Trump’s normal response to one of his inner circle being indicted/convicted/named as one of his accomplices is, “I don’t know him, I don’t know what he does, blah, blah, blah.  It’s his trademark Throw Your Friends Under the Bus strategy.  This week, he did it again with Lev Parnas, indicted for campaign finance laws, when he started singing like a canary about his role in trying to frame Joe Biden over fabricated corruption charges.

Trump immediately declared that he didn’t know Parnas.  Sure.  He never heard of him –

President Donald Trump standing with Lev Parnas at the White House in Washington.

Here’s Trump’s normal response to being caught in a lie as applied to Lev Parnas:

This morning the GAO announced its finding that, by withholding military aid to Ukraine against the appropriation passed by Congress, Trump violated federal law.  In issuing it’s opinion, the GAO said, “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.”

Cue the noise machine, which has already started.

Much to Trump Brown Noser Greg Abbott’s consternation, a federal judge just blocked Trump’s cruel, idiotic and illegal executive order to keep immigrants from resettling in states or communities without prior approval of those jurisdictions.  In his order, the Maryland judge said that the order “does not appear to serve the overall public interest.”  He went further, saying,

…the order gives states and local governments “the power to veto where refugees may be resettled — in the face of clear statutory text and structure, purpose Congressional intent, executive practice, judicial holdings and Congressional doctrine to the contrary.”

The argument placed before the judge was about the Refuge Act of 1980, and argued that Trump was trying to circumvent the federal law by implementing a state by state ban.  The judge agreed:

“The objectives of this Act are to provide a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission to this country of refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States, and to provide comprehensive and uniform provisions for the effective resettlement and absorption of those refugees who are admitted.”

One more for the good guys.

Republicans efforts to stymie the Senate impeachment trial continued this week with Senate rules committee Roy Blunt announcing that access by the press will be severely restricted during proceedings and even excluded completely at times.  Blunt lied that these restrictions are the same as during the Clinton trial, but they’re not.  This is simply a continuing effort by Trump enablers to make a mockery of these proceedings including even trying to dismiss the charges before a trial even happens, keeping witnesses and documents out of evidence, and coordinating directly with Trump’s goons in the WH.  Cutting out the press?

It’s shameful, but not at all surprising.

Since we all know that Russia prefers Trump to any other US president (since Putin said so on global television) it’s not a surprise that Russian military hackers got into the systems of Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden was on the board of directors for a few years.  Ignoring the stupidity of Hunter’s taking of that job, there is no evidence of wrongdoing by him or his father, but that didn’t stop the Russians from doing the job that Trump extorted Zelensky to perform, the move that drew an impeachment action against him.

The effort started in November just as the impeachment inquiry started in the House and Trump began frantically trying to discredit it.  Using phishing and spearphishing tactics (just like in 2016) the Russian GRU has been bombarding Burisma email accounts and have successfully stolen email credentials to get inside of the company.

The super frustrating thing about all of this illegal activity is not only Trump’s acceptance of it, but his encouragement for it to continue.  When is enough enough for Republicans?

As we discussed the other day, I believed strongly that the crash of the Ukrainian Airlines 737 was NOT caused by a mechanical failure.  Indeed, video showed something hit the aircraft and today, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau confirmed what we all feared:

Of course, Iran government officials are lying about the true cause of the crash, but finally bent to demands to allow others into the investigation including Ukraine and Boeing.  The truth will come out, and the Iranian government (along with Trump) look like idiots.  Trump kills the top military general for Iran and 7 others.  Iran retaliates to make a statement, warning the US three hours before the attack so they could clear out and have no casualties.  Purely by accident, the Iranians shot down a commercial aircraft filled with 176 innocents.  Tragic.  And stupid.

Using military strength gets people killed.  It’s high time the morons running these two governments finally figured that out.