Our special BradCast coverage of the ongoing impeachment hearings of Donald J. Trump continues today, as 33-year foreign service veteran, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was sworn in as a witness in the U.S. House Intelligence Committee's public hearings. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

Yovanovitch, whose parents fled both Stalin's Soviet Union and Nazi Germany offered riveting testimony about being ousted, without explanation, by Trump, amid a smear campaign against her, propagated by Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani, ousted corrupt Ukrainian officials and the President of the United State himself. The coordinated campaign against the virulently anti-corruption Ambassador appears to have been at the center of Team Trump's need to move her out of the way in April of this year so they could try to force Ukraine to announce state probes into Donald Trump's political rivals in exchange for $391 million in military assistance apportioned by Congress and unlawfully withheld from the embattled nation by the White House.

Even as the hearing on Trump's apparent high crimes and misdemeanors played out in the U.S. House Intelligence Committee on Friday afternoon, Trump seems to have added a new potential Article of Impeachment by attacking Yovanovitch on Twitter during her testimony. Committee Chair Adam Schiff, a former federal prosecutor himself, characterized the remarkably brazen attack on the longtime, well-respected Ambassador as attempted "witness intimidation". Even top Fox "News" reporters and anchors were stunned by Trump's attack.

We're joined today once again by award-winning opinion and analysis journalist HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hulaballoo as we analyze, explain and try to make sense of Friday's hearing, along with the aid of several extended clips from the proceedings.

ALSO TODAY: Even as the hearings played out, Roger Stone, a longtime Republican dirty trickster and close Donald Trump ally, was found guilty on all 7 criminal counts for which he was facing trial in federal court as part of the Robert Mueller investigation into Russia, Wikileaks and Team Trump interference in the 2016 election. The charges Stone was found guilty of include lying to Congress and witness tampering and could net the 67-year old GOP operative up to 20 years in federal prison...unless he is pardoned by his friend Trump. He is the sixth top Trump associate to be found or have pleaded guilty to federal felony charges.

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal today is exclusively reporting that Giuliani --- who was at the center of the Yovanovitch smear campaign and what Democrats describe as the bribery scheme to force Ukraine to announce an investigation of Joe Biden and his son who served on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma --- is himself now being criminally investigated by federal prosecutors in relation to a Ukrainian natural gas scheme.

Yes, it is all that insane, but we do our best to try and make sense of it today nonetheless...

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On today's BradCast, our special coverage of the first day of public hearings in the impeachment inquiry of Donald J. Trump. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

We share extended excerpts from the opening statements at today's historic hearing in the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, as chaired by Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and led on the Republican side by Ranking Member Devin Nunes.

The witnesses for Wednesday's hearing were two long-serving, non-partisan, career diplomats who offered detailed and often damning testimony on Trump's unprecedented withholding of military aide to Ukraine as part of a pressure campaign to force its new President to announce investigations into Trump's political rivals and into an uncorroborated theory regarding Ukraine's interference in the 2016 election. Both men also offered background on Ukraine's struggle to break away from its corrupt past with its new administration, even while the beleaguered former Soviet-bloc nation continues its long and deadly war on its eastern border against Russian-backed separatists.

Ambassador Bill Taylor, a 30-year foreign service veteran and decorated Vietnam combat soldier, currently serves as Trump's top diplomat in Ukraine. He was assigned to the post by Trump's Sec. of State Mike Pompeo after Trump's previous Ambassador, the virulently anti-corruption Marie Yovanovitch (who will testify on Friday), was pushed out of her role by what Taylor described as an "irregular" diplomatic channel consisting of several of Trump's political allies, including his attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Taylor broke the most noteworthy new piece of information of the day as he described learning, just last week, about a late night unsecured cell phone call in July by one of the "irregulars", Ambassador to EU Gordon Sondland, to the President. The call was made in a restaurant, the day after Trump's infamous July 25 call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Taylor's staffer (who will now also testify on Friday) is said to have overheard Trump asking Sondland about the status of "the investigations" into the Bidens and the 2016 election. After the call, Taylor testified, when the staffer asked Sondland about Trump's feelings toward Ukraine, the Trump-donor-turned-diplomat said he "cares more about the investigations of Biden" than Ukraine.

Sharing the witness table with Taylor on Wednesday was George Kent, Deputy Asst. Sec. of State overseeing policy for Ukraine. Kent, who also offered damning testimony about Trump's scheme to strong-arm Ukraine, has been a part of the State Department's foreign service since 1992, having served, like Taylor, under five different U.S. Presidents --- three Republicans and two Democrats --- during his time in government service.

We're joined today for insight and analysis on all of this by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Hullabaloo and Salon, as we discuss today's breaking news of note, the damning case being laid out against the President by Democrats, the thin and disjointed rebuttal being offered by Republicans in his defense, and how all of this may be perceived by the American public as the historic hearings continue later this week, into the next one, and likely beyond...

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Yes, everything, even wildfires in California, are now political, as proven over the weekend when I tweeted out a non-political video I captured of a fire that broke out on a hillside in the San Fernando Valley, threatening the iconic Hollywood sign just on the other side of the hill. Callers ring in today --- as we were able to open the phones for the first time in weeks --- on a bunch of stories covered on today's BradCast.

Among those stories...

• Trump loses yet again in court as a federal judge on Monday dismissed his lawsuit filed in D.C. hoping to, preemptively, prevent Congress from using New York state's newly adopted law which allows the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee to request copies of the tax returns of New York residents (read: Donald Trump's). It was just another loss in the long list of frivolous lawsuits brought by Trump to try and keep his tax returns from becoming public, for some reason;

• Over the weekend Republicans submitted a list of requested witnesses for the upcoming public hearings in the Trump impeachment matter regarding his attempt to extort Ukraine by withholding military assistance in exchange for his demand that Ukraine announce an investigation into Joe Biden, his son Hunter and a conspiracy regarding Ukraine interference in the 2016 election. The House GOP's request list includes both Hunter Biden and the whistleblower who first brought the Ukraine matter to light. Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic Chair of the Intelligence Committee holding the public hearings this week responded by saying that he will not allow the proceedings to be used to promote the already-debunked theories that Trump was attempting to force Ukraine to spread in his unlawful effort to strong-arm the nation's new President into helping Trump on his 2020 reelection campaign;

• We review some of the remarkable comments I received over the weekend after I tweeted a completely non-political news video of a wildfire in Burbank which broke out while I was there. Did you know they were caused by socialist homeless pedophiles? Who knew? Trump fans on Twitter do, apparently!;

• And, speaking of both fires in CA and the 2020 elections, I share the response I recently received from the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's office seeking comment about their contingency plans to deal with preemptive power outages should they occur during the general election next year at the same time as the ones California power companies imposed this year in hopes of not sparking wildfires during climate change-fueled hot, dry and windy conditions.

