Marjorie Taylor Greene asks if Republicans are ‘being bribed’ to oppose impeachment

Marjorie Taylor Greene gave a doozy of an interview with right-wing podcast host Charlie Kirk on Wednesday to commiserate about House Republicans’ failed impeachment vote Tuesday of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. 

Greene has been big mad about the failed vote and, like many of her pro-impeachment colleagues, is looking for someone—anyone—to blame, including Democrats for trying “to throw us off on the numbers.” 

But Greene has plenty of disdain for the Republicans who voted against the bill too. When Kirk asked why Ken Buck of Colorado, Tom McClintock of California, and Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin voted against impeachment, Greene seemed flabbergasted—but didn’t rule out the possibility that “they’re being bribed.”

Kirk fed the Georgia congresswoman the utterly baseless idea, asking, “Do you think these people are being blackmailed by the intel agencies? They might have had relations with certain  people and pictures and compromised. Do you think that they're currently being blackmailed?”

And Greene took the bait.

You know, I have no proof of that, but again, I can't understand the vote. So, nothing surprises me in Washington, D.C. anymore, Charlie. Literally, nothing surprises me because—it doesn't make sense to anyone, right? Why would anyone vote no? Why would anyone protect Mayorkas unless they're being bribed, unless there's something going on, unless they're making a deal. You know, because you can't understand it. It makes no sense. And it's completely wrong to vote no on impeachment.

Greene also speculated that Buck, who is retiring, is “trying to get a job working for CNN like Adam Kinzinger.” She insisted that McClintock is clearly not a real “constitutionalist.” And after listing off all of Gallagher’s military intelligence and military bonafides, she concluded, “I can't understand why he made that vote. But he did.” 

Greene might not understand it, but that doesn’t mean these Republican congressmen haven’t been clear and open about their reasons for voting against the impeachment stunt. 

Gallagher explained his opposition in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Why I Voted Against the Alejandro Mayorkas Impeachment.” 

“Creating a new, lower standard for impeachment, one without any clear limiting principle, wouldn’t secure the border or hold Mr. Biden accountable,” he wrote. “It would only pry open the Pandora’s box of perpetual impeachment.”

McClintock also explained his opposition in a speech on the House floor before Tuesday’s vote.

“Cabinet secretaries can't serve two masters. They can be impeached for committing a crime related to their office but not for carrying out presidential policy,” he said. “I'm afraid that stunts like this don't help."

On Wednesday, McClintock appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” to again defend his vote, and responded to Greene saying McClintock needs to “read the room.

“I suggest she read the Constitution that she took an oath to support and defend,” he said. “That Constitution very clearly lays out the grounds for impeachment,” he said. “This dumbs down those grounds dramatically and would set a precedent that could be turned against the conservatives on the Supreme Court or a future Republican administration the moment the Democrats take control of the Congress.”

Nevertheless, Greene “can’t understand” why her Republican colleagues weren’t on board with her impeachment aspirations. It must be a conspiracy.  

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House GOP wages war with itself, the Senate, and reality

The government-funding can that Congress kicked down the road earlier this month is inexorably rolling toward the new deadlines in early March, and so far, none of the 12 appropriations bills that have to be completed have made it through both the House and the Senate. But that doesn’t seem to be a priority this week, because the House Republican majority is once more at war with itself, the Senate, and reality. The agenda for this week includes fighting over the border policy bill the Senate is preparing, fighting over a tax bill that should be a no-brainer for every member of Congress, and impeaching a cabinet secretary over nothing.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is working hard to appease both Donald Trump and the MAGA crowd in the House on the border legislation that a bipartisan group in the Senate has been working on. That’s the immigration policy changes Republicans insisted be included in a national-security supplemental funding package with aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Now that a deal on immigration—which Republicans have been claiming to be the most important policy issue of the day—is within reach, the House is rejecting it. They would rather have the issue to run on in this election than to actually do something to solve it.

That’s putting Johnson at loggerheads with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is pushing hard for some sort of deal in order to salvage assistance to Ukraine—a top priority for the Kentucky senator. Last week, Johnson said the deal is “dead on arrival,” without even seeing legislative language. And the fight has spilled over into the Senate, where hard-line MAGA members—like Ohio’s J.D. Vance, who is opposed to Ukraine aid—are lining up against McConnell.

“If you’re going to take a tough vote, you take one but you want to accomplish something. The worst of all possible worlds is you take a vote, you put a lot of political pressure on the House and you don’t get any policy accomplished,” Vance told Politico. The Senate could vote on the legislation as soon as this week.

Back in the House, there’s what should be a no-brainer tax bill on tap. But it’s got both the hard-liners and the moderates up in arms. The bill would extend the child tax credit to help more working families and reduce some business taxes. What more could you want in an election-year tax bill? Republicans are turning on each other along familiar breaklines: MAGA vs. everyone else.

