My friend Welton Gaddy died today -- one of my favorite people in the world. Welton was the Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and the longtime former president of the Interfaith Alliance @intrfthalliance -- where he did so much good for so many years.
religionnews.com/2014/11/19/wel…

Short(ish) thread on one interesting detail concerning the bizarre falsified elector documents Republicans sent in to the National Archives in various Biden-won states after the 2020 election, falsely asserting that those states had chosen Republican/Trump electors: In 5 states (at least) - AZ, GA, NV, MI, WI - Republicans sent in fake electoral slates that looked quite alike: Same font, spacing, formatting, and language. The similarity suggests a coordinated effort or that, at least, they were all working from the same document template.

I'm going to thread a few sentences from this piece by @benjaminwittes in the hopes that you'll read the whole important thing:
lawfareblog.com/sliming-susan-… "When a broad political movement has consistently put lies ahead of truth in the service of its own power—as the Trumpist right has with respect to Russia, Trump and associated matters—it simply has to smear those who faced the issue squarely.

Is Mr. Castor just... ad libbing? Ever have one of those nightmares where it's your time to talk and everybody's looking at you, but you haven't prepared anything?

Heads up re Alabama...

"Alabama saw its largest single-day increase in new cases Monday, a little more than three weeks after the stay-at-home order expired on April 30 and two weeks after the state allowed restaurants and bars to reopen on May 11."
alreporter.com/2020/05/26/wer… "The number of cases confirmed per day in Alabama has been rising since April 30, showing no sign of slowing. Over the past week, new cases rose faster than in 46 other states with no comparable increase in testing."
alreporter.com/2020/05/26/wer…

"Aome senior officials believe that the disease is already spreading rapidly through the warren of cramped offices that make up the three floors of the West Wing."
nytimes.com/2020/05/10/us/… "Most restaurants, offices and retail stores do not have the ability to regularly test all their employees and quickly track down and quarantine the contacts of anyone who gets infected. At the White House, all employees are being tested at least weekly"
nytimes.com/2020/05/10/us/…

This is smart from @ThePlumLineGS Greg Sargent:

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…

"Trump is almost certainly not wearing a mask at such events to send a message to the country that we’re approaching normalcy... "That’s likely why Trump and Vice President Pence have been lately holding other events without masks and proper social distancing.

"Trump and Pence are able to do this because they have special access to a rapid testing mechanism..."

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…

Boston Globe editorial board:

"The months the administration wasted with prevarication about the threat and its subsequent missteps will amount to exponentially more COVID19 cases than were necessary. In other words, the president has blood on his hands."
bostonglobe.com/2020/03/30/opi… "Catastrophic decisions in the White House have doomed the world’s richest country to a season of untold suffering."
bostonglobe.com/2020/03/30/opi…

Hi, Mr. President -- thanks for tweeting that interview. Gen. Semonite and the Army Corps are indeed doing great work, but at nowhere near the scale that is needed.

We're hundreds of thousands of hospital beds behind, months behind schedule, and...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1243628257871831043

...we're about to see the number of sick patients surge and hospitals overflow in multiple US sites at once.

This is not an NYC problem or even just a city problem. The apex patient surges will not happen tidily, one after the other, they'll flare up all over, overlapping.

"Health officials in NY, California and other hard-hit areas are restricting testing to health workers and people who are hospitalized, saying the battle to contain the virus is lost and the country is moving into a new phase of the pandemic response."
washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03… "As cases spike sharply, they're hunkering down for an onslaught, directing scarce resources where they are needed most to save people’s lives. Instead of encouraging broad testing of the public, they’re focused on conserving masks, ventilators, ICU beds."
washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03…

"Richard Grenell did not disclose payments for advocacy work on behalf of a Moldovan politician whom the U.S. later accused of corruption. His own office’s policy says that could leave him vulnerable to blackmail."

propublica.org/article/trumps… "In 2016, Grenell wrote articles defending the oligarch, but did not disclose that he was being paid. He also did not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people to disclose work in the US on behalf of foreign politicians...

propublica.org/article/trumps…

NYT says Trump is poised to name Richard Grenell as Director of National Intelligence.

