Attention to the Unseen

Asha Rangappa writes: Just under the deadline, Republicans turned in on Saturday the list of witnesses they’d like to have testify at impeachment hearings beginning this week. Among them is Hunter Biden, former vice president Joe Biden’s son, who Trump wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate as a condition of getting U.S. military aid. In listing Biden as a witness, the GOP may hope to build a defense that shifts the focus to alleged wrongdoing by the former vice…

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Business Insider reports: Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has received a surge in cash from nine Russian donors, who have been named in a suppressed investigation into Russia’s attempts to undermine democracy in the UK. The report by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee identifies close links between major donors to the Conservative party and the Russian government, the Sunday Times reports. The report was due for publication this week but was blocked by Johnson, due to reported fears that the information…

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CNN reports: Russia’s influence reaches deep into the British establishment and successive UK governments have turned a blind eye to it, lawmakers were warned, according to multiple sources familiar with testimony given to a parliamentary inquiry. Members of the cross-party Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) were told that Moscow built up a network of friendly British diplomats, lawyers, parliamentarians and other influencers from across the political spectrum. One witness described the development as “potentially the most significant threat to the…

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Peter Jukes writes: According to its chairman, Dominic Grieve, Boris Johnson personally blocked – for “bogus” reasons – the imminent publication of a cross-party report on Russia meddling in UK politics by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). Elements of the suppressed report have now leaked out. According to CNN, the evidence of Bill Browder, the campaigner behind the anti-corruption Magnitsky Acts, suggests that Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, has deployed Russians “to infiltrate UK society and to conceal the underlying…

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The New York Times reports: “Yes, billionaires will have to pay a little more,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said of the revised tax package she introduced recently, “six cents on each dollar.” This modest-sounding proposal, though, would have a far-reaching impact on the wealthiest Americans when combined with her other tax plans — shrinking colossal fortunes over time and making it much more difficult to hand down multibillion-dollar legacies. The tax bite for any individual would not equal the $100 billion…

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Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump says he lifted his freeze on aid to Ukraine on Sept. 11, but the State Department had quietly authorized releasing $141 million of the money several days earlier, according to five people familiar with the matter. The State Department decision, which hasn’t been reported previously, stemmed from a legal finding made earlier in the year, and conveyed in a classified memorandum to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. State Department lawyers found the White House Office…

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The New York Times reports: State Department Foreign Service officers usually express their views in formal diplomatic cables, but these days they are using closed Facebook groups and encrypted apps to convey their pride in Marie L. Yovanovitch, the ousted ambassador to Ukraine, whose House testimony opened the floodgates on the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. #GoMasha is their rallying cry. In private conversations, they trade admiring notes about career State Department officials like William B. Taylor Jr. and George…

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  “The Russians were who attacked us in 2016, and they’re now writing the script for others to do the same. And if we don’t get our act together, they will continue to make fools of us internationally.” Fiona Hill Full transcript of testimony of Fiona Hill. For some relevant background on Putin’s work skills as a KGB case officer, watch this 2013 interview with Hill and Clifford G. Gaddy.

Quartz reports: US president Donald Trump will be receiving a special gift from Berlin residents on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—a 2.7-ton section of the wall itself. The stunt is squarely directed at Trump’s vow to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, a part of his “zero tolerance” immigration policy. “We would like to give you one of the last pieces of the failed Berlin Wall to commemorate the United States’ dedication to building…

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Noah Feldman writes: It’s no surprise that Ambassador William Taylor is expected to be the first witness to testify when the House of Representatives opens public impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump next week. First, he’s an astoundingly credible witness — straight from central casting, as Trump himself likes to say about some of his appointees. As a matter of prosecutorial strategy, that makes him an ideal first witness for House Democrats to lay out their case for the first…

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