The Freedom Caucus is pushing a lie that the tax credits would go to “illegal foreign nationals.” Of course, that’s not true, and even Americans for Tax Reform, a right-wing lobbying group, is saying so. They point out that anyone receiving the tax credit has to have a Social Security number, and that “There are no ‘anchor baby bonuses’ in this bill as one organization alleged.” 

Meanwhile, the so-called “moderates” in the GOP conference—largely a group of New York Republicans representing swing districts—are hopping mad that their No. 1 issue isn’t included in the bill. That’s raising the SALT cap, the limit on federal deductions for state and local taxes. “There is real anger about the process,” one GOP lawmaker in the SALT Caucus told The Hill.

House moderates might unite on the other big issue in the House Homeland Security Committee: impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over nothing. Back in November, eight of them originally voted to defuse a motion from Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to impeach Mayorkas by instead sending it to committee. The group argued that if it was going to happen, it needed to happen through the committee process. Now that it has, they’ll probably be on board, never mind that there is absolutely no foundation for the action, and that the Senate will not vote to convict Mayorkas. It seems like this bunch of moderates figure they’ll have better luck getting reelected in their Biden districts on taxes than on bucking MAGA leadership.

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Senate inches closer to border deal. Will House GOP and Trump kill it?

Senate negotiators made some progress in talks over the holiday break on a potential border and immigration deal, which was the Senate Republicans’ requirement for agreeing to a vote on President Joe Biden’s Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan supplemental funding package. Over the weekend, the lead Republican in the talks, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, said text could be released soon. The fate of that agreement, however, lies in the hands of his fellow Republicans and their fealty to their de facto leader, Donald Trump.

“Text hopefully this week, to be able to get that out,” he told Fox News on Sunday. “This agreement has to work. Everyone’s counting on this actually working.” Senate leaders were cautiously positive on Monday. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor statement that “it’s been a very promising few days. We have made more progress in the past couple of days on the border than we have in the past few weeks.”

“I was encouraged to see that Senator Lankford and our Democratic colleagues made progress toward an agreement to put meaningful border security policy at the heart of this supplemental,” said Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. “Russia is openly mocking the fickleness of Western support for Ukraine,” he intoned with a shocking lack of irony, since it’s entirely congressional Republicans’ fault that U.S. support to Ukraine is endangered. "The Senate cannot afford to get this wrong," McConnell declared.

As Monday wore on, Lankford tempered his optimism and his revised deadline for delivering text to next week, with a Republican conference on the negotiations hastily scheduled for Wednesday to brief skeptical conservatives, showing the cracks that could make Senate Republicans get this very wrong.

Ukraine aid needs at least 10 Republican senators to support it, and they are skeptical at best right now, both on Ukraine and on the immigration deal Lankford is trying to secure. Last month, Republican senators voted unanimously to keep Ukraine aid from moving to a floor vote over the border issue, and now there is a contingent of Republicans who seem intent on torpedoing Lankford’s efforts.

One of them is McConnell’s previous number two, Sen. John Cornyn, who is taking a hard line in the talks on the president’s authority to provide immigration parole to people who have financial sponsors coming from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti. These immigrants are not crossing at the southern border; they fly into the country. Cornyn and others want to severely restrict, if not end, Biden’s humanitarian parole authority. “We can’t fix asylum and then just have them release people on parole,” Cornyn told The Washington Post. “That would be a disaster politically, and otherwise.”

Other Republican senators like MAGA star J.D. Vance of Ohio are egging the House extremists on in their threats to shut the government down over immigration. “I think that we have a real fiscal crisis in our country, but I think the most significant crisis we have is what is going on at the southern border,” Vance told the Post. “And I encourage my Republican friends in the House to use all the negotiating leverage they can to solve this problem politically.” Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas will reportedly try to force a “no confidence” vote on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in support of the House’s impeachment effort, which won’t advance in the Democratic Senate.

It seems like the most fervent Republican backer of Ukraine, McConnell, is following rather than leading his fellow Republicans at this point, going along with the demands from his hardliners on immigration. That’s a problem for the future of Ukraine, particularly with House Speaker Mike Johnson taking hard line on talks, insisting that the extreme House immigration bill passed last year is a “necessary ingredient” for the deal. He also moved forward with Mayorkas’ impeachment, despite the lack of cause.

When it comes to immigration, Johnson is catering to the Freedom Caucus. That group hasn’t backed off last week’s government shutdown threats over immigration, and are now even more adamant after Johnson’s agreement for a government funding deal with Schumer.

Hanging over all of this is Trump: Republican lawmakers’ fealty to him; his increasingly bombastic, Hitleresque immigration rhetoric; and his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. He would likely end all support to Ukraine and hand the country over to Russia if he got back into office.

The specter of Trump hangs over Congress and over Ukraine. There need to be enough Republicans willing to buck Trump for the bleak outlook for Ukraine aid—and thus Ukraine’s future—to improve.

