Trump directly asked the Ukraine president to investigate Biden. Since Biden is a presidential candidate, just asking this is illegal under campaign law, and is an impeachable offense. And this transcript is what Trump released! The actual transcript is probably even more damaging.

Crowdstrike is a US security company that uncovered Russian Fancy Bear malware aimed at DNC and Ukraine. Trump wanted Crowdstrike investigated. because he mistakenly thought Crowdstrike servers were in Ukraine. They aren’t. Trump, as always, has no command of the facts. However, his intent is clear. Investigate the enemy of Putin. Again, more felonies.

Quoting Trump on the phone call to the Ukraine president:

I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.

Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.

The other thing, There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it…

Crowdstrike blog, 2016 on Fancy Bear:

In June CrowdStrike identified and attributed a series of targeted intrusions at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and other political organizations that utilized a well known implant commonly called X-Agent. X-Agent is a cross platform remote access toolkit, variants have been identified for various Windows operating systems, Apple’s iOS, and likely the MacOS. Also known as Sofacy, X-Agent has been tracked by the security community for almost a decade, CrowdStrike associates the use of X-Agent with an actor we call FANCY BEAR.

This actor to date is the exclusive operator of the malware, and has continuously developed the platform for ongoing operations which CrowdStrike assesses is likely tied to Russian Military Intelligence (GRU). The source code to this malware has not been observed in the public domain and appears to have been developed uniquely by FANCY BEAR.

Trump is weakened and damaged by the Ukraine bribery whistleblower. Let’s ramp up attacks against Trump. No rest until he is gone. This includes putting pressure on the House to impeach.

Let’s be clear. The whistleblower complaint involves Trump offering the Ukraine president guns and money if Ukraine restarted a bogus investigation of Joe Biden’s son Hunter. That is bribery and it is an impeachable offense. Period. Also, the allegations against Hunter have been investigated previously and are rubbish.

Rudy Giuliani went on CNN last night, screeching mad and insane, howling about conspiracies against him and Trump, contradicting himself repeatedly, and in one especially memorable moment yowled “Truth isn’t truth.” Trump was twitchy and evasive this morning at a press conference about it, his increasing dementia becoming obvious.

Giuliani essentially said, yeah, it was bribery. The countdown begins until Trump purges Giuliani. It won’t be long until Rudy feels the full effects of #EDDT.

Giuliani appeared on CNN on Thursday night and defended Trump as if there were some kind of a quid pro quo involving foreign aid and investigating the Bidens. (Giuliani will often be dispatched to head off bad stories for Trump, though sometimes he doesn’t have his facts straight.)

“The reality is the president of the United States has every right to say to another leader of a foreign country, ‘You got to straighten up before we give you a lot of money,’ ” Giuliani said. “It is perfectly appropriate for [Trump] to ask a foreign government to investigate this massive crime that was made by a former vice president.”

TPM has more.

In sum, the scandal is about allegations that Trump – in part via his attorney Rudy Giuliani – applied Tony Soprano-style pressure on the Ukrainian government to produce information that could damage Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, and which could discredit the prosecution of Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for Ukraine-related financial misdeeds.

George Conway is married to senior counselor to Trump Kellyanne Conway . He spends considerable time ranting on Twitter about how horrible Trump is, often to be point where it seems almost satire. It’s mostly just nasty attacks that border on being unhinged. Which is fine, however not at all what you would expect a seasoned DC operative to be capable of. The usual Beltway pundits marvel at how unusual this is, what must their conversations at home be like, and isn’t it just too crazy that a DC insider Never Trumper is married to a rabid pro-Trumper. Oh giggle giggle.

Or so the conventional wisdom goes. There’s always been a minority view that George Conway is not at all who he appears to be. And indeed, Trump never seems to attack him. Why would that be? It might be due to deference to Kellyanne (however that would not be something Trump is exactly known for doing.) So quite possibly it is due to something else.

Cheri Jacobus

Former Republican National Committee spokesperson Cheri Jacobus tweeted that Conway infiltrated himself into Never Trump discussions on the Right during the Kavanaugh nomination. He helped convince them to back Kavanaugh, which led others like Sen. Susan Collins to vote to confirm. Conway responded saying “Whoever you are, you are lunatic, and you are a liar.” Yet he clearly knows who she is because she was a Republican Party major player for years. And he had no factual rebuttal. Just his usual nastiness.

Conway also ran interference for AG Barr spending $30,000 for a birthday party at Trump’s DC hotel, which at the very least is ethically stinky thing for Bar to do. And why would he go out of his way to do that?