  Now that Los Angeles is moving to 100% unverifiable electronic touchscreen voting systems and electronic pollbooks, such an outage could prove disastrous for voters on Election Day and during early voting next year. Unfortunately, while the Registrar's office here replied to my queries on this (tune in to hear their response), they failed to reply to follow up questions;

• All of this is decidedly NOT an academic issues, given the disasters that occurred last week during Off-Year municipal elections in George and Pennsylvania, where, for the first time, counties in those states deployed brand-new touchscreen voting systems akin to the ones that Los Angeles will be forcing voters to use at voting centers next year, rather than hand-marked paper ballots and paper pollbooks (neither of which require electricity or the Internet).

  The results were catastrophic in many PA and GA polling places with some voters unable to vote at all, many forced had to wait up to an hour during the sparsely attended off-year election, and computer-reported results showing some candidates receiving 0 votes at several precincts, even though they'd received thousands. And, yes, a power outage prevented voters from voting at one precinct. All of this serves as a chilling preview of what could well await the nation in 2020 during the most critical Presidential election in our nation's history.

Finally, we then open the phone lines, at long last, on all of the above. And our listeners have a LOT to say about it all, including a few who believe global warming is a hoax, and that the President should NOT be impeached for either extortion or obstruction of justice. Fun! Tune in for all of that and much more on today's very lively BradCast!

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On today's BradCast, a close look at the scheme that Kentucky's Republican Governor may now be trying to pull off in hopes of stealing last Tuesday's election from the apparent Democratic winner. [Audio link to show follows below.]

But, first up today, paper tiger Donald Trump, after vowing he'd never settle the case by New York Attorney General against his fraudulent "charitable" organization called the Trump Foundation, agreed to settle today after all. A state judge fined the President of the United States $2 million after finding he misused the foundation, repeatedly and illegally, to further his own political and business interests. Trump admitted to the wrong doing detailed in the settlement.

Moreover, the remaining $1.7 million in the organization's bank account will be donated, along with the $2 million fine, to several different charities, including the United Negro College Fund and U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Trump and his three children who sat on the Foundation's board will be restricted in their ability to sit on the boards of charitable organizations in the future. And while one might think that being forced by a court to pay up nearly $4 million after admitting to using a charitable foundation to rip people off would be grounds for impeachment, given the indescribably unending criminality of Donald Trump, it seems unlikely this matter will even come up in the U.S. House's ongoing impeachment proceedings against him.

To that end, House Dems have announced the schedule for the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry to kick off next Wednesday, featuring two of Trump's top State Department officials who will testify to his politically motivated extortion plot against Ukraine. One of those officials, Deputy Asst. Sec. of State George Kent, is said to have taken copious contemporaneous notes after becoming concerned that the White House's attempted quid pro quo was "injurious to the rule of law, both in Ukraine and the U.S," according to a transcript of Kent's recent closed-door Congressional deposition made public on Thursday.

But, of course, we are still covering the ongoing fall-out from Tuesday's off-year elections, in which Dems flipped the Virginia House and Senate "blue" for the first time in decades, and as brand-new touchscreen voting machines deployed in Pennsylvania and in Georgia failed disastrously on their initial trial run before 2020.

Today, we focus on the potentially disturbing developments in Kentucky, where the state's unpopular and very Trumpy Republican Gov. Matt Bevin is said to have lost by just over 5,000 votes (out of some 1.4 million cast) to Democratic challenger Andy Beshear on Tuesday. Since then, Bevin has refused to concede, citing "well-corroborated irregularities" including what he described on Wednesday as "'thousands of absentee ballots that were illegally counted," reports of voters being "incorrectly turned away" from the polls, and "a number of machines that didn't work properly." He has yet to offer actual details on those serious allegations, but has formally requested a "recanvass" of tallies. That, according to KY's Sec. of State, will be carried out next Thursday, in a state with a very recent history of serious election rigging --- at least by very powerful insiders.

However, while the Bluegrass State has rules to resolve contested elections with recounts, those statutes specifically do not apply to gubernatorial races, oddly enough. And that's where things get quite murky in the state. Contested gubernatorial races are settled by a vote of both Houses of the General Assembly. Both chambers in the state (which Trump won by some 30 points in 2016) are currently controlled by Republicans. The last time a gubernatorial contest occurred in the state --- in 1899 --- it ended with an assassination.

While a GOP scheme to steal the election from a Democrat this way seems ridiculously far-fetched at first glance, a number of normally quite conservative election law experts are taking the matter quite seriously, given Bevin's current playbook which, some of them suggest, mirrors that of his close pal Donald Trump and what he may do in 2020 if things don't go his way.

We're joined by one of the nation's top experts on all of this today, University of Kentucky College of Law's JOSHUA A. DOUGLAS, to explain what happened on Tuesday; why Bevin's scheme and potential help from GOPers in the state legislature could augur very darkly for our democratic system; what all of this means for Mitch McConnell (the other similarly unpopular statewide Republican who just happens to be on the 2020 ballot); and what --- if Bevin turns out to be the same paper tiger that Trump is --- we should expect from the new Democratic Gov. Beshear's administration in an otherwise still very "red" southern state.

"There is danger," Douglas tells me today. "but it's not about irregularities. It's about the Governor's rhetoric and his allegations of 'voter fraud' and problems without any evidence whatsoever. I think that's really dangerous for our democracy, because it can undermine the public's confidence in our electoral system. I have not seen any evidence whatsoever that there were any problems in the way that Tuesday's elections were run. In fact, it was a fairly quiet Election Day [and] I usually hear about things that might be concerning. The danger here is really Gov. Bevin's allegations without any evidence, and Republican leaders' failure to call him out on that point."

"It's very concerning for what could happen in 2020 if Trump does not win re-election, and he also refuses to concede defeat by peddling theories of 'voter fraud' without any evidence," says Douglas.