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Speaker Mike Johnson faces same old GOP dysfunction in the new year

There’s a big backlog of critical business facing Congress when members return in January, thanks to all those issues they put off dealing with in 2023. The House will reconvene with an ever-slimmer Republican majority that is somehow even more dysfunctional than the one that kicked off this year. An ousted speaker, an expelled member, a simmering civil war, and midterm retirements made for a bitter end to the first session of the 118th Congress and set Speaker Mike Johnson up for a potentially catastrophic second half in 2024.

Congress left for its holiday break in mid-December, one-quarter of the way into the 2024 fiscal year, with no agreement between the House and Senate on overall funding levels after House Republicans reneged on the agreement they made with President Joe Biden to resolve the last big crisis over the debt ceiling. That deal was brokered under the last speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in one of his desperate attempts to keep his job. The current speaker is showing little inclination to reverse course.

“We all shook hands, we passed it,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, told Politico earlier this month. “And now the speaker is saying: ‘Never mind, we’re going to go backwards.’”

The continued stalemate is going to make meeting the Jan. 19 and Feb. 2 deadlines to fund the government for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year challenging, to say the least, even while Congress is supposed to be putting together its budget for the 2025 fiscal year. As if.

Though still a newbie speaker, Johnson is already stymied by the extremist Freedom Caucus, whose far-right members keep holding the threat of what happened to McCarthy over him. One of the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy, Eli Crane of Arizona, is making that abundantly clear.

“One of the positives is that the precedent has now been set for the first time in history that at least with this group, and this slim majority: If you make repeated promises that you do not keep, you will be held accountable,” Crane told The Hill.

A bunch of less extreme House Republicans took a stab at changing the rules so that one chaos agent—aka Matt Gaetz—no longer has the individual power to get the ball rolling on ending a speakership. The push to overhaul the “motion to vacate” rule went nowhere, and is still causing tension in the conference.

“We looked like a bunch of idiots. We looked like a banana republic a few months ago,” McCarthy ally Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana told The Messenger. “I don't think you should have one moron that should be able to trigger that vote.”

Speaking for the “morons,” new Freedom Caucus chair Bob Good of Virginia is happy with the status quo—and happy to wield the threat against Johnson.

“I think most of us hope it would never need to be filed again,” Good said, but added, “you can’t control the future.”

While that internecine war is bubbling away, Johnson also faces the reality of an even slimmer majority than his predecessor wrestled with. With said predecessor deciding to jump ship early, New York’s George Santos expelled, and Ohio’s Bill Johnson on his way out the door early next year, the new speaker is only going to have two Republican votes to spare—that is, as long as Democrats remain unified, something they’ve become remarkably good at.

Johnson has already had to rely on Democrats to keep the government running and pass the big defense authorization bill his party’s hard-liners hated, moves that made him even less popular with the maniacs running roughshod over his conference. Any way you slice it, the first few weeks of January are going to be pretty darned miserable for Johnson, and he’s finally going to be forced to make decisions about how to deal with his fractious caucus.

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Republicans’ betrayal of Ukraine is about one thing: Pleasing Donald Trump

The pathetic capitulation of the Republican Party to Donald Trump may turn out to be the singular political phenomenon of the 21st century, possibly eclipsing even the 9/11 terrorist attacks in sheer scope and impact—not just on American society, but ultimately the rest of the world. What began as simply crass political opportunism on the part of one of the major political parties has by now morphed into a movement that embraces something profoundly worse and far more damaging. This strain of reflexive strongman-worship now threatens to eradicate the American democracy experiment altogether, and could take the rest of the world’s free societies down with it. 

Clear warning signs were all visible at the outset, well before Trump descended his golden escalator to the oohs and aahs of a fawning, fascinated media: The GOP was a party inherently susceptible to authoritarianism and disdain for the egalitarian nature of democracy. It comprised a shrinking demographic of aggrieved white males and white evangelicals facing unfamiliar, threatening cultural shifts and engendering a groundswell of racism and misogyny, all waiting to be galvanized by the cynical machinations of a golden demagogue appearing at just the right moment to exploit them. 

Those factors certainly combined to create the phenomenon we are witnessing today. But as David Frum convincingly explains in a new essay for The Atlantic, what has pushed Republicans irrevocably over the edge is the same thing you see in any totalitarian dictatorship: an irresistible, mandated compulsion to demonstrate fealty, over and over again, to the Great Leader. 

The latest, most glaring example of this imperative can be seen in congressional Republicans’ refusal to provide continued military aid to Ukraine. As Frum observes, fear of Donald Trump’s disapproval coupled with the frantic desire to please him have completely transformed many Republicans’ attitudes about supporting Ukraine. These attitudes were directly cultivated by Trump, based on his own sycophantic relationship to Vladimir Putin. Over a period of just a few years, these attitudes were amplified by Trump himself and by pro-Putin mouthpieces on Fox News and other right-wing media.

They are now so deeply embedded in the GOP that in the event Trump is reelected in 2024, this country will likely abandon not only Ukraine but also the European NATO allies with whom we have worked for 75 years to preserve peace not just in Europe, but at home.