I’ve been Never Trump since before the 2016 elections and have followed and actively participated in it on Twitter. And have lost track of how many people pretended to be something they were not. There are snakes everywhere. So, beware, be careful, verify. If new revelations jettison old ideas, then move on with the new.

The hypocrisy and degeneracy of MIT Media Lab attempting to give their Disobedience Award to MeToo activists while secretly being funded by convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein is breathtaking in its cynicism. However, it’s not even slightly surprising that billionaires and supposed elites are trying hard to defend Joi Ito and Jeffrey Epstein. Happily, they are mostly getting reamed for this.

This is a fine example of how members of a privileged class defend their class when it is attacked. Whether or not they are supposed liberals or progressives has nothing to do with it.

Anand Giridharadas was asked to be on the Disobedience Award panel. When the news about Epstein secretly funding Media Lab broke, he expressed misgivings about it to award funder Reid Hoffman, founder of Linkedin. Hoffman essentially told Giridharadas to STFU, that he was not fit to judge. Anand resigned and tweeted what Hoffman said.

“So I resigned. I’m sharing my emails for the sake of transparency, because people deserve to know how these things work. And because people should know that cruel social structures are sustained not only by outright cruelty but also by politeness and silence that entrench power.”

“My own glimpse into this one little world revealed people more respectful of Epstein even in death than of living people who question their power and ways. There are actually smart people out there who didn’t cavort with Epstein. They are the ones who will fix what was broken.”

“Why do we live in such an angry time? people keep asking. Well, this is one reason.”

MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte tried to run interference for Epstein and got shouted down at an internal meeting.

t was at this point that Negroponte said he would still have given Ito the same advice today.

The comments clearly stunned some of his listeners. A woman in the front row began crying. Kate Darling, a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, shouted, “Nicholas, shut up!” Negroponte responded that he would not shut up and that he had founded the Lab, to which Darling said, “We’ve been cleaning up your messes for the past eight years.”

Zuckerman, who had spoken earlier in the meeting, also had a brief spat with Negroponte. Negroponte pressed on: in the fund-raising world, he said, these types of occurrences were not out of the ordinary, and they shouldn’t be reason enough to cut off business relationships. It wasn’t until Darling yelled “Shut up!” again that Negroponte mumbled “Good grief,” and sat down. Soon after, the meeting disbanded.

Trump’s frenzied ranting about Sharpiegate is a clear example of his increasing dementia. Trump is not rational, cannot let it go, keeps quadruping down. Maybe a year ago he could bluster his way out of it. However, everyone knows he is lying now. Except him, possibly. I mean, someone at the White House leaked that Trump himself altered the map with a sharpie. He is ranty grandpa who needs the car keys taken from him.

His handlers desperately continue to cover up. Trump’s public appearances since his enfeebled G7 showing have been greatly limited. Trump has only appeared in public for two hours in the past ten days and when he does, speaks oddly and often has a tantrum about something.

Dementia is irreversible and only gets worse. Trump will become increasingly confused and impaired. By Christmas he’ll be an obvious mess. Scaramucci thinks Trump will be gone by March, a victim of senility and bad poll numbers. If by some chance Trump hangs on past March, he will be in no condition for the Republican convention in July. Trump has already said he won’t campaign much and he will be in no condition to participate in a debate. He’s going to have to be replaced. That means human cardboard mannequin Mike Pence will become president and there will be a civil war in the Republican Party.

Tom Joseph has been tweeting about Trump’s deterioration for quite a while. He lost three family members to forms of dementia, has researched it for years, and invested in in biotech companies looking for ways to ease symptoms.

Some selected tweets from Tom @TomJChicago. He’s definitely worth following on Twitter.

It doesn’t matter what states do to block Trump’s GOP challengers. These states will look foolish as his impairment continues to worsen. He was dragging both feet at the G7 & is humiliating himself every time he appears in public-only 2 hrs in the last 10 days. It gets much worse

Pence faces diminishing returns by not acting. His inaction is going to hurt him w/ the GOP. There are contenders. Each day he doesn’t make a bold move he looks weak. I’d give it 60-40 odds that there will be serious conflict between Trump & Pence factions.

“Trump’s activity has slowed to a trickle.” That’s what dementia does. It’s hard to be in public. As predicted, we are seeing less of Trump. Short bursts at best. MSM, of course, notices his stunted schedule bc they, unlike Dotard, are actually working.