{"id":177038,"date":"2020-01-14T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/14\/pass-the-pop-corn\/"},"modified":"2020-01-14T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-15T01:00:00","slug":"pass-the-pop-corn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/14\/pass-the-pop-corn\/","title":{"rendered":"Pass the Pop Corn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/sEd2b3j.gif\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/sEd2b3j.gif\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"250\" \/><\/a>The House of Representatives have just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/xgqdz7\/house-democrats-dropped-impeachment-documents-lev-parnas-rudy-giuliani-ukraine-zelensky\">released a treasure trove of documents incriminating Trump<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">House Democrats just unveiled a trove of fresh impeachment evidence against President Trump in a surprise move that came just days before his impeachment trial is set to kick off in the Senate. <\/p>\n<p> The files include a copy of a letter from Trump\u2019s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani addressed to the President of Ukraine that casts Trump as fully aware of Giuliani\u2019s actions in Ukraine \u2014 at a moment when Giuliani was publicly calling for the country to investigate Trump\u2019s Democratic 2020 challenger, former vice president Joe Biden. <\/p>\n<p> That letter, which requests a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, directly links Trump to a trip <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/05\/09\/us\/politics\/giuliani-ukraine-trump.html\">Giuliani described at the time<\/a> as \u201cmeddling in an investigation.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> \u201cIn my capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent, I request a meeting with you on this upcoming Monday, May 13th or Tuesday, May 14th,\u201d Giuliani wrote. <\/p>\n<p> Republicans have repeatedly defended the president by arguing that the evidence and testimony in the impeachment hearings haven\u2019t linked him closely enough to efforts by those around him, like Giuliani, to get Ukraine to announce an investigation into Biden. But the letter says explicitly that Giuliani had Trump\u2019s full backing and consent, at a time when <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/05\/09\/us\/politics\/giuliani-ukraine-trump.html\">Giuliani told The New York Times<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019m asking them to do an investigation.\u201d <\/p>\n<p> The disclosures deliver a large new pile of hard evidence to Democrats on the eve of their Wednesday vote to send articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial. In December, the House voted to impeach Trump for abusing his office by pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation of Biden and for obstructing the Congressional investigation into what happened. <\/p>\n<p> Giuliani\u2019s letter and other documents released Tuesday were recently delivered to House Democrats by an embattled associate of his named Lev Parnas, a Ukranian-born businessman who helped Giuliani navigate the country and seek damaging information about Biden. <\/p>\n<p>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<p> The new records include an apparent memo, written by Parnas, about getting Zelensky to announce an investigation of Biden. It\u2019s a rare hardcopy piece of evidence suggesting what the whole scheme was about. <\/p>\n<p> \u201cGet Zalensky [sic] to Annonce [sic] that the Biden case will Be Investigated,\u201d the note reads. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is getting good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The House of Representatives have just released a treasure trove of documents incriminating Trump: House Democrats just unveiled a trove of fresh impeachment evidence against President Trump in a surprise move that came just days before his impeachment trial is set to kick off in the Senate. The files include a copy of a letter &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[573,441,560,407,374,486],"class_list":["post-177038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-donald-trump","tag-former-soviet-union","tag-impeach","tag-justice","tag-politics","tag-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177038"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}