Tune in for much more!

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the 999th edition of our Green News Report! And it's at least as disturbing as the previous 998. Next week: GNR1000! And thanks to those of you who make our nearly 11 years of climate coverage possible with your much-needed donations at BradBlog.com/Donate!

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On today's BradCast, in an historic vote, the U.S. House officially adopted formal rules and procures to govern the ongoing impeachment inquiry of Donald J. Trump. We also do a bit of helpful Impeachment 101 to explain how it works, and what we know historically about the process from the three prior Presidential impeachment proceedings against Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. [Audio link to program is posted below.]

Then, it's on to today's vote in the U.S. House, undercutting a limp Republican argument --- already undercut by a federal court last week which determined no such vote was actually required by the Constitution to proceed with impeachment --- a sharply divided House adopted a resolution [PDF] by a 232 to 196 vote, setting out official rules for how the inquiry will proceed. All present members of the GOP voted against the measure and all but two Democrats (conservative ones, from districts won by Trump in 2016) voted in favor. So did former Tea Party Republican turned Independent Rep. Justin Amash of Texas.

The resolution sets the ground rules for upcoming public hearings in the House Judiciary Committee with witnesses who have testified to members behind-closed-doors in recent weeks. The adopted procedures allow the President and his attorneys to participate and cross-examine witnesses in those hearings, as well as request subpoenas for their own witnesses and other evidence, as long as they do not obstruct the proceedings or continue to withhold evidence. The Democrats are targeting a timeline that could see a vote on Articles of Impeachment in the Judiciary Committee and then the full House by Christmas, unless it is further derailed by continuing White House obstruction.

We cover the historic floor arguments today in favor of the resolution offered by Democrats from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Adam Schiff to several rank-and-file members, along with arguments against the resolution from members like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise.

Even as today's vote was carried out, both Democratic and Republican impeachment investigators from the Intelligence, Foreign Services and Oversight Committees continued taking depositions behind closed doors on Thursday, from witnesses testifying about Trump's quid pro quo pressure campaign against Ukraine, which is at the center of the current effort to consider official Articles of Impeachment against the President. Testifying in the House today was the top Russia expert on the White House's National Security Council, Tim Morrison, who was hand-picked by his immediate superior, the extremely right-wing then National Security Advisor John Bolton (who Democrats have also summoned to offer testimony in coming days.) Morrison reportedly corroborated accounts by other senior Administration officials that Trump did, in fact, personally push to withhold $391 million in Congressionally-allocated security assistance to Ukraine in exchange for a commitment from its new President to open an investigation into Joe Biden and a conspiracy theory that Ukraine (not Russia) attempted to manipulate the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

Finally today, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report with new evidence that Donald Trump is losing --- and losing badly --- the "War on Coal", the ominous sign for every state offered by California's wildfires and power blackouts, a very disturbing new study on sea level rise, and a number of major automakers joining Trump in his battle against California and a number of other major automakers on mileage and emissions standards...

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Right in the middle of today's BradCast, as we were discussing the very topic, Twitter announced that they would be blocking all political ads before 2020 from their massive social media site. As our guest today explains, however, Facebook, still refuses to even fact-check political ads purchased on their site, no matter how demonstrably false and misleading they are. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But first today, as fires rage up and down the great state of California due to climate change-fueled winds, heat, tinderbox dry conditions and preemptive power blackouts by private, for-profit utility companies who failed to heed early warnings, it's become clear that elections in the Golden State are now also endangered. Exactly one year out from next year's critical Presidential election, a number of large counties in the state, most notably here in Los Angeles (the nation's most populous voting jurisdiction) are moving to 100% unverifiable electronic touchscreen voting systems, rather than verifiable hand-marked paper ballots, and to e-pollbook systems at Voting Centers which rely on the Internet to establish voter eligibility before voting, rather than old school paper pollbooks.

Both new systems also require electricity for voters to be able to cast their votes at all. But what if power companies are forced, at this very same time next year, to once again preemptively shut down power to avoid the threat of utility line sparked wildfires? We have queried L.A.'s County Clerk and Registrar Recorder's office seeking information on what their backup plans are for such a situation, should it occur, next year. We'll let you know what, if anything, we hear back from Registrar Dean Logan or his office on an upcoming show.

Then, today's impeachment update includes a look at another one of the Republicans' latest attempts to find a way --- some way, any way! --- to defend Donald Trump's well-documented quid pro quo pressure campaign against Ukraine, as he withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in Congressionally-allocated military assistance in hopes of forcing Ukraine's President to commit to a probe of Trump's 2020 political rival Joe Biden. After eviscerating, on yesterday's program, the disingenuous cries from GOPers in recent days that the inquiry was unfair to the President for lack of "due process," today we highlight several of the attempts by a number of Republicans to simply deny the entire matter even exists. From Presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner's recent claim that the impeachment is little more than a "silly game" because the President "hasn't done anything wrong", to Rep. Mark Amodei (R-NV)'s refusal to answer even the simplest questions about Trump's documented behavior, to Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL)'s admission that he hadn't even attended a single impeachment inquiry hearing session, despite being a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, one of three that has been taking depositions behind closed doors from witnesses in the Ukraine affair over the past several weeks.

Then, with the Trump Campaign having purchased some 69,000(!) micro-targeted Facebook ads since May alone, many of them either entirely false or horrifically misleading (and amounting to more ads in total than all 18 current Democratic 2020 Presidential candidates combined!) we're joined by SUE WILSON, former Emmy and AP-award winning broadcast journalist turned media reform activist and founder of the Media Action Center, to discuss the controversial refusal by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to fact-check political ads purchased on his enormous social media site.

Wilson recently wrote at The BRAD BLOG about the controversy, sparked by Zuckerberg's refusal to block a clearly false Trump ad which CNN refused to air, and a subsequent false ad by Elizabeth Warren that she purposely ran at Facebook (and admitted was false) in order to press the point. That column, critiquing Zuckerberg's claim to be following local broadcaster ad standards (despite not being a broadcaster) as an important issue of "free speech", was published prior to some 200 employees of the social media giant signing a public letter this week calling for a number of the same reforms cited by Wilson in her recent op-ed.

"Personally, I'm offended by the idea that lying ads are the same as free speech," she tells me. "That is not free speech. It is paid speech, paid-to-misinform-people speech."

