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The Ukraine scandal has a background between major players (e.g., Trump, Manafort and Firtash) going back 15 years; a timeline of inculpatory events going back 2 years; and a cast of witnesses numbering over 100.

And we're going to get a trial about a dozen men and a phone call.
1/ IMPORTANT: Americans need to understand that the trial they're about to witness on TV is analogous to a trial in which a murderer is accused of jaywalking on his way to commit the murder but is never charged with the murder itself. If the full story is 1,000 pages, this is 25.
2/ Did you know that July 2019 wasn't the first time Trump used Mulvaney to withhold military aid to Ukraine in order to extort Ukraine into providing him with a personal benefit? In fact, he did the same thing with Zelensky's predecessor, in 2017 *and* 2018.

Seems relevant, no?
3/ So this is a trial whose defendant will clutch his pearls and say he can't even contemplate doing what he's accused of while the jury never hears evidence he did the same thing the year before the events of the trial and the year before the year before the events of the trial.
4/ Do you know how long ago Trump first said he didn't want to give military aid to Ukraine? That'd be March...

...2016.

That's right: about four years ago. And in this trial we'll be told Trump was worried about corruption in Ukraine but never opposed giving them military aid.
5/ Did you know the Ukraine scandal is actually a plot by Trump and men he knows *extremely well* (including Parnas and Fruman, who are in effect two of his *advisers*) to overthrow Ukraine's gas company in a bid to enrich Putin and help him win a war in which he invaded Europe?
6/ That's right, Trump was getting *numerous* kickbacks from what was in essence an *energy-industry takeover plot*, including protection from Mueller and conclusive illegal foreign aid in two successive presidential elections, but Putin also stood to make billions and win a war.
7/ The opening statement for the *real* Ukraine scandal would tell the story of a "buddy-villain" movie (as opposed to a buddy-cop movie) in which Trump and Putin, via their respective intermediaries Giuliani and Firtash and a half-dozen middlemen, work to weaken NATO and the EU.
8/ But no, let's instead talk about a wholly decontextualized phone call that looks like it had no past or future or basis in anything, on the grounds that {*checks notes*} Americans are known to prefer boring, false, aimless stories to big, explosive, entertaining, *true* ones?
9/ What's amazing is the purpose of Dems giving us the CliffsNotes version of the CliffsNotes version of the CliffsNotes version of the Ukraine scandal is to ensure no one mentions even one fact from Mueller's report, easily the most damning report ever written about a President.
10/ Democrats are approaching this trial like they're an abused domestic partner who after years and years of criminal violence are just asking whether they can go to the movies with a friend. They're trying to make the smallest ask and tell the smallest story the GOP will allow.
11/ Given the allegations undergirding this impeachment representing ~3% of what Trump did & nevertheless being the most serious allegations ever leveled against a POTUS, does anyone think when this is looked at 200+ years on, & it will be, anyone will respect Democrats' caution?
12/ Here we have the biggest criminal ever to hold federal office—and the biggest traitor ever to sit in the Oval—and he's on target to receive a wholly fake "exoneration" about a day before he triumphantly comes before the nation for the State of the Union to gaslight all of us.
13/ I wish I could comfort myself by saying neither Democrats nor Republicans have read the 200+ investigative reports confirming the real scope of the Ukraine case—but sadly, I think many senators understand the full story and are happy to sit in judgment of the G-rated version.
14/ For all the pathetic whining Trump does—which marks him as the most cowardly and privileged and nauseating defendant in the history of U.S. defendants—you can't even fathom how ahead of the game he is by getting his investigators and prosecutors to ignore 95% of what he did.
15/ For those wondering why I seem far more upset than most others about what's happening, remember: what distinguishes me from many is I've published 1,500 pages' worth of books on Trump's crimes—which means I've read over 2,000 major-media stories on them from around the world.
16/ That's why the trolls who attack me always take the approach of falsely claiming I spin theories: they know that that's exactly what this feed and my books *don't* do—they're based exclusively on the best investigative reports from all around the world and going back decades.
17/ I can't even express the galactic degree of folly among those on the right, and perhaps even in mainstream journalism, who think that the coming years will reveal we were all over-reacting.

In fact, it's just the *opposite*—our descendants will be *amazed* at our *inaction*.
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