WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is preparing to formally object to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as soon as Friday, saying it won’t cooperate with the probe because it was initiated without a vote of the House.

The White House Counsel’s Office was preparing to send a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi objecting to the form of the impeachment investigation, a person familiar with the matter said late Thursday, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the letter before its dissemination.

...

Where courts have generally required congressional oversight requests to demonstrate a legitimate legislative purpose, impeachment requests could be wide-ranging.

It is unclear if Democrats would wade into a lengthy legal fight with the administration over documents and testimony letter, or if they would move straight to considering articles of impeachment.

Adam Schiff
✔
@RepAdamSchiff
After receiving a trove of important documents from the first of the state department witnesses, my fellow chairs and I highlight some of those deserving of the most attention and what is at stake.

Michael Del Moro
✔
@MikeDelMoro
Giuliani tells WSJ outright that Yovanovitch was seen "as an obstacle to efforts to push Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden and his son, Hunter."
https://twitter.com/rebeccaballhaus/status/1179867276633411584
Rebecca Ballhaus
✔
@rebeccaballhaus
NEW: Trump ordered the removal of the ambassador to Ukraine after months of complaints from allies, including Rudy Giuliani, that she was undermining him abroad and obstructing efforts to persuade Kyiv to investigate Biden. w/@MichaelCBender@vmsalama

Trump’s 2020 Campaign Caught Using STOLEN Photos Of Black People With Photoshopped MAGA Hats
September 16, 2019



Rykard Jenkins is mostly known for his appearance on the U.K. reality show Love Island but he has recently been getting attention for something else.

Rykard shared a picture of himself wearing a Trump 2020 baseball cap that had obviously been photoshopped. The hat he had originally been wearing in the picture (an advertisement for the FXB brand), had been edited to look like a Trump 2020 cap.

https://twitter.com/ItsRykard/status/1172426476848742402

Woke up this morning to know I’m the new face for the 2020
@realDonaldTrump
campaign 🇺🇸 ?

Jenkins, who lives in the UK, seems to have a sense of humor about the situation but while he may find the photo amusing, some people are seeing a pattern of Trump’s team taking images of people of color and photoshopping them to promote himself.

Noah Shachtman
✔
@NoahShachtman
EXCLUSIVE: The Ukraine 'misinformation' file delivered to Congress today contains correspondence between conservative journo John Solomon and top Giuliani allies. https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-ukraine-dirt-file-has-private-email-between-john-solomon-and-rudy-allies …

A controversial right-leaning reporter at the center of the Trump-Ukraine scandal apparently emailed a copy of one of his stories—seemingly before it was published—to a top ally of Rudy Giuliani, as well as two pro-Trump investigators attempting to dig up negative information on the Biden family.

In March, The Hill's investigative reporter John Solomon published a story claiming that the U.S. government had pressured Ukrainian prosecutors to drop a probe of a group funded by the Obama administration and liberal billionaire George Soros. The story appears to have been published at 6 p.m., according to a timestamp on paper’s website. Solomon himself didn’t share it on his twitter account until 6:56 pm that night. The earliest cache of the story in the Internet Archive is from 7:42 pm. eastern time.


But hours before that, at 12:52 pm eastern time, Solomon appears to have sent a version of the article to Ukrainian-American businessman Lev Parnas and the Trumpworld lawyers Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. The email was titled “Outline of Soros reporting, including embedded documents” and included the headline and the text of his piece.

Two congressional sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that Solomon’s email was part of a roughly 50-page package of material that was turned over to lawmakers on Wednesday by the State Department’s Inspector General’s office. Reuters was the first to report the email’s inclusion in the packet.

If you like subpoena coladas / and getting caught in Ukraine

emptywheel
@emptywheel
This lays out Trump's game:

1) Russian pressure raises stakes on military aid

2) He promises it but freezes it instead, raising desperation, forcing Zelensky to negotiate with a weak hand

3) After Congress forces the issue he quickly gets concessions