It might be decades before we know the real reasons for Donald Trump’s slavish admiration of a dictator like Putin. The most benign explanation, perverse as it is, is that he is simply enamored with the idea of absolute power, wielded cruelly and ruthlessly. There may be a more prosaic and insidious reason involving Trump’s convoluted history of shady business dealings with Russia that have intersected and overlapped with the Russian dictator’s strategic goals. It’s also entirely possible—as has long been theorized—that Trump himself is compromised or somehow beholden to Putin, who certainly has the capacity, motivation, and wherewithal to engage in blackmail.

But at this point in time, the reason is far less relevant than the end result. Because Trump’s grip on the Republican base is so tight, Republicans feel compelled not only to align themselves with their orange-hued leader, but to act in accordance with his wishes. Failure to do so means banishment from the party at minimum, and risks incurring the violent wrath of his legions of fanatic supporters at worst.

It’s been made clear over the last month that this fealty now includes—and ultimately requires, if Trump is reelected—cutting off military aid to Ukraine, where a Russian victory would cement and accelerate Putin’s long-term goal of intimidating and infiltrating the remaining Western democracies on the European continent. It’s obvious to those countries—or it should be—that Trump and Putin’s logical endgame would ultimately result in America’s abandonment of NATO.

Frum, the former speechwriter for George W. Bush, may be most recognized for his pithy summary of his fellow conservatives' conditional relationship to democracy and its institutions. In a 2018 essay for The Atlantic, Frum took note of the marked drift towards authoritarianism by the Republican Party as it has evolved under Trump. He famously noted, "If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy." 

Whatever you may think of Frum’s background or his own past culpability as a cog in the GOP machine, his statement has been thoroughly vindicated. Republicans are in fact quite demonstrably abandoning democratic institutions. Voter suppression, election denialism, and the draconian autocratic plans of the Heritage Institute—known as ”Project 2025”—are all evidence of a deliberate strategy to reshape the United States into a far more authoritarian country, one where the right to vote is diluted or otherwise manipulated—all to satisfy right-wing policy imperatives driven by white and/or Christian nationalism.

In his most recent piece in The Atlantic, Frum destroys the notion that congressional Republicans’ refusal to provide continued military aid to Ukraine stems from anything other than an abject desire to please Trump. He dispenses with Republicans’ pathetic attempt to equate providing Ukraine aid to sealing the U.S.-Mexican border. Since comprehensive immigration reform is the very last thing Republicans are actually willing to discuss, Frum believes that this comparison really only indicates that they have zero interest in helping Ukraine in the first place. The fact that Republicans have treated such aid as “barter” is more telling in and of itself.

What Republicans’ refusal to aid Ukraine in its war with Russia does indicate, however, is the complete coopting of a substantial portion of the Republican Party to Trump’s (and by extension, Putin’s) views about Ukraine. Frum explains that from 2015 to 2017, in tandem with extensive Russian efforts to secure Trump’s election, Republicans effected a remarkable turnaround on their views towards Russia and its dictator, Putin.

Pre-Trump, Republicans expressed much more hawkish views on Russia than Democrats did. Russia invaded eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea in spring 2014. In a Pew Research survey in March of that year, 58 percent of Republicans complained that President Barack Obama’s response was “not tough enough,” compared with just 22 percent of Democrats. After the annexation, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats to describe Russia as “an adversary” of the United States: 42 percent to 19 percent. As for Putin personally, his rule was condemned by overwhelming majorities of both parties. Only about 20 percent of Democrats expressed confidence in Putin in a 2015 Pew survey, and 17 percent of Republicans.

Trump changed all that—with a lot of help from pro-Putin voices on Fox News and right-wing social media.

As Frum observes, the process began with gushing tributes about Putin’s “manly” rule emanating from frustrated figures of what was then called the “New Right,” such as Pat Buchanan. If it had ended there, Frum believes, the Republican Party could have salvaged itself from the true implications of its then-nascent embrace of the Russian dictator. But as Frum explains, Russian intelligence then went to work infiltrating the party and its allied organizations in the years prior to Trump’s election.

By the mid-2010s, groups such as the National Rifle Association were susceptible to infiltration by Russian-intelligence assets. High-profile conservatives accepted free trips and speaking fees from organizations linked to the Russian government pre-Trump. A lucrative online marketplace for pro-Moscow messages and conspiracy theories already existed. White nationalists had acclaimed Putin as a savior of Christian civilization for years before the Trump campaign began.

But, as Frum notes, the coup de grace that connected these sentiments to the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party was the appearance of Donald Trump, whose unabashed admiration for Putin, combined with is undisputed status as both president and GOP leader, “tangled the whole party in his pro-Russia ties.”

At this point the sheer magnitude of the GOP’s reversal began to manifest itself. 

Frum writes:

The urge to align with the party’s new pro-Russian leader reshaped attitudes among Republican Party loyalists. From 2015 to 2017, Republican opinion shifted markedly in a pro-Russia and pro-Putin direction. In 2017, more than a third of surveyed Republicans expressed favorable views of Putin. By 2019, [Tucker]Carlson—who had risen to the top place among Fox News hosts—was regularly promoting pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian messages to his conservative audience. His success inspired imitators among many other conservative would-be media stars.