Wilson describes the breaking news about Twitter as "wonderful", adding: "It's kind of ironic that it's taking Facebook for us to start looking at these political ads that are allowed to lie to us. Not only should Facebook ban all political ads, but we should rewrite the laws so that broadcasters ban all political ads. This is a giant industry which promotes misinformation, and this is one very good way to start telling the truth to America."

Wilson debunks a number of Zuckerberg's claims about his ill-considered policy decision to allow all paid political propaganda ads by campaigns to run, no matter how many lies are included in them, and explains the arcane, nearly century-old federal requirements regarding which political ads broadcasters (versus cable channels and television networks) are allowed to prevent from running and which ones they may not censor, no matter how demonstrably false they may be.

Today's conversation with Wilson makes clear that Facebook needs to, as its own employees advise, rethink its current policy, at a minimum, before the platform is further "weaponized" by political campaigns with "destructive misinformation" that threatens our very democracy, even as concerns about political censorship by huge media outlets remains a concern. Hope you'll tune in for this important discussion in advance of next year's critical Presidential election!...

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On today's BradCast: We're at the point in the ongoing impeachment inquiry of Donald J. Trump when the facts against him have become so damning that he and his supporters in Congress are pretty much just tossing everything they can against the wall to see what, if anything sticks. [Audio link to show is posted below.]

But first today, some long-overdue very good news out of North Carolina, where a three-judge state court panel has determined the state's Republican-drawn Congressional maps to be an "extreme partisan gerrymander" and has ordered new maps before the 2020 elections. The court went so far as to state that no more Congressional elections may be run on the current maps, and if new ones aren't drawn in time for next year's March 3 primary election, the judges --- two Democrats and a Republican --- will postpone the primaries until they do.

The news is long-overdue, though hardly a surprise. North Carolina is the most divided of swing states, but the GOP-skewed maps have resulted in 3 Democrats and 10 Republicans in the state's Congressional delegation for the past decade. A federal appeals court already ruled the same map to be an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordered a new one drawn. But that ruling was ultimately over-ruled by the stolen Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year, when they declared in a 5 to 4 opinion that federal courts may not hear partisan gerrymandering cases. Only state courts may now do so, and now North Carolina's state court has done so. The same court ruled last month that the state's legislative districts were also drawn in violation of the state constitution and ordered new maps there as well.

Meanwhile, speaking of Congress, a White House national security official and decorated Iraq War vet offered startling testimony to House impeachment investigators on Tuesday, regarding Trump's scheme to withhold nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine unless the nation's President promised to investigate Joe Biden in advance of the 2020 election. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman serves as the top Ukraine expert on the White House's National Security Council (NSC) and is the first official to testify in the impeachment matter who actually listened live to Trump's infamous July 25 "I need a favor though" phone call with Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky.

According to Vindman's prepared opening statement obtained by the New York Times, the veteran Army officer and longtime civil servant was so alarmed by Trump's strong-arm tactics and withholding of military aid that, out of a "sense of duty", he alerted the top lawyer at the NSC --- twice --- in order to register internal objections about the policy, which he feared would "undermine national security."

"I am a patriot,” Vindman says in his testimony, "and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country irrespective of party or politics." Since news of his testimony broke on Monday night, rightwing media have been attacking the Purple Heart winner who was wounded by an IED in Iraq, as a traitor who must be working for Joe Biden or George Soros or Ukraine, after he fled the then Soviet-controlled country as a 3-year old with his parents in 1979.

Next, were joined by former Asst. U.S. Attorney turned George Washington University Law School professor RANDALL ELIASON to discuss the Republicans' continuing, nonsensical whining that the impeachment inquiry lacks "due process" for the President. Though each of their arguments toward that end have been dismantled by both facts and federal courts in recent days, they are still making the case which Eliason describes as "nonsense" in his latest Washington Post op-ed.

He explains why on today's program, noting the old "saying in Washington, that if you're arguing about process then you're losing," adding: "I think that's certainly the case here." Eliason, a longtime expert in white collar crime, government fraud and federal criminal law, responds to a number of different allegations being offered by Trump and his defenders, including the specious claim that there is no crime at the heart of Trump's quid pro quo pressure campaign against Ukraine.

He also offers his thoughts on the recent news --- and "incredibly suspicious" timing behind it --- that Trump's Attorney General Bill Barr has elevated the Dept. of Justice's probe into the origins of the 2016 investigation into Russian election meddling into a criminal investigation of some sort.

Finally, Desi Doyen joins us for the latest Green News Report on California's wind-drive wildfires, Massachusetts' new climate fraud lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, and Trump's new plan to steal Syria's oil in violation of international law. Also, as we close, late news and a few thoughts on the nation's largest private coal company, Murray Energy, declaring bankruptcy protection today. So much for Trump's promise to save the dirty coal industry. Now, what about the company's long-serving coal miners who may very well lose their pensions and health care under Trump-supporter Robert Murray's scheme to restructure his dying company?...

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With the avalanche of news over the weekend and right up until airtime, we've got nothing but news on today's show. Most of it emanates out of Congress in one way or another, though we take a short side-journey to debunk a major lie over the weekend by Donald Trump. Even that, however, is ultimately about his fate in Congress as well. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Among the stories covered on today's wildly news-packed BradCast...

• Former North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan died on Monday at age 66, after a three year battle with encephalitis. We share some thoughts on the distinguished record of public service from the state's first female Democratic Senator.;

• Former Democratic Rep. John Conyers died at the age of 90 on Sunday. The champion for civil rights and equal justice and longtime Chair of the House Judiciary Committee served 53-years in the House, making him the longest-serving African-American in Congressional history, before abruptly resigning in 2017 in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations which he refuted. He stated during his resignation that he believed he was unlikely to receive due process during the peak of the "#MeToo" era. We share a number of his many lasting accomplishments today, including his successful 15-year fight to adopt a national Martin Luther King Day holiday, a years-long effort he began just four days after the civil rights legends' assassination. (Conyers was the only candidate for Congress ever endorsed by MLK.) We also share a number of personal reflections on our years working with Conyers and his office in various ways at The BRAD BLOG, particularly during the darkest years of the George W. Bush Administration. (As mentioned on the program, here is the kind message he sent to the blog in 2005, and here is his guest blog from later that same year.);

