Everyone, and especially the media, should be well-aware of trump’s pathetic ploys to deflect away from his criminal activities by stirring the pot and creating chaos to focus on. People that have worked with him have said that once he finds something that works, he never changes it, and he is once again proving this statement with the deliberate drone attack that killed the Iranian military leader, Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani. When the military officials gave trump a list of potential actions they placed killing Suleimani as the most extreme action, assuming that he wouldn’t select it. This proves that they know nothing about trump, because he was looking for something that would cause a major incident to get attention away from not only the impeachment proceedings, but the recent slew of un-redacted emails that were released that prove his guilt. All it took was for trump to find out that there had been an Iranian-backed attack on an American embassy in Bagdad and the orange bully decided to show punch the hornet’s nest. While everyone agrees that Suleimani was an evil military leader, trump deliberately pushed the button to potential war simply as a redirect.

It’s OUR job to not take the bait and keep our eyes on impeachment.

The media is currently chasing the topic of the attack on the Iranian military leader, doing exactly what trump wants. However, there are some, such as the NY Times, that continue to cover what can only be described as a wanton refusal to turn over legally required documents.

In their article: White House Withholds 20 Emails Between Two Trump Aides on Ukraine Aid, the NY Times includes this sub-caption, which displays the pathetic attempt of trump and his sycophants of thinking that he is a dictator:

“It contends the release of the documents sought by The Times would “inhibit the frank and candid exchange of views” in government decision-making.”

The article continues with:

“WASHINGTON — The Trump administration disclosed on Friday that there were 20 emails between a top aide to President Trump’s acting chief of staff and a colleague at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget discussing the freeze of a congressionally mandated military aid package for Ukraine.

But in response to a court order that it swiftly process those pages in response to a Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, lawsuit filed by The New York Times, the Office of Management and Budget delivered a terse letter saying it would not turn over any of the 40 pages of emails — not even with redactions.

“All 20 documents are being withheld in full,” wrote Dionne Hardy, the office’s Freedom of Information Act officer.

The Times’s information act request sought email messages between Robert Blair, a top aide to Mr. Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, and Michael Duffey, an official in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget who was in charge of handling the process for releasing $391 million in weapons and security assistance Congress had appropriated to help Ukraine resist Russian aggression.”

But the most damning portion of the article stated:

“The Trump administration’s move to withhold all the emails in full — not even disclosing the dates they were sent, or the shape of paragraphs covered by black lines — is a step beyond its heavy censorship of a related set of emails it released in response to another Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Center for Public Integrity.

The documents released to the center consisted of about 300 pages of emails between the Office of Management and Budget and the Pentagon about the Ukraine aid package. While the officially released version was heavily redacted — and the center is contesting the censorship in further litigation — the visible portions showed, among other things, that Pentagon officials had worried that holding the funds could be an illegal impoundment.

A report on Thursday by the legal policy website Just Security added further fuel to the controversy by revealing what was under some, but not all, of the deletions. The website said it had been shown some of the emails in unredacted form, including an Aug. 30 message from Mr. Duffey to a Pentagon budget official stating that there was “clear direction from POTUS” — an acronym referring to the president of the United States — “to continue to hold” the Ukraine military assistance.”

I am including a majority of this article because some do not have access without a subscription.

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McConnell is Backed into a Corner

Mitch McConnell is the kind of Senate Majority Leader that our founders feared. He has aligned himself with Russian oligarch money, as many of the Republicans have done, and is now bound to protecting trump in his blatantly illegal activities regarding blackmailing the newly elected Ukranian President, Volodymyr Zelensky in requiring an announcement of an investigation against his potential running competition, Joe Biden. The entire story wouldn’t even make a good detective novel because it is so poorly done that no one would believe it. But then, if you look back on just about everything trump has done in his life, you will realize it is almost always half-assed, cheesy, and tacky….all the way to his orange makeup and gold-tone chairs and curtains. When the man in the White House is undergoing an impeachment process, the Senate is “supposed” to be nonpartisan, taking evidence in, and allowing those involved to testify. McConnell has no shame in stating that he is coordinating the entire impeachment with the White House!

The problem with what McConnell and the Senators that support him (aka: also benefitted from Rubles in their accounts) is that they are undermining the very process of Democracy, and this is playing into the hands of the Democratic-held Congress. Add to this the fact that there are about 240 bills that Congress has passed and submitted to the Senate that McConnell is just “sitting” on, and McConnell is no longer hiding behind his seat, but coming out without any shame as a Russian tool. While there are the very base of trump supporters that are now hailing Russia and Putin, this is a small percentage. A larger number of Republicans are no longer supporting the kind of behavior that McConnell and those Republican Senators that haven’t announced that they are leaving/retiring.

Republican Senators see the writing on the wall and a large number of them are jumping ship.

The process of getting a fair assessment in the impeachment trial is going to be a waiting game and the longer that McConnell salutes his loyalty to trump and not the country, the better the position of the Democrats in Congress.

Congress shouldn’t have to demand that a fair trial take place, nor should the American people have to show up in protest against the very Senate that is supposed to represent them. McConnell and the spineless Republicans that are left are being backed into a corner because they are choosing to support the Russians instead of our country.

Those that have been watching could have predicted this outcome when trump required that the RNC change the party platform on support for Ukraine just prior to the Republican Convention. The change requirement was briefly covered during the convention, and then later reported by other media sources, as well as NPR in their 2017 article: 2016 RNC Delegate: Trump Directed Change To Party Platform On Ukraine Support

As with everything that trump has done from the beginning — all roads lead to Putin and Russia. Every action that he takes benefits Putin and Russia.

Wake up America — we are experiencing a dictatorship that is being supported by the Republicans.

Focus on the impeachment.