Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Andy Borowitz

Giuliani Claims He Has Evidence Linking Biden to Obama


Photograph by Mark Wilson / Getty

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what could be his most explosive allegation to date, Rudolph Giuliani claimed on Monday that he had "mountains of evidence" linking the Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden to former President Barack Obama.

Appearing on "Fox & Friends," a visibly excited Giuliani said that he had stored the evidence of the Biden-Obama ties in his office safe and was prepared to reveal it "at the proper time."

"This isn't a case of the two men sharing an occasional phone call or meeting," Giuliani charged. "For eight years, they were basically joined at the hip."

Giuliani argued that Obama and Biden had a "secret understanding" that, if anything happened to Obama, "You know who would take his place? That's right: Joe Biden."

Their corrupt deal enabled Biden to "feast at the teat" of the federal government, the former New York mayor said. "Biden took military aircraft around the world and got free housing in Washington, all with the seal of approval of his best pal, Barack Obama," he said.

In his most serious allegation, Giuliani said that all of these "lush perks" amounted to a "payoff" for nefarious services that Biden had rendered to Obama.

"In both 2008 and 2012, Joe Biden meddled in the U.S. elections to benefit none other than—you guessed it—Barack Obama," Giuliani said. "Talk about a quid pro quo."


--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson

Monday, November 25, 2019

Something to Know - 25 November

This news blip from CNN is charming.   This is the most effective marketing tool I have seen in a long time for Atheism.  While we're at it, what's with all these Republicans exhibiting behavior as if they are all "Manchurian Candidates" promoting Putin's agenda?

Rick Perry says Trump (and Obama) were 'ordained by God' to be president


--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Something to Know - 23 November

Dr. Fiona Hill was a very impressive witness, and dominated the inquiry with her pleading that the officials of the Republican panel, and other officials in the Trump Administration, and the nation cease from believing that the narrative, promulgated by Vladimir Putin, that It was Ukraine which meddled in our election process.  Our own US Intelligence and NSA have determined that it was the Russians; end of story.  It is very curious and suspicious why Trump and his minions and many in the Congress have become willing or unwitting agents of the Russians and their conspiracy.  Dr. Hill states that the Russians have successfully infiltrated minds with disinformation, and we are now realizing internal strife that is tearing us apart, enacting policy that isolates our country from the rest of the world, and destroying us.   It is going to be a hard slough to recover.   I find it curious that there is a breaking news story that implicates House Intelligence ranking member Devin Nunes with going, himself, to Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Bidens; looks like the inquiry may not be over yet.


Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says

Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.


Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says


Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.

President Vladmir V. Putin of Russia has been pushing false theories of Ukrainian interference since early 2017, according to American officials.
President Vladmir V. Putin of Russia has been pushing false theories of Ukrainian interference since early 2017, according to American officials.Credit...Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, via Reuters

  • Nov. 22, 2019



WASHINGTON — Republicans have sought for weeks amid the impeachment inquiry to shift attention to President Trump's demands that Ukraine investigate any 2016 election meddling, defending it as a legitimate concern while Democrats accuse Mr. Trump of pursuing fringe theories for his benefit.
The Republican defense of Mr. Trump became central to the impeachment proceedings when Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump's fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating "a fictional narrative." She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.
In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill's testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow's own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.
The revelations demonstrate Russia's persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries — and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points. American intelligence agencies believe Moscow is likely to redouble its efforts as the 2020 presidential campaign intensifies. The classified briefing for senators also focused on Russia's evolving influence tactics, including its growing ability to better disguise operations.



Russia has engaged in a "long pattern of deflection" to pin blame for its malevolent acts on other countries, Dr. Hill said, not least Ukraine, a former Soviet republic. Since Ukraine won independence in 1991, Russia has tried to reassert influence there, meddling in its politics, maligning pro-Western leaders and accusing Ukrainian critics of Moscow of fascist leanings.
"The Russians have a particular vested interest in putting Ukraine, Ukrainian leaders in a very bad light," she told lawmakers.