• And, speaking of a lack of due process, rising-star freshman Rep. Katie Hill announced her own resignation from Congress on Sunday, less than a year after flipping the last Republican-controlled House seat in Los Angeles County in her 2018 election. The 32-year old California Democrat was granted a position on Leadership in the House and a plum position on the House Oversight Committee. However, allegations about an affair with a legislative staffer, which she denies, in violation of House rules was at the center of a complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee. The publication of illicit photographs and text messages attributed to the Congresswoman, which she charges were released by her estranged "abusive" husband, made her ability to fight the charges "untenable," according to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who praised Hill. Seen as a voice for Millennial voters, Hill describes the released photos as unlawful "revenge porn," while many supporters feel she should not have stepped down;

• On the GOP side of the aisle, the woes are far worse. Yet another senior Republican House member, Rep. Greg Walden announced on Monday that he will not seek re-election, even as the Oregon lawmaker was thought likely to be reelected to long held seat in . He is the 19th House Republicans, many of them senior members who are current and former committee chairs, to declare their intent to retire next year, all but conceding that Republicans have little or no chance of winning back the U.S. House majority in 2020;

• On Sunday, Donald Trump announced that a targeted mission by U.S. special forces succeeded in killing long-sought ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in northwestern Syria. After Trump's brief announcement, in which claimed that al-Baghdadi blew himself up with a suicide vest and "died like a dog", "crying", "whimpering" and "screaming", Trump went on to sing his own praises during an insane question and answer period with the press for a good 45 minutes. He claimed that the killing of al-Baghdadi was a much bigger deal than the killing of Osama bin Laden during the Obama Administration, and that he, unlike anybody else, had called for the killing of bin Laden long before the 9/11 terror attacks, in his book "The America We Deserve".

  Multiple fact-checks by multiple news outlets, however, detail that Trump did nothing of the kind in his book, where he barely referenced bin Laden in a single passage. He did not calling for him to be killed, though he did recognize him as "public enemy Number One," which also serves to debunk his own claim at the Sunday presser that "nobody had ever heard of Osama bin Laden" until 9/11. Trump's bizarre spectacle on Sunday, trumpeting his triumph and offering easily debunked false assertions, serves to add a question mark to his claims about al-Baghdaddi --- Russia's foreign ministry is dubious about the kill --- and otherwise serves to underscore what a horrible fact and character witness Donald Trump is for himself, given the ongoing impeachment inquiry he is now facing in the U.S. House;

• Speaking of which, former Deputy National Security Adviser Charles Kupperman, who worked directly under former NSA John Bolton, failed to show up for his deposition before House impeachment investigators today, after seeking a ruling from a federal judge as to whether he was legally required to comply with a House subpoena. His testimony, if and when it happens, is expected to underscore concerns that Bolton reportedly had about the quid pro quo pressure campaign Trump was running against Ukraine while withholding nearly $400 million in military assistance to the country in exchange for a promise from its President to investigate 2020 candidate Joe Biden and a rightwing conspiracy theory concerning Ukraine's involvement in the 2016 Presidential election;

• The Ukraine scandal left Vice President Mike Pence going to extraordinary lengths to avoid answering --- four times --- a simple question on Face the Nation on Sunday as to whether or not he knew about the strong-arm scheme before Trump's infamous July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as corroborated last week by the explosive testimony of top U.S. envoy to Ukraine Bill Taylor and, apparently, by others as well;

• All of which has left Republicans in the U.S. Senate wildly anxious about their own likely votes for or against Trump's removal from office in an impeachment trial, as they worry that independent voters may soon be turning against the President. According to a recent Reuters poll, they already are. Bigly.

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In my exclusive interview on today's BradCast with ANN RAVEL, former Chair of the Federal Elections Commission (FEC), we cover quite a bit of ground. From the reasons she has decided to run for office in California, to the apparent violations of federal election laws at the heart of the Trump impeachment inquiry into the quid pro quo with Ukraine, to the absurd campaign finance laws that allowed two now-indicted Rudy Giuliani associates to buy their way into the White House and directly effect U.S. foreign policy, to the Stormy Daniels affair, and to our shamefully broken FEC. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Ravel, who also previous served as Chair of California's Fair Political Practices Commission (or FPPC --- a more functional version of the FEC, but for the state of CA) and as Deputy Asst. Attorney General during the early years of the Obama Administration, is now running for State Senate in CA's 15th District, which includes San Jose in the Northern California Bay Area. After a lifelong career of public service, this is her first actual run for elected office.

We begin today's conversation with a few thoughts on the "local" issues regarding Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)'s preemptive blackouts for hundreds of thousands of customers to avoid their above ground power lines sparking wildfires. The bankrupt for-profit power utility, the state's largest, has been found liable for billions of dollars after several deadly recent fires, thanks to a failure to properly maintain or bury power lines amid increasingly warm and dry climate changed weather. We discuss whether the state should simply take over the company, following Gov. Gavin Newsom's scathing remarks on Thursday citing PG&E's many deadly failures, which he attributed to "dog-eat-dog capitalism and corporate greed meeting climate change."

Then it's on to many issues of national importance --- as highlighted of late by several matters related to Trump's ongoing impeachment inquiry --- regarding our broken FEC, which does not currently even have a quorum of Commissioners to either meet or vote as we head into the most critical election year in the history of our nation!

Ravel, who resigned as FEC Chair "in abrupt and dramatic fashion", according to the Mercury News in February of 2017, "declaring in a public resignation letter that the Federal Election Commission is on a gridlocked road to nowhere," offers her many insights on...