Once Trump attempted to extort Ukraine by denying the country needed military aid to defend themselves against Russia, conditioning such aid only if Ukraine agreed to open an “investigation” to publicize dirt Trump’s allies had invented about his presumed 2020 opponent, Joe Biden, Republicans found themselves in a quandary. How could they reconcile such objectively obvious treachery with their newfound embrace of Putin?

Frum contends it was done by embracing what he refers to as “undernews,” regurgitating innuendo and social media-churned rumors that are too ridiculous or far-fetched for even Fox News to broadcast with a straight face, but are well understood by the Republican base. In the case of Trump’s first impeachment, Frum believes the “undernews” was that Trump’s acts did not rise to the level of high crimes necessary for impeachment, because in the end Ukraine had received its weapons. Frum also recalls this “undernews” involved “an elaborate fantasy that Trump had been right to act as he did.”

In this invented world, Ukraine became the villain as part of a Biden-connected “global criminal enterprise,” and Trump acted heroically by trying to unmask it. Frum’s example provides valuable insight into not just the delusional world that many Republican voters actually occupy, but how the party exploits it.

Frum believes that continued fealty to Trump is the sole motivation behind newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson’s refusal to allow additional aid to Ukraine. Even as Putin issues warnings and threats against Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (all now members of NATO), Republicans remain beholden to the notion of (as Frum describes it): ” Ukraine=enemy of Trump; abandoning Ukraine=proof of loyalty to Trump.” He believes a majority of House Republicans actually still support aid for Ukraine, but the calendar is controlled by those in leadership like Johnson, whose only interest is catering to the deluded, so-called “undernews” faction. 

Thus it is not only Ukraine, but also our European allies—whose perception of Putin’s real aims is based not on delusional notions or political loyalties but the real, existential threat Putin represents to their societies—find themselves left out in the cold by a Republican Party that places more priority on appeasing the whims of an indicted fraudster and Putin sycophant than on standing up to its own established and assumed strategic commitments.

As Frum emphasizes, “If Republicans in Congress abandon Ukraine to Russian aggression, they do so to please Trump. Every other excuse is a fiction or a lie.“

It’s probably not possible to capture in words the magnitude of betrayal that would be felt not just by Ukrainians—who have no choice but to fight on—but by the entirety of Europe. That abandonment would remain a stain on the history of the U.S. for the rest of its existence.

The economic and strategic impact on this country’s standing in the world would be incalculable, with our ability to establish other alliances forever compromised. Seventy-five years of cooperation and trust could be wiped out by the actions of one corrupt, ignorant man and the treachery of his delusion-ridden political party.

All of which, of course, would suit Vladimir Putin just fine.

Feds raided Rudy Giuliani’s home and office in 2021 over Ukraine suspicions, unsealed papers show

A 2021 federal raid on Rudy Giuliani’s home and office was spurred by suspicions that the former New York City mayor had sought the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine partly because of the prospect of a financial reward from a Ukrainian official, according to documents made public Tuesday.

The documents provide new detail on the since-concluded investigation into Giuliani’s involvement with Ukrainian figures in the run up to the 2020 presidential election. Giuliani, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was not charged with a crime as a result of the inquiry.

In a search warrant application, federal agents seeking to seize Giuliani’s cell phones, laptop and other electronic devices raised the possibility that he and three other people could be charged with acting as unregistered foreign agents.

The documents, unsealed at the request of The New York Times and dating to the weeks before the raids, confirmed past news reports that federal prosecutors in Manhattan were examining whether Giuliani had gotten anything of value from Ukrainian figures in return for lobbying the Trump administration to fire then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The search warrant application said that Giuliani had been “incentivized” to lobby for the ambassador’s removal in two ways.

First, it said, Yuriy Lutsenko, the prosecutor general in Ukraine who wanted the ambassador fired, had offered to hire Giuliani to lobby the Trump administration for help recovering Ukrainian assets he believed had been misappropriated by a U.S. investment firm.

“As discussed below, Giuliani was interested in being engaged to do that work, and proposed a retainer with a $200,000 upfront payment. Thus, it appears that Giuliani took steps to cause the firing of the Ambassador to prove to what he could achieve in order to, among other things, secure the legal representation,” the search warrant said.

Secondly, the application said, Giuliani wanted Lutsenko’s help launching an investigation that might hurt Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Both Lutsenko and Giuliani have previously denied there was anything inappropriate about their interactions.

Prosecutors noted that the proposed $200,000 retainer was never paid. Giuliani has said he also never lobbied the Trump administration on Lutsenko's behalf.

A message seeking comment was left Tuesday with Giuliani's spokesperson.

In November 2022, federal prosecutors revealed in a letter to a federal judge that Giuliani would not face criminal charges over his interactions with Ukrainian figures before the 2020 presidential election.

