Depends, was it going to be on Fifth Avenue?
<<Underlining mine>>
I think the key would be the definition of definitive proof. So long as there is some possible (not necessarily plausible) scenario under which Trump could be innocent, then the senate and Trump’s supporters will hang onto that fig leaf for dear life. “On the phone call to the hit man Trump never said he wanted Yavonovitch murdered he said he wanted her ‘taken out’. Perhaps he was just referring to her being removed from office?”
Even if the evidence is overwhelming as long as any one piece can be discredited, that is what they will concentrate on. “The Democrats claim to have 99 witnesses who say Trump kill Yavonovich in broad daylight, Witness number 72 was so nearsighted that she couldn’t have actually seen Trump pull the trigger, and she was a registered Democrat to boot. The whole thing is a phony witch hunt.”
This story is nuts, but flimsy so far. I am afraid that the GOP represents the Koch Bros. and their kind, and so if it is not in the interests of people like that to remove Trump, it won’t happen. Not even for murder/assassination. What are a few lives compared to tax cuts and deregulation?
It is cynical to view the GOP as that monstrous, but as someone else asked, “have you been following the news?”
Also, if Trump can fire her on a whim, why get her whacked?
The question is moot because, whatever evidence exists, Republicans will drown it out with procedural complaints and whataboutism and bad-faith jeremiads about “due process.” That is how the people in this thread saying “attempted murder is impeachable” will avoid engaging with an actual impeachment for this crime.
To be clear, when you’re part of a conspiracy, you’re part of every crime that the conspiracy committed. So if these Parnas texts are the tip of the iceberg that they appear to be, then Trump may be culpable for conspiracy to commit murder.
Dead ambassadors tell no tales.
Keep in mind this appears to have taken place well after significant assfuckery was well under way between the Giuliani and the new Ukrainian administration. Something that Yovanovitch was already well aware of.
That said, I doubt Trump issued such an order. But if something terrible were to happen to her, it would certainly have made his day.
My question from the cheap seats, do we have definite dates for all of these things?
The date July 25, 2019 is burned into my memory for bullet point #1.
According to the screenshots in the Twitter posts JohnT shared [POST=22081458]in the Impeachment Inquiry thread[/POST], bullet point #2 dates to March 25 and March 26, 2019.
Not sure what the date is for bullet point #3. I can only guess that it is also March 25, 2019.
I don’t know how to date bullet point #4, but it must have been on or before April 25, 2019. April 25, 2019 was the day Ambassador Yovanovitch returned to Washington D.C.
ETA: So, re-ordering the list chronologically:
[ul][li]3/25-26/2019 - Trump cronies apparently have Yovanovich under physical surveillance paying special attention to the security detail surrounding her.[/li][li]3/25/2019 - Trump crony notes that you can get anything done in Ukraine if you’re willing to pay.[/li][li]On or before 4/25/2019 - Ukrainian security service contacts Yovanovich in the middle of the night and says she’s in danger. Leave the country immediately.[/li][li]7/25/2019 - Trump says that Yovanovich “will go through some things”[/ul][/li]
~Max
This is a good way of looking at it. It may be noteworthy that July 25th also happens to be the date that Trump was at peak pique about Ukraine’s Zelensky doing him “a big favor tho”. So saying, “she’s going to go through some things”, was Trump’s Goodfella way of impressing upon Zelensky how serious he was about extracting that favor and the length he was willing to go to get his way.
“Is Marie Yovanavitch dead? No. Therefore, the President did not have her murdered. And it’s not an impeachable offense for a President to make plans to murder an American ambassador. That’s just contingency planning.”
For the optics. A graphic warning to all [del]Deep Staters[/del] law-abiding folks not to FUCK with the Don.
Let’s be kind. “Hit” was a metaphor for “removed” aka fired. Just terminated without extreme prejudice. Successfully, stealthily discrediting someone so they’re unable to continue their job is what intel folk call “a nice clean hit”, right? Media trash are “hit pieces”, right? Only career death, not a bloody corpse.
No, let’s be paranoid. This POTUS wants his opponents (that’s most of us) jailed or dead. He could process a 5th Ave crowd with an Uzi and not be convicted. The nightmare is real. Even paranoiacs have enemies.
For the optics. A graphic warning to all [del]Deep Staters[/del] law-abiding folks not to FUCK with the Don.
Let’s be kind. “Hit” was a metaphor for “removed” aka fired. Just terminated without extreme prejudice. Successfully, stealthily discrediting someone so they’re unable to continue their job is what intel folk call “a nice clean hit”, right? Media trash are “hit pieces”, right? Only career death, not a bloody corpse.
No, let’s be paranoid. This POTUS wants his opponents (that’s most of us) jailed or dead. He could process a 5th Ave crowd with an Uzi and not be convicted. The nightmare is real. Even paranoiacs have enemies.
Lev Parnas to appear on Maddow tonight.
Josh Lederman of NBC confirms “TONIGHT: Lev Parnas sitting down with @maddow for an exclusive interview, airing tonight at 9pm on @MSNBC”
As the cliche goes; it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.
I can see a theory that Robert Hyde is a crazy man who decided to start a plot against Marie Yovanavitch all on his own and that doesn’t implicate the Trump administration - if that’s all there was to this story.
But we have evidence that Lev Parnas was aware of what Hyde was doing. And regardless of whether Hyde came up with the plan on his own or the plan was created in the Trump administration and Hyde was brought in as a point man, the fact that Parnas was aware that it was happening and took no actions definitely implicates Parnas. Even if Parnas had no prior knowledge of what Hyde was doing, he should have contacted authorities when he received Hyde’s text messages.
The question now is how much higher than Parnas does this go?
I’ll be the first to say Trump probably didn’t order her murdered. He isn’t reckless enough to court that kind of blowback, not consciously anyway.
However, he does have the nerve to indiscriminately hire the worst sorts of goons and direct them with vague messaging like “whatever it takes”, not really caring what it takes, yet feeling insulated because he didn’t spell it out.
But why? If the America-hating fuckstick wanted her gone, he didn’t even NEED an excuse. And if he felt the urge to put a fig leaf on it, I hire all the best people, and Obama hired only the worst people was certainly one he wouldn’t feel any hesitation to deploy.
ISTM that he wanted to make sure that she didn’t have a smoking gun that would blow away the Hunter Biden issue before he pulled the trigger (so to speak) on her dismissal.
Hyde was reporting he already had her under surveillance. So why would he be acting like it was something he was going to do? And why would he be discussing prices with the watchers to do something they had already done?
From the context, the most obvious conclusion is that Hyde had placed Yovanavitch under surveillance as just a preliminary step in the overall plan. And now that he had accomplished this, he was working on the next step. Something which was going to cost him more money and involved knowing when Yovanavitch would be out in the open and what kind of security protection she had.
… as we all do.
I disagree. Thats like going to Georgia in 1940 and saying ‘if the KKK really did lynch that black guy, then the justice system will work the way its supposed to’.
Things are pretty fucked up in America. Even if Trump tries to have people killed, the GOP and his base won’t abandon him.
So she doesn’t squeal, see?
Sure, but dead ambassadors attract A LOT of attention. Remember Benghazi? It just doesn’t seem like something one would expect to get away with, even granting how dumb Trump can be.