• Campaign finance laws apparently violated by Trump in soliciting a "thing of value" from a foreign entity. That impeachable and criminal violation of law is at the heart of Trump's attempted withholding of military aid and the strong-arming of Ukraine in exchange for dirt on the Biden family and the 2016 election. "There is no question whatsoever that there was a crime at the heart of this," Ravel tells me. "And I'm appalled, having also been at the Department of Justice at the beginning of the Obama Administration, what has become of a Department that is supposed to be doing justice for the people";

• Attorney General Bill Barr and the Dept. of Justices' failure to refer that matter, exposed by a whistleblower complaint, to the FEC for civil charges, as per a longstanding agreement between the two federal agencies. "That was the general understanding that always was the principal we operated by at the FEC";

• The FEC's lack of ability to take immediate action on such a charge, even if it had been referred to them, given the FEC's current lack of a quorum. "Had it been referred as a complaint, that would begin the statute of limitations. And there is a five-year statute. So at some point, assuming there are other Commissioners appointed, ever --- by McConnell, or the Democratic Minority Leader, and assuming that the President makes the nominations --- it could, in the coming five years, actually take some action";

• The obscene lack of campaign finance laws following Citizens United and other woeful "dark money" rulings from SCOTUS in recent years. Those High Court rulings have allowed men like Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman to run an influence operation to purchase access to the White House and Republican members of Congress and actually effect U.S. foreign policy in the Ukraine matter in exchange for a few hundred thousands dollars (of unknown origin) given to Trump's SuperPAC, to Giuliani, and to other Republican officials and organizations. While Parnas and Fruman were recently indicted, their charges were based on lying to officials about the source of the money. Had they simply used their own, as we also recently discussed with Brendan Fischer of Campaign Legal Center (which filed the original complaint to the FEC about the pair's donations last year), the influence operation would have been perfectly legal under current law, she confirms. "And that is a whole other problem with our campaign finance system...That will only be fixed if there is a different Supreme Court";

• Why isn't the case of Trump's hush-money payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels a bigger matter, given that Trump is known to have "directed" a campaign finance law felony conspiracy in making the payments, and then failed to report them to the FEC as required by law? To Ravel's consternation, Democrats in Congress, to date, have yet to make the matter a central point in their impeachment inquiry, and the short-handed FEC is otherwise unable to bring civil charges for Trump's willful violation of the law. She notes that fines levied against the Obama Campaign years ago were for far less serious violations of campaign finance law. "I often say, to much laughter, that I consider myself an expert in Stormy Daniels. I think this is scandalous. It is a campaign violation, without question, and it was being done at the behest of the President."

Those are just some of the many topics discussed on today's program with Ravel.

Finally, after some breaking news on a ruling late today by a federal judge ordering the DoJ to turn over unredacted grand jury testimony and other materials from the Robert Mueller probe to House Democrats working on impeachment, we take a quick look at the quickly snowballing fate of Rudy Giuliani, who finds himself in deeper and more embarrassing --- and potentially criminal --- straits by the hour. For now, Trump is standing by his man. But probably not for long. So, for a musical close to to the week, we turn to the inimitable Randy Rainbow, who recently threw Rudy entirely under a bus...

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On today's BradCast, Donald Trump needs a LOT of defending --- on virtually every front today. Lucky for him he's still got quite a few willing chumps, suckers and patsies willing to go down with his ship, from elected officials in Congress, to entire media networks invested in his criminal wingnuttery, to the best team of shameless lawyers his dirty money can buy. [Audio link to full show follows below.]

We kick off today with the remarkable argument offered by one his shameless attorneys in a federal appeals court in Manhattan, where a lower court judge recently ruled against Trump in his suit to block his longtime tax accountants at Mazars USA from turning over eight years of his tax and other financial documents as subpoenaed by state prosecutors. The probe is into payments made while Trump was in the White House to reimburse his then-attorney, now-convicted felon Michael Cohen for hush-money payoffs to porn star Stormy Daniels just prior to the 2016 Presidential election.

After the lower federal court judge virtually laughed the Trump attorneys out of court earlier this month, finding their argument that a President may not be indicted or even investigated at the federal OR state level to be "repugnant to the nation's governmental structure and constitutional values," Team Trump quickly appealed to the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which heard his argument today.

During today's hearing, the 3-judge federal panel, citing an infamous quip about Trump's ability to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing any supporters, queried Trump attorney William Consovoy on whether law enforcement officials would be Constitutionally allowed to investigate or do anything about it, if that literally occurred. The President's attorney said no, they could not. It's a hypothetical that I've raised several times in the past, in response to the absurd, Constitutionally-weak, decades-old DoJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion memo asserting that a sitting President may not be criminal indicted. That OLC memo, never tested in a court of law, though cited by Robert Mueller when he failed to bring criminal Obstruction of Justice charges against the President despite mountains of supporting evidence, will now almost certainly have its day before the Republican's stolen U.S. Supreme Court in this matter.

Then, the many desperate attempts made by Republicans last night and today to try and defend the President following Tuesday's "damning" testimony to House impeachment investigators by Bill Taylor, Trump's acting Ambassador to Ukraine. The veteran diplomat rocked D.C. with his meticulously detailed recounting of how he learned that Trump was personally behind the quid pro quo pressure campaign to withhold nearly $400 million in military assistance to Ukraine unless its recently elected President, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly promised an investigation into Joe Biden and the 2016 election.

With no clear messaging campaign to push back against the explosive charges at the heart of the ongoing impeachment inquiry, Republicans from the White House to Congress to Fox "News" have been flailing over the past 24 hours. The White House Press Secretary released a statement attempting to tar the longtime civil servant and military veteran Taylor as a "radical unelected bureaucrat waging war on the Constitution"; Trump's former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker took to Fox "News" to declare that "abuse of power" is not actually a crime; and Trump's far-right allies in the U.S. House stormed a secure room in the basement of the Capitol in a faux "riot" (reminiscent of the infamous "Brooks Brothers Riot" in Florida in 2000) to stall the planned impeachment deposition of Defense Department official Laura Cooper, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia. It is believed Cooper was to testify on the Pentagon's finding that the White House's withholding of Congressionally-allocated military assistance to Ukraine was, in fact, unlawful.

Some of Trump's defenders today have been arguing that Taylor's testimony highlighted that Zelensky didn't know about the withheld U.S. military assistance and, therefore, the Administration's pressure campaign could not possibly have amounted to a quid pro quo. That argument, however, was neatly eviscerated late today via an exclusive from Associated Press, reporting that Zelensky was aware of the White House pressure campaign and the potential of losing U.S. aid if he didn't play ball in Trump's political scheme, as early as May of this year.

Finally today, the stalled impeachment deposition was not the only hearing on Capitol Hill today. Desi Doyen joins us for some highlights from a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday in which Exxon Mobil scientists testified about the oil giant's knowledge, decades ago, that the use of their product was endangering humanity by warming the globe, even as Exxon invested millions in an "immoral" public relations campaign to convince the world that the science on the matter was in doubt...