“Based on information currently available to the Government, criminal charges are not forthcoming,” they wrote. They said the grand jury probe that led to the seizure of Giuliani’s electronic devices had concluded.

Giuliani tweeted soon afterward that it was a “COMPLETE & TOTAL VINDICATION.”

The contours of the investigation were broadly known even before its conclusion, but details of what evidence prosecutors were acting on when they sought to search Giuliani had not been revealed.

The Times wrote to the judge in October seeking copies of the search warrants, warrant applications, supporting affidavits and other documents.

Giuliani consented to releasing the search warrant documents, according to U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken’s order unsealing them.

The documents contained numerous redactions, with many names and other identifying information blacked out. Trump’s name appeared in the documents more than two-dozen times, mainly pertaining to Giuliani’s alleged lobbying efforts. There was no suggestion that investigators suspected Trump of wrongdoing.

In an affidavit filed with Manhattan federal magistrates to secure search warrants, investigators wrote it appeared Giuliani had been aware of FARA registration requirements for some time and had publicly stated that he believed he was not required to register because he has never lobbied the U.S. government on behalf of his clients.

The disclosure of the search warrant documents comes amid a tangle of recent and ongoing legal challenges for the Republican ex-mayor.

Giuliani was indicted in August in Georgia on charges he acted as Trump’s chief co-conspirator in a plot to subvert Biden’s victory. He was also described as a co-conspirator but not charged in special counsel Jack Smith’s federal election interference case against Trump.

Last week, a jury in Washington, D.C. ordered Giuliani to pay $148 million in damages to two former Georgia election workers who sued him for defamation over lies he spread about them in the wake of Trump’s 2020 election loss.

The former workers, Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, sued Giuliani again on Monday, alleging he continued to defame them during the trial.

The April 2021 raid on Giuliani's Manhattan apartment and office was seen at the time as a major escalation of the Justice Department’s yearslong investigation of his dealings in Ukraine.

At the same time, agents also served a warrant for a phone belonging to Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing, a former federal prosecutor and close ally of Giuliani and Trump. Her law firm said she was informed she was not a target of the investigation. She was not charged.

Giuliani accused federal authorities at the time of “running rough shod over the constitutional rights of anyone involved in, or legally defending" Trump.

Giuliani was central to the then-president’s efforts to press Ukraine for an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter.

Giuliani also sought to undermine Yovanovitch, who was pushed out on Trump’s orders. He met several times with a Ukrainian lawmaker who released edited recordings of Biden in an effort to smear him before the election.

Hunter Biden was charged by U.S. authorities in September with federal gun crimes and is scheduled to be arraigned next month on tax charges.

The federal Foreign Agents Registration Act requires people who lobby on behalf of a foreign government or entity to register with the Justice Department.

The once-obscure law, aimed at improving transparency, has received a burst of attention in recent years — particularly during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of foreign election interference, which revealed an array of foreign influence operations in the U.S.

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Sunday Four-Play: Lindsey Graham admits there’s no ‘smoking gun’ in GOP’s fake impeachment push

It’s keenly ironic that House Republicans acted on a raft of sketchy, Rudy Giuliani-exhumed allegations to launch a presidential impeachment inquiry in the very same week that he was ordered to pay $148 million for lying on Donald Trump’s behalf. But that’s the difference between our courts and our Congress. In court, you have to tell the truth.

Of course, every House Republican—to a person—is now doing what Rudy did years ago: Appeasing their ocher overlord by conjuring nonsense in a cynical bid to put the faux stink of corruption on President Joe Biden. We’ll have to wait to find out if those congressional fiends eventually get their comeuppance. In the meantime, we’ve got Sunday show clips! So let’s get on with it, shall we?

1.

It’s been glaringly obvious for some time now why House Republicans are trying to impeach President Biden: It’s because Donald Trump wants them to. They’re wholly in thrall to a lifelong punchline who steals top secret government documents and sounds like Hitler slipped on the basement stairs and can’t get up. 

Fortunately, some still see the current Republican Party for what it truly is: a pathetic cult of personality.

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen appeared on “The Katie Phang Show” to discuss the GOP’s fake Biden impeachment, and he very quickly got to the crux of the matter.

.@RepCohen on Speaker Mike Johnson's baseless Biden impeachment inquiry: "He went down to see his daddy Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago and he told him: 'Go back to Washington and impeach Joe Biden.' [...] This is juvenile." #katiephangshow pic.twitter.com/4cN99NgaUW

— The Katie Phang Show (@katiephangshow) December 17, 2023

PHANG: “Let’s start first … with the absurd impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Republicans on three House committees have been investigating President Biden and his son for months now with zero evidence of wrongdoing being discovered. Can you share with our viewers why there was a unanimous vote by House Republicans? Did you hear anything from your Republican colleagues on why they would do, across straight party lines, a vote in favor of this baseless inquiry?”

