Day: December 3, 2019

Background Briefing: December 3, 2019

 

The House Intelligence Report Delivered to the House Judiciary Committee

We begin with today’s release of the Majority report from the House Intelligence Committee which found that Trump “personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection”. And while not recommending articles upon which Trump should be impeached, the House Judiciary Committee will now evaluate the report for articles of impeachment against the president. Casey Michel, a writer, analyst, and investigative journalist who digs into topics ranging from kleptocracy and grand corruption to developments in the post-Soviet space and relations with the West, whose forthcoming book is “Crossroads Asia”, joins us. We discuss the contents of the report and assess whether its finding will overcome the partisan divisions and the Republican effort to once again blame everything Trump is guilty of on Hillary Clinton who, according to the absurd talking points the GOP is parroting from Putin, apparently arranged with the FBI to place her server in Ukraine to hack into the DNC and her campaign manager Podesta’s emails then pass on the damaging contents to Wikileaks so that she would cause herself to lose the election.

 

Court Orders Release of Trump’s Dealings with Two Banks

Then, with a federal appeals court siding with House Democrats trying to obtain records of Trump’s financial dealings with Deutsche Bank and Capitol One, ordering the two banks to comply with House subpoenas in a prompt manner, we speak with Jack Blum, a Washington lawyer who is an expert on white-collar financial crime and international tax evasion. A former staff attorney with the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he has been a consultant to the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, the United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention, and is currently Chair of the Tax Justice Network USA. We will discuss Trump’s likely move to appeal to the Supreme Court in the hope of running out the clock.

 

Trump No Longer Knows the Disgraced Prince Andrew

Then finally we speak with Nina Burleigh, a National Politics Correspondent at Newsweek. Her book “The Fatal Gift of Beauty: The Trials of Amanda Knox” was a New York Times bestseller, and her latest book is “Golden Handcuffs: The Secret History of Trump’s Women”. She joins us to discuss the Royal Family’s deepening disgrace following Monday’s airing of the BBC documentary featuring the women who, as girls, were trafficked for sex with Prince Andrew by Jeffrey Epstein. About which when asked at the NATO summit, Trump lied, claiming he did not know Prince Andrew, even though there are many videos of them together and even pictures of Trump and Prince Andrew with Epstein in the background.