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On today's BradCast, it was (another) very bad day for Donald Trump, but a good day for Hillary Clinton, if anybody was able to notice, thanks to another shameful weekend by the mainstream corporate media. [Audio link to show follows below.]

Our stable genius President didn't make it any easier on himself by beginning his day with a grotesquely offensively comparison of his ongoing Constitutional impeachment inquiry to "a lynching". But it got far worse for Trump (if nowhere near as bad as an actual lynching), when his top diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, testified before impeachment investigators in the U.S. House. The veteran diplomat and foreign policy elder statesman spelled out, in no uncertain terms --- based on copious, contemporaneous notes --- that Trump had personally tied the release of nearly $400 million in military assistance for Ukraine to a quid pro quo requirement that Ukraine's President publicly commit to investigating Trump's 2020 political rival Joe Biden.

The testimony, according to House impeachment investigators, directly contradicts Trump, numerous top White House officials, and a number of Trump-appointees who offered earlier testimony. It also included a 15-page opening statement from Taylor, accurately described as "damning" by a number of Democrats.

Then, while you may or may not have heard about the news which was buried deep inside weekend papers on Saturday, the State Department --- Trump's OWN State Department --- concluded its years-long probe of emails sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server. The report, sent to Congress with little or no fanfare from either the media or the Trump Administration, found "no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information" by Clinton or anybody else in the Department.

The faux "scandal" that Trump, his campaign and his party disingenuously used to help propel him to office in 2016 has officially ended with a barely imperceptible whimper. That, even as top White House officials from daughter Ivanka Trump to son-in-law Jared Kushner to Steve Bannon to Stephen Miller to Executive Agency heads like Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have all since been found to have carried out government business on private email servers and have even reportedly shared classified information on private texting apps.

We're joined today by longtime media analyst ERIC BOEHLERT to discuss not only the phony "BUT HER EMAILS!" scandal that Trump falsely described during his campaign as "worse than Watergate" --- and which even today results in "Lock her up!" chants at his unhinged campaign rallies --- but the corporate mainstream media's dreadful failure and stunning "whitewash" of its own role in colluding with the Trump Campaign by constantly over-hyping the baseless charges in the run up to the fateful 2016 Presidential election.

"The email story does not exist without the Beltway press," Boehlert tells me, noting their coverage of the end of State Department's probe on page 16 (NYT) and 6 (WaPo) on Saturday. "Most of the network newscasts never even reported on the story over the weekend.

"This email story ran from March 2015 to November 2016," he rails. "This story rolled for months and months. If you take one peek, in September 2015, on average, if you look at the Washington Post --- print and online --- they were publishing two Clinton email stories every day for the month of September 2015. We forget how bad it was. Pick your adjective. Mind-boggling. Numbing. Irresponsible. Reckless. And what's important [is] to not let this happen again."

But, of course, it will, especially given the lack of contrition for this failure evidenced by the story's coverage this weekend. "These are smart people," he says. "They play dumb on an epic scale." Boehlert aptly compares the media's failure in becoming "hugely investigated in this story from the get to" to their similarly reckless coverage of the Bush Administration's claim that Iraq had WMD in the run-up to our disastrous war there beginning in 2003. He also goes on to offer warnings about the Administration's schemes to use the very same playbook in 2020.

"If you're concerned that we're going to have a repeat because the press not only refuses to learn any lessons from 2016, but doesn't even admit there are any lessons to be learned --- look at Joe Biden and the Ukraine. It's happening again. Not as bad as the other, because Trump has inadvertently impeached himself by publicly confessing to colluding with a foreign power. But we saw it in the beginning of this story, a lot of headlines, "Trump and Biden both tainted by Ukraine'. No, they're not. Let's not do that," he pleads.

We discuss why this seems to happen over and over (remember how the media fell for the John Kerry "Swiftboat scandal" in the 2004 campaign?) when it comes to the media's coverage of Democrats, what the media should have done both in 2016 and today, and what Americans can do to help avoid being taken for another predictable ride in 2020.

Finally, were joined by Desi Doyen for our latest Green News Report as Trump's Energy Secretary calls it quits, Arizona looks toward a future without water, and ExxonMobil goes on trial for climate fraud. All while the GNR creeps toward our 1000th episode and we gently ask for your support of unabashedly independent, fearless and accurate news over your public airwaves via BradBlog.com/Donate.

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The outlook for Donald Trump appears grimmer by the day, but the systemic institutional problems that brought him to office and have now helped bring him to the brink of impeachment are of even larger concern on today's BradCast. [Audio link to today's program is posted below.]

First up, the latest in the House's ongoing impeachment inquiry, as the worm may --- emphasis on 'may' --- be turning, following Trump's Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney's nationally-televised admission that the Administration withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in Congressionally-allocated military aide to Ukraine in an effort to strong-arm the former Soviet nation into investigating Democrats and the 2016 election. Mulvaney's "confession", as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described it, of a pretty clear quid pro quo has knocked several Republicans off their footing, as they struggle to find ways to defend the President's actions.

A number of Congressional Republicans in both the House and the Senate now appear troubled by the admission (which Mulvaney attempted to walk back just hours later) and it has led Ohio's former Republican Governor John Kasich to concede on Friday that he now supports the impeachment and removal of Trump based on the latest information.

Then, we're joined by BRENDAN FISCHER, Associate Counsel at the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) in Washington D.C., which filed a formal complaint with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) in July of 2018, detailing serious campaign fiance law violations by Rudy Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The Soviet-born Ukrainian-Americans were dramatically arrested and indicted at Dulles International Airport just over a week ago by federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York, as they were attempting to flee the country with one way tickets to Vienna. Parnas and Fruman were charged [PDF] with using a fake shell corporation to illegally funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars from an unknown source to Republicans, including Trump's America First Action SuperPAC, in a successful effort to gain political power.

They also paid some $500 thousand to Giuliani --- who is working, for free, as Trump's personal lawyer --- and donated to Texas Congressman Pete Sessions, all in an effort to act on the conspiracy theories used by Trump and Giuliani to strong-arm Ukraine. As Fischer lays out in a piece at CLC detailing the backstory of the arrests of the two Trump donors, "Working closely with the president’s personal attorney, Giuliani, their efforts touched two branches of U.S. government, two presidential administrations in Ukraine, at least five countries, numerous individuals in and out of government, and, now, an impeachment inquiry into the U.S. President himself."