But the campaign by Russian intelligence in recent years has been even more complex as Moscow tries not only to undermine the government in Kyiv but also to use a disinformation campaign there to influence the American political debate.

The accusations of a Ukrainian influence campaign center on actions by a handful of Ukrainians who openly criticized or sought to damage Mr. Trump's candidacy in 2016. They were scattershot efforts that were far from a replica of Moscow's interference, when President Vladimir V. Putin ordered military and intelligence operatives to mount a broad campaign to sabotage the American election. The Russians in 2016 conducted covert operations to hack Democratic computers and to use social media to exploit divisions among Americans.


This time, Russian intelligence operatives deployed a network of agents to blame Ukraine for its 2016 interference. Starting at least in 2017, the operatives peddled a mixture of now-debunked conspiracy theories along with established facts to leave an impression that the government in Kyiv, not Moscow, was responsible for the hackings of Democrats and its other interference efforts in 2016, senior intelligence officials said.
The Russian intelligence officers conveyed the information to prominent Russians and Ukrainians who then used a range of intermediaries, like oligarchs, businessmen and their associates, to pass the material to American political figures and even some journalists, who were likely unaware of its origin, the officials said.
Impeachment Inquiry
Latest Updates
Updated
Nov. 22, 2019

Who was the latest to testify?
Fiona Hill, the White House's former top Europe and Russia expert, who had testified previously about her efforts to oppose the pressure campaign on Ukraine; and David Holmes, an official in the United States Embassy in Ukraine, who was a witness to a key phone call between President Trump and Gordon Sondland, his ambassador to the European Union.
What were the highlights?
Dr. Hill criticized Republicans for promoting what she called a "fictional narrative" embraced by Mr. Trump: that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in the 2016 elections.
Dr. Hill called Mr. Trump's demands for Ukraine to announce investigations into Joe Biden and the 2016 elections a "domestic political errand" that diverged from American foreign policy goals.
Dr. Hill was asked about a now-famous line from her deposition, in which she quoted John Bolton, the national security adviser at the time, as saying, "I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up." She said she took "drug deal" to mean the scheme of exchanging a White House meeting for the investigations Mr. Trump sought.
Both Dr. Hill and Mr. Holmes said that the use of the name "Burisma" — a Ukrainian energy company — was code for investigating the Bidens. Asked whether "anyone involved in Ukraine matters in the spring and summer would understand that as well," Mr. Holmes had a one-word answer: "Yes."
Mr. Holmes said he had a "clear impression" that the hold on nearly $400 million in military aid for Ukraine was "likely intended by the president either as an expression of dissatisfaction with the Ukrainians who had not yet agreed to the Burisma/Biden investigation, or as an effort to increase the pressure on them to do so."

That muddy brew worked its way into American information ecosystems, sloshing around until parts of it reached Mr. Trump, who has also spoken with Mr. Putin about allegations of Ukrainian interference. Mr. Trump also brought up the assertions of Ukrainian meddling in his July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, which is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry into whether he abused his power by asking for a public commitment to investigations he stood to gain from personally.


Mr. Trump referred elliptically to allegations that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election and brought up a related conspiracy theory. Asking Mr. Zelensky to "do us a favor," Mr. Trump added, "I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine."

Russia's operation to blame Ukraine has become more relevant as Republicans have tried to focus public debate during the impeachment inquiry on any Ukrainian role in the 2016 campaign, American officials said.
Republicans have denounced any suggestion that their concerns about Ukrainian meddling are without merit or that they are ignoring Russia's broader interference. "Not a single Republican member of this committee said Russia did not meddle in the 2016 elections," Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, said Thursday.

