Thread by @SethAbramson

In Spring 2019, the State Department learned there was a security threat to one of its European ambassadors. The Department's response to the threat was to fire the ambassador. It appears this was done because State knew the threat came from *inside the president's circle*.

WOW.

1/ The State Department made no report to the FBI. The State Department issued no public defense of its ambassador. The State Department lied to the ambassador about what was going on. The State Department later lied about what it knew and withheld documents from Congress.

WOW.

2/ This scandal, involving a possible violent plot to overthrow the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, and indeed such a plot *orchestrated in the first instance by the president and his inner circle*, is as scary as anything we've encountered in our history and it came up *post-impeachment*.

3/ The foregoing simply underscores how premature this trial in the Senate is. We have a situation in which Lev Parnas was a member of Trump's legal team and may have been involved in the *most serious plot within our government in U.S. history* and he's not even a trial witness.

4/ I've said for months the Ukraine scandal is about more than Biden. And Clinton. And Manafort. More than Naftogaz, the Russian mafia, and Trump's John Solomon-led information war on his own people. It's about helping Putin in an ongoing invasion of Europe. A *literal* invasion.

5/ Imagine what it'd take to be worth it for a Trump agent to discuss harming a U.S. ambassador. What would have to be at stake? Everyone knows a July phone call isn't enough. Everyone knows some provably false "dirt" on Biden isn't enough. That's why that's only 5% of the story.

6/ At stake in the Ukraine scandal is the 2020 election. At stake in the Ukraine scandal is the future of NATO and the EU. At stake in the Ukraine scandal is the current (literal) battleground between the Kremlin and Europe and Putin's unchecked adventurism and thirst for empire.

7/ If Democrats get all the witnesses they want, it'll simply let them open a *tiny* window into what Trump and his agents did in Ukraine. The public still won't have anything like a full picture. Yet Trump is pulling out every stop to keep even that window from opening. Ask why.

8/ Here's what I mean: Trump isn't really contesting any of the core facts in the articles of impeachment; major media has already reported on everything we think the four witnesses Democrats want would say at the trial; and yet Trump is *terrified* of his trial opening up wider.

9/ Anyone who's been a public defender has had a few cases in which an especially nervous defendant establishes implicit no-go areas in the defense, meaning you can look here and ask about this but I'll go ballistic if you go over *there*. In this scandal "there" is *everywhere*.

10/ Having read hundreds of articles from around the world to research this scandal for my feed, I can say that Trump was involved in a clandestine effort to take over the Ukrainian energy industry to help Putin win a war and enrich the Russian mafia.

His kickback? Election aid.

PS/ Mind you, the election aid was hard currency as well as opposition research and a coordinated, foreign-run disinformation campaign intended to dovetail with Kremlim lies and whose intended victims were Americans.

Sound familiar? It's also what happened in the Russia scandal.

PS2/ As ever, I've no "theory" that I'm interested in beyond an investigative "theory of the case" based on hundreds of major-media investigative reports from around the world. This research draws on my experience, knowledge, and training as a scholar, attorney, and investigator.

PS3/ None of this, of course, relies on Trump being a genius, as he's no genius. What I've said from the start, as someone who's represented thousands of defendants, is that Trump as a career criminal has very strong instincts as to who he can work with to further his interests.

PS4/ As ever, Twitter is a hard place to explain complex concepts, though I do my best. For instance, *every American* needs to know what the "BLT Prime team" was between November 2018 and June 2019—and *who was on it, where they met, and what they did*.

Every. Single. American.

PS5/ So here are the members of the BLT Prime Team, which met regularly in the restaurant of the Trump International Hotel from November 2018 to spring 2019:

Giuliani
Parnas
Fruman
Toensing
diGenova
Harvey
Nunes (via proxy Harvey)
Solomon
Correia
Patel*

*Awaiting clarification.

PS6/ The BLT Prime Team—so named by Parnas—was a salon for criminals. Its members met regularly to discuss a conspiracy they were executing. Members of the team were behind every aspect of the Ukraine scandal, from Naftogaz to outreach to Russian mafia to domestic disinformation.

PS7/ "BLT Prime" is the name of the restaurant in Trump's D.C. hotel. That's where the meetings happened. Because of the meetings' location and the fact that *five members of the team were on Trump's legal team*, the odds Trump didn't know about the meetings are *basically* zero.

PS8/ Trump could have attended some meetings himself. It's certainly possible, as they occurred at a location Trump wholly controlled and therefore the team could easily retire to a private room to chat with Trump whenever he happened to be in the building. But we don't know yet.

PS9/ One of the *first questions* @maddow/@MaddowBlog needs to ask tonight is, "Can you give us a full list of anyone who ever attended a meeting of what you've called the 'BLT Prime team'? Did any of the Trumps—including Trump Sr.—ever attend a meeting face-to-face or by phone?"

@maddow @MaddowBlog PS10/ Maddow can certainly expedite things by reading Parnas the list of "team" members I provided above and then simply asking, "Who am I missing? Who attended even one meeting of the 'team' who I haven't listed here?"