BY BRIAN BEUTLER, PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, SARAH LAZARUS

& CROOKED MEDIA

Thursday, October 3, 2019

—@therudygiuliani. Spoiler alert: “They” do.

LIVE FROM DC, IT'S CRIMES

If you hark back to the simpler, more innocent era of last week, you’ll recall that some Democrats wanted to limit their impeachment inquiry to the Trump-Ukraine scandal alone. That strategy now looks downright impossible, because President Trump just solicited additional foreign interference in the 2020 election during impromptu remarks on the White House Lawn. On camera. 

Here’s what happened: 

• “China should start an investigation into the Bidens, because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine,” said the president, in full knowledge that we can see and hear him. (Ed note: Everything Trump has said about “the Bidens” is false.)
  

• Trump made that comment just after he directed an ominous threat at China concerning the trade war he started with them: “if they don’t do what we want, we have tremendous power.” It’s always helpful when he puts the “quid pro” close to the “quo.” 
  
  
• This is an impeachable offense all on its own, and it happened on national television.
  
  
• We now know this wasn’t the first time! During a June 18 phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump brought up the political prospects of both Biden and Elizabeth Warren. On the same call, Trump told Xi he’d keep quiet on the Hong Kong protests as trade talks progressed. The record of that phone call was then stored, you guessed it, in the same highly secured "bury crimes" server as the infamous Ukraine call. 
  
  
• And finally: a Trump ally outside of the White House reportedly got a message from Chinese officials asking if Trump meant it about investigating Biden. The response? “Investigating corruption” [read: manufacturing dirt on Biden] is the way to get on Trump’s good side. Extremely normal stuff.

Meanwhile, House Democrats interviewed the first witness in their impeachment probe today. 

• While testifying to Congress behind closed doors, former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine/text message signer Kurt Volker produced evidence that Bill Taylor, our then-top diplomat to Ukraine, understood Trump to be “withholding security assistance for help with a political campaign,” which is what you might call evidence that Trump is extremely guilty. "I think it's crazy,” Taylor said. (Bill, you were correct!)
  
  
• The ambassador to the E.U., Gordon Sondland, responded to Taylor that Trump was “crystal clear no quid pro quo of any kind” before suggesting they take their conversation off of text (never a good sign, nothing to see here). Side note: Sondland is a GOP megadonor who gave $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee before scoring this gig. Taylor is a career foreign service official. 
  
  
• Most stunningly: Volker and Sondland reportedly drafted a statement for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to deliver, announcing his intent to pursue the very investigations Trump tried to coerce him to conduct. They literally gave him blackmail instructions!

The impeachment news is tough to keep up with, partly because the president keeps doing new crimes while Congress is investigating his only-slightly-older crimes. The bottom line is that Republicans can no longer even pretend to be confused: Trump is abusing the powers of the presidency to invite foreign assistance in the election for his personal political gain on live TV, and they will all have to vote on whether they’re cool with that.

The Trump administration plans to start collecting DNA samples from hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants in ICE and Border Protection custody, and adding them to a national criminal database. The FBI’s DNA database currently contains information from people who have been arrested, charged, or convicted of serious crimes, and immigrants have been exempt from laws that authorized broader collection. This has invited considerable, obvious backlash from immigrant and civil liberties advocates, who argue that this infringes on the privacy of already vulnerable people without cause.

Hey 2020-watchers, Arizona is winnable! Dan Pfeiffer is back out of campaign retirement with a memo analyzing the results of the latest Crooked Media/Change Research poll out of Arizona, a key battleground state in 2020. 

Read Dan’s analysis →

Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who is low-key implicated-as-hell in the Ukraine scandal will resign next month. Oh. 

President Trump has signed an executive order to change the Medicare program to expand private “Medicare Advantage” plans and “protect” people from Medicare for all.” What it would actually do is jack up the cost of Medicare for no reason but to spike premiums for seniors on Medicare’s public insurance plan so that they’ll flock to the private plans in Medicare Advantage, thus privatizing the program. “Protect people from Medicare for all by privatizing Medicare for seniors” is why Republicans don’t want to impeach Trump. 

The “other whistleblower”—the one from the IRS who claims at least one political appointee in the Treasury Department tried to interfere with the annual audit of the president’s tax returns—gave an interview to the Washington Post. Note: Just because there are two whistleblowers now doesn’t mean that it’s acceptable to dress up as sexy whistleblower for Halloween. 

MGM International resorts has reached an $800 million settlement with victims of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, NV. The Vegas shooter fired into the crowd at a country music festival from his room at the Mandalay Bay hotel, which MGM owns. Victims accused MGM of negligence for allowing the shooter to stockpile 23 weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his hotel room.

Jeffrey Epstein raked in $200 million from a start-up after he registered as a sex offender in 2008. Hopefully some of this money makes it into the hands of his victims who, after Epstein escaped a criminal trial by killing himself, have sued his estate. 

A bipartisan letter from 2016 shows that Republican senators agreed with Joe Biden and everyone else in the free world that Ukraine’s prosecutor general office and judiciary needed reform. By now you’re probably aware that this “scandal” is completely invented, but thought you should know. 

Bernie Sanders is still recovering from an artery blockage procedure, but he’ll be headed home soon and plans to participate in the next debate on October 15. Straight stuntin’ on those stents.

The Trump administration has made good on its threat to cite San Francisco, CA, for “water pollution.” The EPA notice of violation followed Trump’s baseless claim that the city’s homeless population litters needles into the ocean, because apparently the only thing Trump hates more than clean water is homeless people and California.

Notorious conspiracy theorist/grifter Jacob Wohl’s latest con is trying to convince people that Elizabeth Warren had an affair with a 24-year-old Marine. Warren’s response is that she’s only a (University of Houston) Cougar because classes were just $50 a semester. We are in awe. 

Twitter took down Trump’s Nickelback video after receiving a copyright complaint. Chad Kroeger…welcome to the resistance.

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Bob Woodward conducted such a painful interview of Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey on Wednesday that the audience revolted. The investigative reporters were promoting their new book She Said, about their work exposing Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misconduct, and Woodward repeatedly interrupted them and asked questions that suggest he thinks maybe Weinstein’s just kinky? Anyhow, a bunch of people booed and walked out—hopefully after they bought the book.

A new invention to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been deployed for the first time. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a swath of ocean garbage between Hawaii and California that’s about three times the size of France. Dutch scientists designed a free floating device to collect plastic from the ocean, and it’s working! 

Even better news: the trash could pay for its own cleanup. Here’s Boyan Slat, creator of the Ocean Cleanup project, at a press conference: “I think in a few years’ time when we have the full-scale fleet out there, I think it should be possible to cover the operational cost of the cleanup operation using the plastic harvested.” Trash! Is! Cash! From Brian: I resemble that remark.

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