Indeed, Ms. Stefanik and her Republican colleagues on the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee, which is conducting the impeachment hearing, have also steered clear of the fringe notion that Mr. Trump mentioned to Mr. Zelensky, which is pushed by Russian intelligence: the so-called CrowdStrike server conspiracy theory, which falsely suggests Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the breach of Democratic operatives' servers.
Mr. Trump repeated the baseless claim on Friday in an interview with "Fox & Friends," laying out the narrative and doubling down after a host gently pressed him on whether he was sure of one aspect of the debunked theory, that the F.B.I. gave a Democratic server to what Mr. Trump had inaccurately described as a Ukrainian-owned company.
"That is what the word is," Mr. Trump replied.
Some Republicans have also focused on Hunter Biden, raising questions about whether his hiring by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma was corrupt. Burisma hired Mr. Biden while his father, former Vice President Joseph Biden Jr., a potential rival of Mr. Trump's in the 2020 election, was leading the Obama administration's Ukraine policy. On the July 25 call, Mr. Trump also demanded Mr. Zelensky investigate Burisma and Hunter Biden.
Moscow has long used its intelligence agencies and propaganda machine to muddy the waters of public debate, casting doubts over established facts. In her testimony, Dr. Hill noted Russia's pattern of trying to blame other countries for its own actions, like the attempted poisoning last year of a former Russian intelligence officer or the downing of a passenger jet over Ukraine in 2014. Moscow's goal is to cast doubt on established facts, said current and former officials.
"The strategy is simply to create the impression that it is not really possible to know who was really behind it," said Laura Rosenberger, the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, which tracks Russian disinformation efforts.
Although American intelligence agencies have made no formal classified assessment about the Russian disinformation campaign against Ukraine, officials at several of the agencies have broadly agreed for some time that Russian intelligence services have embraced tactics to shift responsibility for the 2016 interference campaign away from themselves, officials said.
Russia has relentlessly tried to deflect attention since the allegations of its interference campaign in the 2016 election first surfaced, one official said.



Mr. Putin began publicly pushing false theories of Ukrainian interference in the early months of 2017 to deflect responsibility from Russia, said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who declined to answer questions about the briefing.
"These people are pros at this," said Mr. King, who caucuses with the Democrats. "The Soviet Union used disinformation for 70 years. This is nothing new. Vladimir Putin is a former K.G.B. agent. He is trained in deception. This is his stock and trade and he is doing it well."
During a news conference in February 2017, Mr. Putin accused the Ukrainian government of supporting Hillary Clinton during the previous American election and funding her candidacy with friendly oligarchs.
It is not clear when American intelligence agencies learned about Moscow's campaign or when precisely it began.


Russian intelligence officers aimed part of their operation at prompting the Ukrainian authorities to investigate the allegations that people in Ukraine tried to tamper with the 2016 American election and to shut down inquiries into corruption by pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine, according to a former official.
One target was the leak of a secret ledger disclosed by a Ukrainian law enforcement agency that appeared to show that Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump's onetime campaign chairman, had taken illicit payments from Ukrainian politicians who were close to Moscow. He was forced to step down from the Trump campaign after the ledger became public in August 2016, and the Russians have since been eager to cast doubt on its authenticity, the former official said.


Intelligence officials believe that one of the people the Kremlin relied on to spread disinformation about Ukrainian interference was Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who had ties to Mr. Manafort. After his ouster from the campaign, Mr. Manafort told his former deputy later in 2016 that Ukrainians, not Russians, stole Democratic emails. Mr. Deripaska has broadly denied any role in election meddling.
"There is a long history of Russians putting out fake information," said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior C.I.A. official. "Now they are trying to put out theories that they think are damaging to the United States."

Matthew Rosenberg, a Washington-based correspondent, was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump and Russia. He previously spent 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.



