September 27, 2019

Trump Impeachment Liveblog, Day 4: A House Republican Breaks Ranks

Here’s the latest.

Li Muzi/ZUMA

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As the White House scrambles to mount a defense against impeachment proceedings—a predicament Donald Trump reportedly never thought would come to life—scrutiny into the president’s efforts to cover up the cover-up is intensifying.

Follow along below.

6:54 p.m. ET: Dan Friedman on Kurt Volker’s resignation:

6:47 p.m. ET: Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada became the first Republican House member to support the impeachment inquiry. “Let’s put it through the process and see what happens,” he told the Nevada Independent. Amodei even leaned into it a bit and said, if an inquiry showed someone using government agencies to try to tip an election, “there’s a problem.”

5:24 p.m. ET: The New York Times reports that President Trump met with Wayne LaPierre to “discuss how the NRA could provide financial support for the president’s defense” during the impeachment inquiry. LaPierre, head of the NRA, has been trying to make sure Trump doesn’t enact any gun control in the wake of mass shootings, according to the report. You may recall that earlier today, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released an investigation calling the NRA a “foreign asset” during the 2016 election for Russia.

4:48 p.m. ET: The House issued its first subpoena. It requested a slew of documents related to the Ukrainian scandal from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by October 4. And, in the accompanying letter, it also laid out a slew of Rudy Guliani’s public statements they say raise “troubling questions.”

2:08 p.m. ET: The only thing more delightfully dumb, impeachable, and insidious than a president of the United States calling an apostrophe a “hyphen” and nitpicking over CNN’s nitpicking over Trump’s nitpicking over grammar and spelling on Twitter, all in the past few hours, is a nation that takes the bait and more than a minute to talk about it. So I’ll write this in under a minute, and hope you read it in less.

At the doorstep of impeachment, shifting gears to rattle copy editors’ cages and stir up a grammar investigation is like Tactic 2 in Trump’s misdirection playbook, but petty begets petty, so our talent for obliging him was on full display this morning, when I awoke to a copy editor friend’s email titled “Trump became a copy editor overnight?” Every news outlet on the planet was asking the same. I would explain, but that would put us over a minute. Read more here. But don’t. ‹59 seconds› —Daniel King, Mother Jones copy editor

1:46 p.m. ET: Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire would like to remind you—lest you’d forgotten—that Trump is a liar. Read analysis from David Corn, Mother Jones’ Washington, DC, bureau chief, here.

12:51 p.m. ET: Presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is finally on board with the impeachment inquiry.

12:18 p.m. ET: 

10:40 a.m. ET: The White House confirms, for the first time, a major allegation in the whistleblower complaint, that the transcript of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president was moved to a separate classified server. (Yes, a server.) A senior official told CNN that the decision for the highly unusual move came at the direction of lawyers for the National Security Council.

8:15 a.m. ET: Gabriel Sherman reports on the existential crisis hitting Fox News this week, with even Sean Hannity acknowledging that the whistleblower complaint at the center of Trump’s Ukraine scandal is “really bad” for the president. Meanwhile, White House aides are quickly realizing there is no roadmap.

7:50 a.m. ET: “This is no cause for any joy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says on impeachment during an appearance on Morning Joe. “This is a very sad time for our country.” Pelosi also blasts Attorney General William Barr for going “rogue” in his unprecedented efforts to shield the president.

7:30 a.m. ET: Trump calls on House Intelligence chair Rep. Adam Schiff to resign. 

7:00 a.m. ET: The president emerges Friday morning laser-focused and ready for battle. We won’t insult you by pointing out the obvious errors in this one.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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