COHEN: “Totally political. Unfortunately, we have a child speaker. He went down to see his daddy, Donald Trump, at Mar-a-Lago, and he told him, ‘Go back to Washington and impeach Joe Biden. That will make me feel good because I was impeached twice, and I want to say he was impeached, too.’ So this is juvenile. It’s unfortunately an inexperienced speaker who’s dealing with an irrational man, and the Republican Party basically is responding to that as well. The MAGA Republicans do what Trump tells them to. So they’re going to do that, and they’re doing that with Ukraine, too. To keep his deal going with Putin that was so successful, him getting elected president, that he’s … [he doesn't want] to give Ukraine any money because he wants Putin to win the war and he wants Putin to help him in 2024. Trump’s looking at 2024 and Putin’s looking at posterity, and working together.”

Wow, that sure makes Republicans sound cynical and soulless, doesn’t it? But when you’re right, you’re right. And Rep. Cohen is most definitely right.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: The fake Biden impeachment rolls along, and J.D. Vance forgets Mike Johnson exists

2.

If anyone knows about selling his soul to appease Trump, it’s Sen. Lindsey Graham. So it’s particularly noteworthy that even he can’t figure out what House Republicans are impeaching Biden over.

Graham joined Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” and was asked to weigh in on the GOP’s disingenuous impeachment push. It looked like he would have preferred to discuss just about anything else.  

WELKER: Grassley said he does not see any evidence that the president is guilty of anything. Do you agree with him? LINDSEY GRAHAM: If there was a smoking gun I think we'd be talking about it. pic.twitter.com/pBESdm7HML

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 17, 2023

WELKER: “Okay, let’s turn to the other big story on Capitol Hill, the impeachment, of course—the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Your colleague Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said that he does not see any evidence, quote, that the president is guilty of anything. Do you agree with him? Is there any evidence so far?”

GRAHAM: “You know, I haven’t really been paying that much attention to it. They have to prove that President Biden somehow financially benefited from the business enterprises of Hunter Biden. We’ll see.”

WELKER: “Have they done it yet, in your mind?”

GRAHAM: “If there were a smoking gun, I think we’d be talking about it ...”

Look, it was obvious from the outset that Republicans would try to impeach Biden for something. But this is really a stretch—particularly since Trump continually took money from foreign interests while he was cosplaying as president, and did so out in the open.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: DeSantis-bot glitches out, and ex-Trump aide says the former guy is 'slowing down'

3.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie tells the truth on exactly one topic: Donald Trump. And he didn’t start doing that until Trump decided he’d try to garrote American democracy. He was fine with Happy Meal Hitler trying to kill him and turning our country into a WWE cage match, but lying about the election and trying to overthrow the government were the final straws. Which is good, of course. He’s ahead of the curve as far as Republicans go. That said, as the following clip shows, Christie always knew about Trump’s strong affinity for indiscriminate murder enthusiast Vladimir Putin, and he still tried to get Trump reelected.

Go figure.

Christie joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” to warn America about Trump’s increasingly authoritarian rhetoric.

.@GovChristie hits Donald Trump for echoing Vladimir Putin’s criticism of American democracy in an interview with @jaketapper. “It's time to send Donald Trump back to Mar-a-Lago permanently.” #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/yzXNCeYpBB

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) December 17, 2023

TAPPER: “Gov. Christie, you just heard Donald Trump approvingly quoting Vladimir Putin about American democracy, about the American legal system, attacking the criminal charges against him and the ‘rottenness’ of the American political system, quote, unquote. What’s your reaction?”

CHRISTIE: “My reaction is that he gets worse and worse by the day, Jake. And voters better start paying attention to exactly what he’s saying. He has always been approving of Putin right from the beginning of his presidency. That was something that he and I had regular arguments about going all the way back to 2017. And the fact is that—Vladimir Putin as an expert on democracy? This is a guy who doesn’t even know what democracy is and, quite frankly, has spent most of his life trying to undercut democracy all over the world, and Donald Trump is citing him as his expert witness that he’s being persecuted and is innocent. Look, this is a guy who just believes ‘woe is me, woe is me, I can’t believe that I got caught.’ But let’s remember something, and everyone needs to know this. It’s not going to be Vladimir Putin on the witness stand in Washington, D.C., this spring. It’s not going to be some left-wing prosecutor making the case. Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff, has accepted immunity. I did this for seven years, Jake. The reason he’s accepted immunity is because he has admitted he had committed crimes himself, or he wouldn’t need immunity. And he’s going to testify that Donald Trump committed crimes on his watch—a founder of the Freedom Caucus, his former chief of staff who he called the next James Baker. Donald Trump realizes the walls are closing in. He’s becoming crazier. And now he’s citing Vladimir Putin as a character witness, a guy who’s a murderous thug all around the world. It’s time to send Donald Trump back to Mar-a-Lago permanently.”

Hey, thanks for piping up, Chris! Better late than never, right?

Then again, it’s kind of soothing to hear an ex-prosecutor describe exactly how much legal peril Trump is in these days. Hopefully, at least one of the four criminal cases against Trump sees the light of day before he has a chance to send his tank columns into Fulton County, Georgia.

