if it s one country versus another? i think that the entire narrative was, russia is helping trump, they wanted to move away from that, they wanted to be a different country, a different set of actors. take a listen to adam schiff on how this fits in. the president enlisted the whole departments of government in the illicit aim of trying to get ukraine to dig up dirt on a political opponent, as well as further conspiracy theory about the 2016 election that he believed would be beneficial to his re-election campaign. this is the wild part where it becomes about programming. one of the things we ve just learned from the more detailed house testimony is the exact way they wanted to roll this out. not in 2016, when you ve traced the origins, but in the bribery plot. they wanted the ukrainian president to do a television interview that would be seen in the united states, announcing this foreign investigation.
everyone who watches tv knows rarely do you see foreign heads of state announcing domestic prosecutions as a u.s. news event. but this goes to how important it was as programming, whether you want to call that propaganda, reality show programming, or the heart of the bribery plot, it was programming that trump wanted. they re looking to shape an actor, this is their modus operandi, they have to stick to this notion, it wasn t russia, it was ukraine. you said bad faith. a lot of people get in the habit of saying, is it true or not true, and why would you take a risk for something not true? that s a framework that doesn t really apply to how donald trump thinks. it s better if you never find the missing emails, it s better if the criminal probe is never resolved, it s better if, as he was winning more delegates because of rules that favored him, you say it s rigged because then you have this cart that the
when other aides have attempted to testify. call it mulvaney versus trump. mulvaney trying to join a lawsuit against his boss trump. mulvaney s team is in court tonight which makes fitting headlines for a year where it seems like everything has already massachusetts happened. but not this. he is trying to join this lawsuit against trump that basically asks a court to decide if mulvaney should testify against his boss. now that is unusual. mulvaney could just fight this request outright, arguing executive privilege, for he thinks the truth is good for him and trump. he could just go down and testify, right? he has already made this whole argument on live tv. he could make it again to congress or he could adjust it. instead, he is trying to join the lawsuit against trump with an ousted trump aide charles kupperman who was a former deputy to john bolton, and bolton is key here because he has all kinds of bad things reportedly to say about the bribery plot. he even reportedly said he want
could inflict grave constitutional injury on the house impeachment probe. and finally, this brief cites some precedent that trump and presumably mr. bolton may be concerned about, that congress has more power to force testimony when probing, quote, misconduct by impeachable officials. impeachable officials. the president s the most important impeachable official there. so while these white house officials do follow a long line of aides who do wrestle with these dilemmas, and some of them are real, rarely do you see a chief of staff join a suit against his own boss, the president, or what mulvaney is doing this evening, a suit telling him to reject his own boss s order or accusing him of a bribery plot that may be impeachable, let alone an official who reportedly accused him of cooking up a drug deal. so as with so much in 2019, this is a little different. what happens next in this case after that hearing late today,
try to do is parcel it out. there s one more piece of news i want to get your action. this is all about sondland who is a trump person. fiona hill saying he was in charge of ukraine and he said on whose authority and he said the president. this is impeachment evidence because of everything that went down. she saw sondland as target for foreign powers basically telling me i can get you into the white house. all this as he makes the bombshell reversal this week. he started by defending the president but conceded the bribery plot saying he told ukraine no u.s. aid money without the investigation trump wanted. that brings us up to is it blurry, are there lies? donald trump backing away as he s done with other people who have served him up to a point because look at this. donald trump recently described sondland as someone he knew to be a good man and a great american and now all of a sudden today he says this.