More witnesses tell of Giuliani's heavy meddle on Ukraine

Diplomats: Rudy ran amok

The impeachment inquiry has learned from previous testimony that John Bolton, the former national security adviser, exploded in frustration at Rudy Giuliani as "a hand grenade who's going to blow everybody up.”

The House committees on Wednesday formally invited Bolton to testify next week, though his lawyer said he won't appear voluntarily and won't answer a subpoena either unless ordered to comply by a federal judge. In the meantime, more witnesses on Capitol Hill described the wounds to personnel and policy from Giuliani's shadow mission — to turn Ukraine into an instrument for President Donald Trump's personal political vendettas — as well as their efforts to contain the damage.

In an open Senate hearing for confirmation as Trump's nominee for ambassador to Russia, John Sullivan said he was the one who had to tell Marie Yovanovitch she was being removed as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine even though she did "nothing wrong." Asked whether he believed Giuliani was “seeking to smear Ambassador Yovanovitch, or have her removed,” Sullivan replied: “I believed he was, yes.”

Sullivan, the deputy secretary of state, said to skeptical Democrats he was unaware of Giuliani's broader efforts, but agreed that a president's effort to demand investigations into his domestic rivals would not be "in accord with our values.”

Christopher Anderson, a State Department official who served as a senior adviser on Ukraine, said Bolton told him Giuliani's influence with Trump on Ukraine "could be an obstacle to increased White House engagement” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which U.S. officials focused on policy goals had sought. Anderson described trying to counter a "negative narrative" whose causes included a Giuliani comment that Zelensky was "surrounded by enemies" of Trump.

Another State Department official, Catherine Croft, said that when she learned U.S. military aid to Ukraine would be frozen, “the only reason given was that the order came at the direction of the president." 

On Thursday, the committees will hear from Tim Morrison, a National Security Council official who was one of the authorities listening in on Trump’s July call with Zelensky. Morrison resigned his post on Wednesday. William Taylor, the U.S. diplomat in Ukraine ripped by the president as a "never Trumper" after he gave a closed-door account about protesting a scheme to link aid to investigations by Ukraine, is willing to return and testify in public hearings, CNN reported.

To the streets and tweets

As House Democrats move closer to impeachment Thursday with a vote on the rules for taking their inquiry public, grassroots groups on both sides of the issue are gearing up for a battle they plan to wage at lawmakers’ offices, rallies and on social media, Newsday's Tom Brune reports.

“We’ve just hit send on an email to all our members nationwide to call their representative and urge them to support the vote,” said David Sievers, campaign director for the left-leaning activist group MoveOn.org.

On Trump's side, Freedom Works says it has urged its 6 million members to tell their senators to “end this illegitimate impeachment inquisition.”

Public opinion has played a key role in the last two impeachments. President Richard M. Nixon resigned when his approval ratings plummeted to 25%. But President Bill Clinton’s approval rating stood at 62% on the day that the Senate acquitted him.

Janison: Putin pleaser

For all of Trump's fanboy fawning about Vladimir Putin, official U.S. policy toward Russia remained tough earlier in his presidency. Sanctions against Russia were tightened. Seized diplomatic compounds in the U.S. went unreturned. A largely symbolic bombing raid was carried out in Russian-aligned Syria over an alleged chemical weapon attack.

But in recent months, writes Newsday's Dan Janison, the U.S. president has taken high-stakes positions clearly aligned with Putin's interests, and not just with the sudden pullout from Syria. A stark example came Wednesday in testimony before Congress by Anderson, the former special adviser for Ukraine negotiations.

When Russia seized Ukrainian military vessels heading to a port in the Sea of Azov last November, Anderson said he and State Department colleagues "quickly prepared a statement condemning Russia for its escalation," but "senior officials in the White House blocked it from being issued." Trump has absorbed Putin's hostile views on Ukraine, which were reinforced when Trump met with Hungary's authoritarian leader Viktor Orban, whose views often align with the Russian president, over the objections of national security advisers.

Vouching for Vindman

The just-retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, spoke up Wednesday for Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who was denounced by the president as a "never Trumper" and had his loyalty to the U.S. attacked by Trump's allies for testifying about the effort to manipulate Ukraine policy for Trump's political advantage.

"He is a professional, competent, patriotic, and loyal officer. He has made an extraordinary contribution to the security of our nation in both peacetime and combat," Dunford told CNN. Vindman worked for the Joint Chiefs before moving to the White House to serve on the National Security Council.

A quid pro quo pro

According to the Daily Beast, Trump took offense at a Wall Street Journal editorial last week that argued he could be off the hook in the Ukraine scandal because "it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it."

When Trump saw the editorial, he promptly began complaining about it to some close to him, according to the report. A person familiar with the president's comments recounted that "he started saying things like, ‘What are they talking about, if I wanted to do quid pro quo, I would’ve done the damn quid pro quo,’ and … then defended his intelligence …" Another person familiar with the president’s comments on the matter corroborated the account.

“He was clearly unhappy. He did not like the word ‘inept,’ ” the first source added.

Trump camp rips Twitter ad ban 

Twitter announced Wednesday that it will ban political ads from its site, and the Trump campaign took it hard and personally.

Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale called the decision "another attempt by the left to silence Trump and conservatives." (The worldwide ban applies to everybody.) A campaign statement said, "Twitter just walked away from hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue, a very dumb decision for their stockholders."

Parscale argued his boss will suffer the most because "President Trump has the most sophisticated online program ever known.”

Twitter’s move to ban all political ads comes after weeks of Facebook getting roasted by critics over its own policy that allows politicians to lie in ads. Explaining his decision, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said, “This isn’t about free expression. This is about paying for reach. And paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle."

What else is happening:

• A name from Washington's scandals of the 1990s has re-emerged in the impeachment inquiry. Former GOP Rep. Robert Livingston, who was about to succeed Newt Gingrich when an extramarital affair toppled him, is a lobbyist with Ukraine connections. He pushed as did Giuliani to oust Yovanovitch, according to testimony Wednesday by State Department official Croft, who fielded Livingston's repeated calls.
• Trump's hopes of signing a first-phase trade deal with China at a world leaders' summit in Chile next month are dashed after unrest in the South American country forced cancellation of the meeting. The White House said it wants to find another place to do it.
• Mick Mulvaney is still Trump's acting chief of staff, but his exclusion from the circle informed in advance of the U.S. military raid against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi suggests his star has fallen, according to an NBC News report.
• Kamala Harris, whose campaign has been bleeding cash and support, will laying off dozens of aides at her Baltimore headquarters and deploy staffers to Iowa to try to resuscitate for hid for the 2020 Democratic nomination, Politico reported.
• Trick and tweet: Trump tweeted a fake photo depicting him placing a medal around the neck of the military K-9 injured in the raid that left al-Baghdadi dead. The composite photo borrowed an image from a 2017 ceremony in which Trump gave the Medal of Honor to James McCloughan, a Vietnam War hero. McCloughan told The New York Times he wasn't offended. 
• After six months on the stump, Joe Biden's wayward speaking style keeps undermining his message, The New York Times writes. He takes circuitous routes to the ends of sentences, if he finishes them at all. He sometimes says the opposite of what he means. He has mixed up countries, cities and dates, embarked on off-message asides and sometimes he simply cuts himself off.