--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson

Friday, November 22, 2019

Political Cartoon

I missed the cartoons.  Had to eliminate them because my clunky cut and paste new jobs got blown out with formatting problems upon being sent together.  So, just testing,  Believe it or not, it takes a lot of time reviewing an array of cartoons for publication than it does finding choice new articles:

Clay Jones Comic Strip for November 22, 2019



--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson

Andy Borowitz

Devin Nunes Accuses Witnesses of Misleading American People with Facts

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what some observers called his most sarcastic opening statement of the impeachment inquiry, Representative Devin Nunes, on Thursday, accused witnesses of trying to mislead the American people with facts.

"From the beginning of these proceedings, the Democrats' witnesses have offered facts, more facts, and nothing but facts," Nunes said. "I, for one, have had enough of their factual games."

Ramping up his attack, he accused the civil servants who have testified of having "an almost cult-like worship of verifiable information."

" 'Step right up,' these witnesses seem to be saying," Nunes added. " 'The fact circus is in town.' "

Nunes, however, warned his Democratic colleagues that "the American people won't be fooled by your relentless account of things that actually happened."

"When the American people see the Democrats building this massive, sky-high tower of facts, they have to ask themselves: Is that all you've got?" he said.

--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson

Monday, November 18, 2019

Andy Borowitz

Trump Warns Republicans That If They Vote to Impeach He Will Campaign for Them Like He Did in Louisiana







WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Delivering an ominous threat to members of his own party, Donald J. Trump warned congressional Republicans on Monday that if they vote for impeachment he would come to their states and campaign for their reëlection.

In a series of intimidating, early-morning tweets, Trump made it clear that if Republicans wobble on impeachment, "I will hold rallies in your state and support you with everything I've got."

Making it clear that his threat was far from hollow, Trump tweeted an image of a "Keep America Great" banner and warned, "I used these in Louisiana and Kentucky. Don't think I won't use them in your state!"

Trump's threat to campaign enthusiastically for disloyal Republicans had an immediate impact on Monday, as several G.O.P. congresspeople who had previously called the President's actions toward Ukraine "troubling" revised their assessment to "probably no big deal, now that I think about it."



--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Something to Know - 17 November

 I am back from a trip by river from Paris to Normandy, back to Paris, a train ride to Dijon and another river boat down to Arles.  The beauty and history of France is a wonder to behold.  Nice to be back.   With all the wine flowing for tasting, I believe that the French have a deep devotion to history and protection to their grapes and wine, but I do believe that the California and all West Coast USA wines are more accessible and just as good, or better.  While trying to keep up with some tid-bits of political drama, it really has been a momentous week for Individual 1 and his GeeOpie chums.   The operations of a political mob boss are coming to light.   This article goes to the heart of why things are changing.  There are people, solid public servants, who are devoted and compassionate in their work, and are coming forth to speak truth to power.   Should be an interesting road from here on out, as we see a semblance of Watergate play out.


Trump Demeaned Bureaucrats. This Is Their Revenge.

Honesty is the best foreign policy.

By 

Ms. Drew is a journalist based in Washington who covered Watergate.

  • Nov. 16, 2019

The opening hearings on the Ukraine scandal demonstrated that mundane government processes and seemingly colorless bureaucrats are what keep our country going. It was these sorts of unknown public servants who maintained the executive branch functioning during Watergate — and are doing so now while our distracted president and his acolytes try to circumvent the rules.
The witnesses in the first week of open hearings were three lifelong career diplomats — on Wednesday, William Taylor, currently the chargé d'affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the senior State Department official on Ukraine; and on Friday, Marie Yovanovitch, the career diplomat whom President Trump fired as ambassador to Ukraine because she got in the way of his private schemes.
While the three witnesses came across as unusually admirable, they're not atypical of their breed. They will endure only so much abuse or see only so much scandal around them before rising up in some way. All three testified in defiance of the president.

Mr. Trump cannot fathom such people, because they're not interested in big money or fame. The "bureaucracy" may seem sluggish, stubborn and unimaginative at times, but it also can stand as a bulwark against assaults on the laws and the Constitution by the passers-through who inhabit the administration of the moment. Mr. Trump made a big mistake by demeaning civil servants from the outset (his awkward, self-reverential speech to the C.I.A. on his first full day in office was an embarrassment and also an omen) and then setting about trying to make them irrelevant.

