So #TrumpMeltdown is trending on Twitter as he acts increasingly unhinged even by his standards in a presser alongside Finnish President Sauli Niinistö,
Best was when a Finnish reporter asked Niinistö what favors Trump asked for! 
Brooks concedes that Trump acted criminally but still suggests that nothing be done to address it. And he is supposedly one of the smarter, ethical Republicans. Says a lot about the GOP these days.
NPR reporter Franco Ordonez tweets that Trump said today that Pence was on the call with Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/FrancoOrdonez/status/1179467385205641220?s=19
I always assumed Pence was as dirty as the rest of the administration. If the Ukraine call is what takes them down, and Pence goes down with them… Woo Hoo!
President Pelosi!
Let’s say someone smarter than Trump sees that Pence is going down, and Trump convinces Pence to resign. Can Trump then appoint a replacement so the Republicans hold the White House when Trump is evicted?
He has corrected his tweet, saying he misheard President Mumbles.
At the moment, it sounds like Trump is working to make sure that everyone he depends on is going down if he goes down. He wants to make sure that they’re just as strongly on the defense as he is.
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Trump can absolutely do anything he wants, and lie about it seconds after he did it. And his Trumpsters will believe anything… ANYthing.
6 in 10 Republicans believe that Trump did not discuss Biden in his phone call to the Ukraine President. Even though the transcript RELEASED BY TRUMP HIMSELF shows that he did exactly that.
If Trump declared at 12:00 noon that it was nighttime and dark out, 6/10 Republican voters would immediately go home (with their car lights on), fumble for their house keys in the darkness of noon, and go straight to bed.
This may prove to be useful later on today:
18 U.S.C. § 1512 - U.S. Code
(b) Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens, or corruptly persuades another person, or attempts to do so, or engages in misleading conduct toward another person, with intent to–
(1) influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person in an official proceeding;
(2) cause or induce any person to–
(A) withhold testimony, or withhold a record, document, or other object, from an official proceeding;
(B) alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal an object with intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding;
© evade legal process summoning that person to appear as a witness, or to produce a record, document, or other object, in an official proceeding; or
(D) be absent from an official proceeding to which such person has been summoned by legal process; or
(3) hinder, delay, or prevent the communication to a law enforcement officer or judge of the United States of information relating to the commission or possible commission of a Federal offense or a violation of conditions of probation 1 supervised release, 2 parole, or release pending judicial proceedings;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
Well, poop.
No, it’s not someone from the OLC. The person I was referring to is Steve Linick as referred to by Euphonious Polemic in his Post #1542. Mr. Linick is the IG for the State Department, completely independent, appointed by President Obama in 2012 or 2013, if I recall. He was highly critical of Hillary Clinton’s handling of her email server. Those who know him view him as a total non-partisan straight shooter who takes his work very seriously.
It’s Mr. Linick who is meeting with the Congressional committees this afternoon. With documents.
I am hopeful.
No he can’t…
“the president may appoint a vice president to fill a vacancy in that office, subject to approval by both houses of Congress.”
Any word on what time this is happening?
It’s already over.
Right now.
“Linick declined to comment to CNN as he entered the briefing just before 3 p.m. ET on Wednesday.”
~Max
ETA: He’s currently meeting with Congressional legal staffers, not Congress itself.
Rep Jamie Raskin moments ago:
“An organized effort to smear government employees who were getting in the way of President Trump”
“An attempt to create a narrative to justify what the president did”
“You will recognize names in these documents”
Yep. Witness tampering. Find out who did it, investigate and prosecute them.
Probably already occurred.
Either Trump will tweet something to attack the information, before the information is public, or Schiff will leak something to WaPo based on it if there’s something glaringly apparent among it. It might take a few days.
It could be a binder of Breitbart articles!
Based on Max S.'s link, it looks like a central result of the IG move might be to supply the House with documents, just previous to interviewing people in the State Department.
Whether they have time to go through the documents or not, between today and tomorrow, the people who are testifying will know that some amount of material has been handed over and that their story needs to match whatever is in the documentary evidence or else they’ll be wrung up for perjury.
Given 24 hours to prepare and, probably, uncertain about what was handed over - I expect to hear a lot of appeals to the 5th Amendment tomorrow.
Interesting. So your position is that the IG is supplying unknown documents in order to force people to tell the truth or 5th Amendment their way out of this.
Very cagey, if true.
I’m not sure how that’s cagey. I mean, the simple way out of perjury is always to tell the truth. If the IG has made that more appealing, is that cagey?