Stop the news. I want to get off. First, from the Wall Street Journal via Reuters:

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took part in a July phone conversation between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the heart of a House of Representatives impeachment inquiry, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

This opens up Pompeo for a lot of questions. Can he verify the whistleblower's complaint, and how involved was the Secretary of State with the decision to stash the call onto the Secret Server? Moreover, it appears that the entire executive branch might end up collapsing into a mud pile. From The New York Times:

President Trump initiated the discussion in recent weeks with Mr. Morrison explicitly for the purpose of requesting Australia’s help in the Justice Department review of the Russia investigation, according to the two people with knowledge of the discussion. Mr. Barr requested that Mr. Trump speak to Mr. Morrison, one of the people said. It came only weeks after Mr. Trump seemed to make military aid to Ukraine contingent on Mr. Zelensky doing him the “favor” of helping Mr. Barr with his work...

Mr. Barr flew to Italy last week and met with Italian government officials on Friday. The Justice Department spokeswoman would not say whether he discussed the election inquiry in those meetings, but former Justice Department officials said that Mr. Barr would need to ask foreign countries for cooperation in turning over documents pertaining to the 2016 election.

And, in case if you were wondering how far up shit-creek Barr has gone, well, if the Washington Post is accurate, he's found the headwaters at the very least.

Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter...

Barr has already made overtures to British intelligence officials, and last week the attorney general traveled to Italy, where he and Durham met senior Italian government officials and Barr asked the Italians to assist Durham, according to one person familiar with the matter. It was not Barr’s first trip to Italy to meet intelligence officials, the person said. The Trump administration has made similar requests of Australia, these people said.

It's become plain at this point that the ongoing "review" of the origins of the investigation into the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 election has as one of its primary purposes developing an alternative narrative to the plain fact that the Russians wanted to help the president* become president*, and that he accepted their help, and that this alternative narrative then will be used to discredit the revelations in the whistleblower's complaint, and that this project now commands the attention of, at the very least, the office of the president*, the Department of State, and the Department of Justice. The line for the rollercoaster at Depositionland is getting longer by the minute.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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