Attention to the Unseen

The Washington Post reports: In February, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine — a 33-year career diplomat who had served presidents of both parties — received a blunt warning. “Watch your back,” Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch said she was told by Ukraine’s interior minister. The Ukrainian official relayed that a pair of Florida businessmen and a Kyiv prosecutor with whom Yovanovitch had clashed were working to oust her from the post she had held since 2016, she later told House investigators. The…

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Politico reports: House Democrats are calling Donald Trump’s decision to attack Marie Yovanovitch mid-hearing on Friday a blatant example of witness intimidation, further building the case to charge the president with obstruction in potential articles of impeachment. Lawmakers of both parties were stunned to see Trump’s disparaging tweet about the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in the middle of a hearing where she had already described in great detail how she felt personally threatened by the president. “What you saw…

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Ken Dilanian writes: In his final statement to the jury in the trial of political operative Roger Stone, federal prosecutor Michael Marando sought to boil the case down to a simple and stark premise. “I know we live in a world nowadays with Twitter, tweets, social media, where you can find any political view you want,” he said. “However, in our institutions of self-governance — courts of law or committee hearings, where people under oath have to testify — truth…

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Noah Bookbinder writes: Impeachment is a constitutional procedure that should be reserved only for extraordinary times with the most extreme examples of abuse of power by a president. That is why, in our country’s history, only two presidents have been impeached. But this is one of those times. The evidence of wrongdoing by President Trump is overwhelming. The impeachment inquiry has been conducted so far in a sober, responsible way. As Wednesday’s hearing made clear, the witnesses are credible and…

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Renato Mariotti writes: If it looked like House Republicans were throwing a lot of mud at the wall to see what might stick during the first day of public impeachment hearings, that’s because they had settled into a strategy many defense attorneys adopt when the prosecution has the goods on their client—confuse the issues and distract the audience from the evidence at hand. I’ve tried many federal criminal cases, and Wednesday’s hearing looked a lot like trials in which the…

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CNN reports: In its effort to sell off the lease to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, the Trump Organization has put together a glossy investor brochure complete with pictures showcasing the hotel’s grandiose architecture, its central location and its spa’s Himalayan salt chamber. The hotel’s biggest selling point though, according to a copy of the brochure seen by CNN, is the one thing that the Trump family insists it didn’t take advantage of: profiting off foreign governments. “Tremendous upside…

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The Guardian reports: Trump’s conduct, according to analysts interviewed by the Guardian, hews more closely than any previous conduct by any other president to what scholars conceive as a concrete example of impeachable behavior. Frank O Bowman III, author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump and a professor at the University of Missouri school of law, said that Trump’s having extorted actions with no legitimate US national purpose from a foreign country…

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Michael Gerhardt writes: In declaring the initiation of a formal impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was solemn: “We’re not here to call bluffs. We’re here to find the truth, to uphold the Constitution of the United States. This is not a game for us; this is deadly serious.” In the weeks since, she has upheld that intention: Three different committees of the House of Representatives, with their Republican and Democratic members in attendance, have called a…

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The New York Times reports: For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began. Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the…

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BuzzFeed reports: If you were wondering how Vladimir Putin’s “mafia state” was involved in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, look no further than the Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the US. Dmytro Firtash is usually described as a Ukrainian oligarch with admitted ties to organized crime, but he is much more than that. He has direct ties to Russia, and to President Vladimir Putin in particular, and those have only grown since he was arrested five years ago, awaiting…

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CNN reports: Rudy Giuliani has been approaching defense attorneys for possible representation, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The move by Giuliani, who is President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, is notable because last week he said he would not be seeking a new lawyer unless he felt one was needed. His previous lawyer, John Sale, was helping him deal with congressional inquiries. “If they take me to court I would then have to get another lawyer,” Giuliani told…

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The New York Times reports: One of the two indicted associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Wednesday tied the case to the president himself, saying that some of the evidence gathered in the investigation could be subject to executive privilege. The unusual argument was raised by a defense lawyer in federal court in Manhattan as the two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, pleaded not guilty to federal charges that they had made illegal campaign contributions…

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Politico reports: Even if President Donald Trump shot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, New York authorities could not punish him while he is in office, the president’s lawyers argued Wednesday. Attorneys for Trump made the claim while arguing before a federal appeals court in their suit against Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who has subpoenaed Trump’s tax returns. Trump is fighting the subpoena on the grounds that as president, he has absolute immunity from criminal indictment or investigation….

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Law & Crime reports: The New York City Bar Association has called on U.S. Attorney General William Barr to stand down and recuse himself from any further review by the Department of Justice (DOJ) of issues related to the Trump Administration’s massive and snowballing Ukraine scandal. In a statement, the organization blasted Barr’s continued presence. The DOJ “has a unique role in safeguarding the rule of law under the Constitution,” the statement’s summary begins. “Barr has undermined that role,” by…

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