The problem for presidents who, in their frustration over the limits on their power, empower extragovernmental groups to carry out their extragovernmental policies, is that it usually comes a cropper. If Richard Nixon's "plumbers" hadn't been such stumblebums, botching every wayward project they took on, the Nixon presidency just might have survived its attempts to determine the opposition party's candidate for the next election.
In the case of the current scandal, the "three amigos" — Kurt Volker, a foreign policy expert who signed on as a special envoy to Ukraine; Rick Perry, the departing energy secretary who has close ties to the energy industry; and Gordon Sondland, a hotel magnate whose donations to the Trump inaugural committee helped him secure his job as ambassador to the European Union — usurped Ukraine policy from normal State Department channels, setting Mr. Trump's private whims against the stated policies of his government. Mr. Sondland appears to have known even less about Ukraine than he did about Europe before taking that job.
The three men seem to have reported to Rudolph Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer and a freelance provocateur. Mr. Giuliani, now under federal investigation in New York, has had his own business interests in Ukraine's natural gas industry. Under arrest are a couple of his sidekicks, Soviet-born Americans known by their first names, Lev and Igor, with substantial Ukraine interests.


Mr. Giuliani and the three amigos were reportedly part of the president's scheme to hold up $391 million in congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine in order to wring from the new president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, a public announcement that he would order an investigation of Joe Biden and Mr. Biden's surviving son, Hunter, who took an ill-advised membership on the board of one of Ukraine's largest natural gas companies while his father was managing Ukraine policy for the Obama administration. (Numerous press investigations have turned up no actual misbehavior on the Bidens' part.) The fragile Hunter, who lost his brother, to whom he was very close, to brain cancer and has struggled with addiction, remains a Republican political target.
Mr. Sondland inadvertently provided the only real news on the first day of the hearings, when Mr. Taylor testified that a member of his staff overheard the president talking to Mr. Sondland when the latter called him on his cellphone from a restaurant in Kiev. Mr. Trump volubly asked how things were going in getting President Zelensky to announce an investigation of the Bidens. This linked Mr. Trump directly to the pressure on Ukraine. Later, it was learned that a second person also overheard the call. Mr. Trump's allies have also pushed Mr. Zelensky to look into the fantasy that the foreign interference in the 2016 election involved Ukraine, and not Russia.

But the hearings are less about big disclosures than about building the case, brick by brick, of why the president should be impeached. The Democrats have suggested various terms on which to charge him, and they're not yet united on that. Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested on Thursday that the charge should be bribery, since that's a constitutionally stated reason for impeachment, and it's a crime that people can understand. But this is a disheartening choice, because a more significant ground for impeachment is abuse of power, which isn't in the statute books, and it would apply to Mr. Trump's holding up the arms aid, among other offenses in this instance.
Yet, just a few days ago, Ms. Pelosi and others were talking abuses of power. A House Democrat advised me not to take too seriously the flurry of competing rationales: The Democrats haven't actually met to decide on a unified position, he said; that may wait until the Judiciary Committee draws up the actual articles of impeachment.
The Republican strategy of the moment is apparently to seal off Mr. Trump from Mr. Giuliani and the amigos' activities. Their attempts to engage in their specialty of disrupting hearings was swiftly shut down by the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, who was firm but fair, leaving them little to dispute. They've found it awkward to defend Mr. Trump since they know that squeezing the Ukrainians for desperately needed military aid in their war against Russia for his own political purpose is indefensible. Moreover, Mr. Trump has complained about their focus on process issues, continuing to insist, ridiculously, that his infamous July 25 phone call to Mr. Zelensky was "perfect." Regrettably, he may actually think it was.

