- Trump brought up Crowdstrike in the call to Zelensky. He gets that from an insane conspiracy theory that Russia didn’t hack the DNC and Crowdstrike helped them hide the evidence by spiriting the physical server away to Ukraine, where their founder was from. Crowdstrike’s founder isn’t Ukrainian, there were dozens of DNC servers containing their email, and we know Russia was behind the hack. The president wanted a foreign head of state to investigate this anyway. Zelensky as it turns out had no idea what the hell the president was talking about and they had to look it up.
- An OMB worker is defying White House orders to not testify and testifying before the impeachment inquiry.
- Trump is looking into pardoning several service members who have been convicted of or accused of war crimes.
- Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer is under federal investigation for campaign finance investigations and failing to register as a foreign agent. Both of these are related to the work he was doing for Trump.
- The president is looking to increase the payment South Korea provides the United States to six times its current amount. He’s long said other countries need to pay the US for protection, turning the US military into mercenaries.
- I didn’t write a piece on the Taylor / Kent testimony as we learned very little which was new. Taylor however said one of his aides was having lunch with Ambassador Sondland in a Ukrainian restaurant when Sondland called Trump. Trump could be heard on the other end of the call asking about the requested investigations into Biden and Clinton. (In addition to more evidence of the extortion, this is a massive security risk.) The Associated Press is reporting that a second witness was there in the restaurant and also heard Trump’s call. David Holmes, Taylor’s aide who overheard the call, will be testifying tomorrow in a closed session.
