September 27, 2019

Trump Impeachment Liveblog, Day 4: A House Republican Breaks Ranks

Here’s the latest.

Li Muzi/ZUMA

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As the White House scrambles to mount a defense against impeachment proceedings—a predicament Donald Trump reportedly never thought would come to life—scrutiny into the president’s efforts to cover up the cover-up is intensifying.

Follow along below.

6:54 p.m. ET: Dan Friedman on Kurt Volker’s resignation:

6:47 p.m. ET: Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada became the first Republican House member to support the impeachment inquiry. “Let’s put it through the process and see what happens,” he told the Nevada Independent. Amodei even leaned into it a bit and said, if an inquiry showed someone using government agencies to try to tip an election, “there’s a problem.”

5:24 p.m. ET: The New York Times reports that President Trump met with Wayne LaPierre to “discuss how the NRA could provide financial support for the president’s defense” during the impeachment inquiry. LaPierre, head of the NRA, has been trying to make sure Trump doesn’t enact any gun control in the wake of mass shootings, according to the report. You may recall that earlier today, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released an investigation calling the NRA a “foreign asset” during the 2016 election for Russia.

4:48 p.m. ET: The House issued its first subpoena. It requested a slew of documents related to the Ukrainian scandal from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo by October 4. And, in the accompanying letter, it also laid out a slew of Rudy Guliani’s public statements they say raise “troubling questions.”

2:08 p.m. ET: The only thing more delightfully dumb, impeachable, and insidious than a president of the United States calling an apostrophe a “hyphen” and nitpicking over CNN’s nitpicking over Trump’s nitpicking over grammar and spelling on Twitter, all in the past few hours, is a nation that takes the bait and more than a minute to talk about it. So I’ll write this in under a minute, and hope you read it in less.

At the doorstep of impeachment, shifting gears to rattle copy editors’ cages and stir up a grammar investigation is like Tactic 2 in Trump’s misdirection playbook, but petty begets petty, so our talent for obliging him was on full display this morning, when I awoke to a copy editor friend’s email titled “Trump became a copy editor overnight?” Every news outlet on the planet was asking the same. I would explain, but that would put us over a minute. Read more here. But don’t. ‹59 seconds› —Daniel King, Mother Jones copy editor

1:46 p.m. ET: Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire would like to remind you—lest you’d forgotten—that Trump is a liar. Read analysis from David Corn, Mother Jones’ Washington, DC, bureau chief, here.

12:51 p.m. ET: Presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is finally on board with the impeachment inquiry.

12:18 p.m. ET: 

10:40 a.m. ET: The White House confirms, for the first time, a major allegation in the whistleblower complaint, that the transcript of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president was moved to a separate classified server. (Yes, a server.) A senior official told CNN that the decision for the highly unusual move came at the direction of lawyers for the National Security Council.

8:15 a.m. ET: Gabriel Sherman reports on the existential crisis hitting Fox News this week, with even Sean Hannity acknowledging that the whistleblower complaint at the center of Trump’s Ukraine scandal is “really bad” for the president. Meanwhile, White House aides are quickly realizing there is no roadmap.

7:50 a.m. ET: “This is no cause for any joy,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says on impeachment during an appearance on Morning Joe. “This is a very sad time for our country.” Pelosi also blasts Attorney General William Barr for going “rogue” in his unprecedented efforts to shield the president.

7:30 a.m. ET: Trump calls on House Intelligence chair Rep. Adam Schiff to resign. 

7:00 a.m. ET: The president emerges Friday morning laser-focused and ready for battle. We won’t insult you by pointing out the obvious errors in this one.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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