Even the bully boy Republican dispatched to serve on the Intelligence Committee at the last minute, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, was of limited effectiveness. Mr. Jordan mainly yelled and spoke rapidly to throw off the witnesses. Nevertheless, some Democrats believe the Republicans managed to muddy the case against Mr. Trump in a couple of instances. The first was their complaint that the Democrats' sources of information were at best secondhand — though that has now been undermined by Mr. Sondland's eagerness to use his cellphone to call the president from a Kiev restaurant. The Democrats also riposted that Mr. Trump had forbidden people with firsthand knowledge from testifying.
A second disingenuous but somewhat effective argument, some Democrats conceded, was that the military aid has been released. This occurred within days of the committee's learning about the unnamed whistle-blower's report revealing Mr. Trump's phone call to Mr. Zelensky. Representative Jim Himes, a Democrat of Connecticut and leading member of the Intelligence Committee, told me, "They stopped doing the crime when they heard the sirens around the corner."
Oddly, Mr. Trump, whose awareness of what had gone on in Washington before he arrived seems quite limited, has in some ways followed Nixon's example, wittingly or not. Like Nixon, Mr. Trump's overriding drive was apparently to guarantee his re-election by trying to undermine the candidacy of his potentially strongest opponent. And a potentially strong opponent was an enemy to be preemptively "destroyed," rather than overcome within the conventional political arena. The two presidents, on the surface so different, were similar in other ways. Both had contempt for constitutional constraints and saw the other branches as nuisances to be overcome. Under both administrations, the very constitutional system of checks and balances was under assault.


My major concern about the current impeachment process is that the target is too small. While the president's constitutional misbehavior in the Ukraine scandal stands as a metaphor for his attitude toward government, it doesn't provide an adequate picture of his long list of abuses of power during his first three years in office. If the Republicans can confuse enough people by saying that the president is being impeached for "a phone call," then the argument for removing him will be like a house on stilts, with the stilts being removed one by one.
The argument of Ms. Pelosi and her allies that the target should be limited in the interest of time and clarity has its merits. But the great danger is that the legacy of this period will be that Mr. Trump got caught doing one bad thing rather than that he abused power across the board and wantonly violated the Constitution. The public is more than capable of understanding, among other things, that the president may have exploited his office to enrich himself, blatantly flouting the Constitution's emoluments clause.



One Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee told me that it would be hard to prove exactly how much money ended up in the president's pocket. But I'm not sure that some actual instances can't be proven. And I worry about the precedent set by focusing solely on Ukraine, an implicit view that other behavior — constant lying, redirecting government funds against Congress's wishes (such as building a phantasmagorical wall), sloppiness with government secrets, using the military for political purposes, encouraging violence against the press, and still more — was acceptable.
All because of the schedule? History is unlikely to remember the schedule.

Elizabeth Drew, a political journalist who for many years covered Washington for The New Yorker, is the author of "Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall."


--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson

Friday, November 15, 2019

Andy Borowitz

"Everywhere She Went Turned Bad," Says Man with Six Bankruptcies

Photograph by Michael Reynolds / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a blistering tweet on Friday, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was accused of leaving a trail of destruction by a man with six bankruptcies and multiple business failures.

"Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad," wrote the man, who ran the now defunct United States Football League into the ground and paid twenty-five million dollars to settle fraud charges against a fake university bearing his name.

"She started off in Somalia, how did that go?" tweeted the man, whose lengthy roster of bankruptcies includes the Trump Taj Mahal (1991), Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino (1992), the Plaza Hotel (1992), Trump Castle Hotel and Casino (1992), Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (2004), and Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009).

"Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her," continued the man, who founded such business fiascoes as the Trump Shuttle airline, Trump Vodka, and Trump Steaks.

At the House of Representatives, Representative Devin Nunes vigorously defended the man's controversial tweets. "He is calling out someone for creating disasters everywhere she goes, and no one is more qualified to talk about that than he is," Nunes said.



--
****
Juan

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

- Kris Kristofferson