing improper involving his son. Speaking out to the news media for the first time on the matter, Poroshenko rebutted claims made by President Donald Trump …

Trump’s media team is getting even more pathetic: President Trump on Wednesday tweeted a video that inserted a photograph of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter golfing with a Ukrainian gas company executive into the music video for Nickelback’s 2005 song “Photograph.” Ukrainian officials have not suggested any wrongdoing by either Biden in connection with the company …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump repeatedly involved Vice President Pence in efforts to exert pressure on the leader of Ukraine at a time when the president was using other channels to solicit information that he hoped would be damaging to a Democratic rival, current and former U.S. officials said. Trump instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian …

Buzzfeed News reports: Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday refused to say what sort of agreement, if any, he has with President Donald Trump to act as his lawyer. “If I did, I wouldn’t show it to you, and what right do you have to ask me that?” Giuliani said in a phone call with BuzzFeed News. “I’m a private lawyer. I …

Politico reports: House investigators are looking into an allegation that groups — including at least one foreign government — tried to ingratiate themselves to President Donald Trump by booking rooms at his hotels but never staying in them. It’s a previously unreported part of a broad examination by the House Oversight Committee, included in Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, into whether Trump …

Today Forbes reports that the Trump sons have sold $110 million of real estate since inauguration day, mostly in relatively small transactions that have escaped much notice. In the Dominican Republic, the younger Trumps sold a piece of land in January 2018 for $3.2 million. It was the clearest violation of their father’s pledge to do no new foreign deals …

CBS News reports: Addressing reporters in Rome during an overseas visit, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that he was on the July call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky. “I was on the phone call,” he told the press. “I know precisely what the American policy has been with respect to Ukraine. It’s been remarkably consistent, and …

The Washington Post reports: On Tuesday night, Rudolph W. Giuliani proposed an unusual legal strategy in response to the ongoing investigation into President Trump’s dealings in Ukraine: Suing Democratic members of Congress. Speaking on Fox News show “The Ingraham Angle,” Trump’s personal attorney said that he “had a couple of talks” with attorneys amid the accelerating impeachment probe and a …

“I’m talking about the deep state, Lou. Everything we are trying to do to make working Americans have a better future is constantly blocked and sabotaged by the deep state, and we are breaking through and we are winning and we’ll keep on winning. “But what you have with this current non-scandal, non-controversy, made-up, phony story from this fake whistleblower …

NBC News reports: Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine who resigned his post last week after his name appeared in a whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s dealings with the Ukraine, will testify in the House’s impeachment inquiry on Thursday, two committee aides told NBC News Tuesday. Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was …

The Daily Beast reports: When Attorney General William Barr showed up at the U.S. embassy’s Palazzo Margherita on Rome’s tony Via Veneto last week, he had two primary requests. He needed a conference room to meet high level Italian security agents where he could be sure no one was listening in. And he needed an extra chair for U.S. Attorney …

The Associated Press reports: Rudy Giuliani, the outspoken personal attorney for Donald Trump, has hired his own lawyer to represent him in the House’s fast-moving impeachment investigation into the president. The former New York mayor tapped Jon Sale, a former Watergate prosecutor and assistant U.S. attorney, in what’s shaping up to be a battle with Democrats over documents tied to …

Axios reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sent a letter to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday accusing Democrats of “an attempt to intimidate, bully, and treat improperly” officials from the State Department who have been asked to cooperate in the Trump-Ukraine investigation. The chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees responded to Pompeo on Tuesday …

Politico reports: Sen. Chuck Grassley moved to stave off attacks and the unmasking of a federal whistleblower who first divulged President Donald Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president, a move at odds with many of the president’s defenders. In a statement, the Iowa Republican, who has long fashioned himself a defender of whistleblowers, said the fact that the individual’s knowledge of …

CNBC reports: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday pushed back on House Democrats’ attempt to depose State Department officials as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Pompeo said in a tweet that he is “concerned with aspects” of House committee leaders’ requests “that can be understood only as an attempt to intimidate, bully, & treat …

Reuters reports: Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) called out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in a tweet, saying the Ukraine call at the center of a scandal involving President Trump “is starting to seem like a political set up.” Cheney cited Pelosi’s interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, in which the Speaker said she had talked to Trump about …

CNN reports: The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said Monday that it plans to participate in the lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump to block a subpoena by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for eight years of his tax returns. In a letter sent to the judge in the case, the office’s civil division chief …

After an increasingly typical predawn manic rash of tweeting and retweeting, Glorious Leader posted a blurry map of counties that voted red in 2016, with the double-dog dare message of “try to impeach this.” Which is what over half the country now very much wants to do. After pinning the message to the top of his feed, he resumed the …