RELATED: Sunday Four-Play: Biden delivers results, Christie swats at Trump, and Musk tanks Twitter

4.

Speaking of Putin, his American Super PAC—aka the GOP—is doing all it can these days to support his Ukrainian war effort. House Republicans are holding up aid to Ukraine so they can play political games with our southern border—a cynical tactic that could help them get elected, which in turn would help Putin, who would then further interfere in our elections on their behalf, and on and on into infinity. 

Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen joined Jon Karl on ABC’s “This Week” to discuss this ongoing betrayal of our ally on Putin’s behalf. 

“This is a pivotal moment in American leadership and history,” Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen tells @JonKarl as negotiations continue over military assistance for Ukraine. “We need to make sure that we help our Ukrainian friends.” https://t.co/zgTIHOEo7W pic.twitter.com/au87GpxIEZ

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) December 17, 2023

KARL: “What do you think of this idea of having significant changes to the border tied to funding for Ukraine and Israel? Among the changes that Republicans have been demanding are changes to our asylum laws—making it harder for people to declare asylum, restricting that. And even, you know, Republicans want a return to Remain in Mexico, the policy of the Trump administration, which is ‘ask for asylum before you come to the United States and come after, or if, it’s been granted.’”

VAN HOLLEN: “Well, first of all, I think it’s essential that we provide military assistance to Ukraine. This is a pivotal moment in American leadership and history, and we need to make sure that we help our Ukrainian friends against Putin’s aggression—not just to protect their freedom, but because it would send a terrible signal around the world to our allies who would no longer trust us, and to our adversaries, who would be emboldened if we’re not doing that. In terms of border security, I have to look at the details, and the big question, Jon, is, who’s at the table on the Republican side? I don’t mean the individual, but are they really working with the president to try to get border security? Because the president has proposed historical increases in resources for border security.”

KARL: “And they’re asking for policy changes more than resources.”

VAN HOLLEN: “So we have to look at it, you know.”

Well, Republicans ask for a lot of things. Most of those requests are either disingenuous or downright bonkers. After all, Republicans’ proof that Biden favors open borders is that his administration keeps arresting record numbers of border crossers and sending them back. Try to make sense of that one. 

Meanwhile, comprehensive immigration reform would go a long way toward solving our problems at the border, but Republicans prefer they remain unsolved so Fox News can continue scaring its viewers with caravans of brown people. Because if conservatives can’t frighten people, all they’ve got left is a Hitler See ‘n Say as their putative presidential nominee and undisputed standard-bearer.

But wait! There’s more!

That’s all for now! Note: Sunday Four-Play will be on hiatus next week in honor of my annual holiday sugar coma. Hope to see you all again on the cusp of a new year.

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Congress wraps for the year, after giving Putin a Christmas gift

The Republican House got out of town in record speed Thursday morning with its last vote of the year, passing the final $886 billion defense policy bill agreed to by Senate and House negotiators earlier this month. The Senate cleared the bill Wednesday, so it’s off to the White House for President Joe Biden’s signature.

Speaker Mike Johnson is slinking out of D.C. without giving the traditional end-of-year press conference. He hasn’t had a stellar few months in leadership, having already pissed off the hard right in his conference, so it’s hard to blame him for avoiding the ritual listing of accomplishments. That and he hasn’t really had any to talk about, other than the impeachment circus. In contrast, ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy celebrated his last day in Congress with a photo line for members and staffers.

What that means is Congress will leave for the year without providing aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan because of Republican opposition. Senate Republicans have refused to consider the aid package, extorting extreme immigration concessions for their votes. They have been dragging out the negotiations, seemingly plotting with Johnson and House Republicans to ensure that the issue be pushed off to January. Once the House adjourned for the year, any agreement the Senate came up with couldn’t be passed anyway, Republicans argued.

That’s after Biden made an offer conceding to many of the Senate Republicans immigration demands. Nothing was in writing, and Republicans initially scoffed at the offer. The problem for Biden is that the delay means opposition to his immigration concessions can harden among Democrats. The 42-member Congressional Hispanic Caucus held a press conference Wednesday to voice their opposition and tell Biden to reject the Republicans’ demands.

“Republicans are pitting vulnerable groups against each other to strong-arm policies that will exacerbate chaos at the southern border,” said Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán of California. “We are urging the Biden administration to say no. Do not take the bait.” Barragán also pointed out that the “negotiations are taking place without a single Latino at the table, without a single CHC member at the table, and not even consultation or engagement with our Latino lawmakers.”

Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico reiterated that issue in an interview with Punchbowl News. “I do not see any Latino or Latina advocates at that table who are part of this conversation that are shaping this policy,” said Luján, who has also expressed his concerns about Israel’s war in Gaza.

The only one who is happy right now seems to be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who crowed in a press conference Thursday that "Ukraine produces almost nothing today, everything is coming from the west, but the free stuff is going to run out some day, and it seems it already is.”

Merry Christmas, Mr. Putin, from your friends in the GOP.

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Senate Republicans hand Putin a propaganda victory

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