- Lawyers today for the Department of Justice argued the Judicial Branch cannot intervene in any disputes between the Executive and Legislative branches. The Trump administration has long been using an inversion of the concept of separation of powers – that they don’t have to comply with congress and the courts can’t do anything about it. This is all in an attempt to prevent Don McGahn from testifying about the time Trump told him to falsify documents regarding firing Robert Mueller.
- Lev Parnas, the indicted Giuliani associate who was working on the Ukraine policy Trump was impeached over, may now begin sharing documents and the contents of his cell phone with congress.
- Mike Pompeo briefed the Russian government about the Soleimani assassination before the US Congress was briefed on it. Even guests at Mar-a-Lago were told a response was coming.
- Another woman has accused Donald Trump of sexual impropriety. Former Fox reporter Courtney Friel claims Trump called her to invite her to his office to kiss while both were married.
- The son of a deceased Deustche Bank employee claims he has data proving Trump’s loans from Deustche Bank were underwritten by VTB, a Russian bank. Deustche Bank is publicly denying these claims. There are journalists questioning the credibility of this story.
- The president retweeted a Dinesh D’Souza tweet (a convicted felon) saying Democrats in congress were not informed of the Iraq strike for the same reason the Iranians were not, ie Democrats are traitors who would have leaked the information. As childish as this attack is, Republicans weren’t informed either.
- In a long thread detailing some of the horrendous actions undertaken by Soliemani, Mike Pence linked him to the 9/11 attacks saying he helped transport “10 of the 12 terrorists.” Pence’s press secretary tried to revise the numbers but the larger problem is that the 9/11 Commission concluded that neither Iran nor Hezbollah had any idea the attack was coming. It also makes no sense to tie Soliemani to the hijackers crossing Iran. Not only is Al-Qaeda a long term enemy of Iran, but Soliemani was already appointed to run Quds Force at the time. He wouldn’t have been involved in Saudis crossing Iran, which was common.
- The White House is blocking the release of 20 emails between a Mick Mulvaney aide and someone at the Office of Management and Budget. These emails detail the Ukraine aid hold. The New York Times will be challenging this in court and, in my opinion, will likely succeed.