Here's Lev Parnas telling the Daily Beast that Grenell agreed to give a "heads up" to Kremlin-connected oligarch Dmitry Firtash if DOJ was about to move to extradite him to face trial here: “During the situation that was going on with the Firtash case, Victoria [Toensing] called Ric Grenell...

“She basically asked him, if he sees any pressure coming from DOJ to extradite Firtash, if he could let us know. She told me he said he would.”

thedailybeast.com/lev-parnas-dis…

"More than 1,100 veterans toay condemned President Trump for his continued attacks on Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the Army officer who testified in the impeachment inquiry, noting that military rules bar the service member from defending himself publicly"

militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-… "“The president should know that, despite taking aim at one Army officer, he has targeted anyone who currently wears — or has worn — the uniform.”

Letter is here:
docs.google.com/document/d/1nd…

I know you've seen headlines about former DOJ officials calling for AG Barr to resign, but read their actual letter.

This part strikes me as really important in terms of what happens next, and how the country can potentially pull back from the brink:

medium.com/@dojalumni/doj… "We call on every DOJ employee to be prepared to report future abuses to the Inspector General, the Office of Professional Responsibility, and Congress; to refuse to carry out directives that are inconsistent with their oaths of office...

medium.com/@dojalumni/doj…

Surprising answer to Senator Warner's request for additional information about Russia disseminating the same Ukraine conspiracy theories promulgated by President Trump and Rudy Giuliani (and, I'd note, now the president's counsel and some Republican Senators). Schiff responds that, yes, there's information about that in Jennifer Williams's classified supplement to her testimony, and all Senators should look at that.

But then...

“It’s trickier for him to be in all-on defense mode when he’s been implicated in the underlying allegations.”

politico.com/news/2020/01/2… "Pence is also grappling with other unknowns. If new witnesses are called during the trial, such as former national security adviser John Bolton, will they further implicate him in the administration's effort to pressure Ukraine for political help?"

politico.com/news/2020/01/2…

Belated kudos to @JasonLeopold and BuzzFeed for their (ongoing!) prying loose of the Mueller 302s.

Full stack (and summary) of the latest tranche is here:

buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…

For my money, the best part is page 161...

1/4 ...where we learn that Trump campaign adviser Carter Page interrupts the FBI agents questioning him so he can insist to them that he considered himself to be a "highest level contact" for the Russian intelligence services:

2/4

"Trump took steps to conceal the details of his formal meeting with Putin in Hamburg, taking the notes away from his interpreter and instructing her not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials..."

washingtonpost.com/national-secur… "White House aides were not part of Trump’s private conversation with Putin in Hamburg, or a later meeting he had in Helsinki for two hours with the Russian president"

washingtonpost.com/national-secur…

One of the things I did not have on my impeachment bingo card is that the GOP would have to sideline the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee from these proceedings...

1/3 Notice how it was Nadler (D) and Collins (R) from Judiciary leading things in the morning...

and then Schiff (D) and... Collins again in the afternoon?

Devin Nunes (not Collins) is Schiff's Republican counterpart on the Intel Committee.

Where's Congressman Nunes?...

2/3

Prosecutors' new filing in the Lev Parnas case requests revocation of his bail.

Remarkable turn of events, given Parnas's key role in the Ukraine scheme for which the president is now being impeached.

Here prosecutors cite Lev's "seemingly limitless access to foreign funds": "In the last three years, Parnas received in excess of $1.5 million from Ukrainian and Russian sources":

Ahem.

"Firtash was “financing” the activities of Parnas and Fruman, the source familiar with their business dealings said..."

reuters.com/article/us-usa… "One of the two Florida businessmen who helped President Donald Trump’s personal attorney investigate his political rival, Democrat Joe Biden, also has been working for the legal team of a Ukrainian oligarch who faces bribery charges in the US"...

reuters.com/article/us-usa…