"The big giving opened a lot of doors," Fischer tells me. "It got them into political fundraisers where they rubbed shoulders with President Trump's inner circle. That money allowed them to build and deepen a relationship with Giuliani. And they were able to leverage that relationship in order to advance this narrative about Ukraine --- the same narrative about Ukraine that President Trump espoused in his call with Ukrainian President Zelensky, which has now led to this impeachment inquiry."

In other words, despite the ongoing mysteries behind the true source of their funding, they got a lot of bang for their campaign finance bucks used to buy influence with GOP officials and effect actual U.S. foreign policy in the bargain. But, as Fischer explains on today's program, had they not used a phony corporation to do it with someone else's money (and lied about that to the FEC), everything they did appears to be largely perfectly legal under U.S. campaign finance laws! Yes, apparently if you have enough money, you are allowed to use it to buy a major political influence operation that can directly effect U.S. foreign and domestic policy, even out of the White House.

Fischer explains how the dark money operation --- which didn't even include all that much money --- is still being unraveled by federal investigators as the probe (which could even nab Giuliani) continues and, perhaps even more importantly, how it may represent just be the tip of a campaign finance iceberg that illustrates the dangers of our disgraceful campaign finance laws in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling in 2010.

"The indictment makes clear that the purpose of the political contributions that Parnas and Fruman made was to buy access and to build influence with powerful political officials in order to advance their own personal financial interests," says Fischer. "But that is not what they are being indicted for. They were indicted because they laundered the funds through shell corporations and then lied about it." So, had they actually been rich dudes who used their own money for this scheme, it would have been just fine? "Yes, it would have been just a beautiful expression of their First Amendment right to free speech."

“This indictment of Parnas and Fruman is really an indictment of our big money political system. It lays out very clearly how powerful political figures operate on this cash-for-access practice. It's become entirely commonplace for wealthy political actors to buy their way into Congressional offices and into the President's inner circle. If you don't have money, your voice does not get heard in our democracy.”

Finally, longtime good government watchdog Fischer also rings in on Mulvaney's stunning announcement that the Administration has officially selected Trump National Doral resort in Miami, Florida as the location for next year's G-7 Summit of world leaders, despite the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution which strictly bans payments to the President from foreign officials --- a point that even Fox "News" (well, at least some there) appear to have a problem with as well...

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Our long road toward catching up with a month's worth of news continues on today's BradCast, with voting news out of Battleground Ohio, the latest on Trump's impeachment and chaos in Syria (and the thing that ties them together), as well as the latest environmental and climate news after a month away. [Audio link to show posted at end of summary.]

First up today: Some surprisingly good news for voters out of Ohio! The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that it comes, at least in part, thanks to the state's new Republican Sec. of State Frank LaRose, who had the good sense to check with voting rights groups beforewrongly purging some 40,000 perfectly active and eligible voters from the rolls who should never have been flagged for removal in the first place! Most of his fellow Republicans are likely not happy about that.

Then, we're joined by the great HEATHER DIGBY PARTON of Salon and Hullabaloo to discuss the latest impeachment news and Trump's deadly withdrawal of U.S. troops from northern Syrian.

The impeachment inquiry over Trump's attempt to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for its President's trumped-up state investigation of Joe Biden and the 2016 election continues to gain steam, with half a dozen or more current and former Executive Branch officials now lining up to testify --- and not in favor of Trump or his lackey lawyer Rudy Giuliani --- to Congressional investigators. Trump's former Russia and Europe expert, Fiona Hill, testified for some ten hours on Monday, reportedly citing Giuliani's shadow foreign policy schemes meant to undermine U.S. foreign policy and personally enrich the President in some way.

According to reports of her deposition, her superior on the National Security Counsel, former National Security Advisor John Bolton, was so alarmed by Giuliani's efforts he described the former NYC Mayor turned Fox 'News' conspiracist as a "hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up". Bolton reportedly tried to warn White House attorneys about Giuliani's many attempts to undermine U.S. Ukraine policy. Bolton himself, the unlikeliest of heroes in this shameful saga, may soon be called to testify to Congress in coming days, along with a long list of other State, Defense and National Security officials who now seem eager to defy the White House's strategy of denying both documents and testimony in the House Democrats' impeachment inquiry. "They're defying the White House telling them not to go testify," Parton observes, "That is a change. That is different than what we've seen. Suddenly that stonewall is crumbling."

We also discuss Parton's reasonable theory as to why this matter has finally resulted in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi giving full permission to her caucus to proceed with impeachment, where clear evidence of felony obstruction of justice from Robert Mueller's report and Trump's hush-money payoffs to porn stars to help win the 2016 Presidential election did not. "This is the same kind of stuff that Trump was accused of [in 2016], that we all suspected him of doing, colluding with a foreign government to sabotage his rival's campaign. Here he is [with Ukraine] doing it in real time. I think that's really what has made the difference."

In not-at-all-unrelated news, Parton goes on to discuss her latest Salon column in which she details how Trump's Syria pullout appears to be anything but an impulsive decision after a recent phone call with Turkish President Erdogan, as many in the media are still describing the disastrous move. She explains how the U.S. abandonment of our Kurdish allies with the U.S. withdrawal of troops from Northern Syria is of a piece with Trump's feckless Ukraine policy. In both cases, she explains, there is one unavoidable fact in common --- even for those of us who may not be Russia hawks: both actions, like so many other controversial policies of the Trump Administration, are in the clear and direct interest of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Finally, we close today with the long-awaited return of the Green News Report, which we had been forced to suspend over the past month due to my family emergency. Somehow or another, Desi Doyen manages to fit in a month's worth of green news into the latest GNR in just six minutes. Buckle up --- and stay that way!...

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Desi and I are back on today's BradCast, after an unscheduled month-long hiatus as my otherwise very healthy 80-year old dad suffered a sudden and major stroke in mid-September before ultimately passing away a few weeks later. [That's him on the left with me in the photo. Audio for today's program is posted below.]

We share a few memories of Harvey Friedman at the top of today's show (there are many more here) and a couple of very important lessons learned both before and after his death that will almost certainly be of use to you and your family! The two booklets I mentioned on air today are Five Wishes (available via AgingWithDignity.org) and the Advance Health Care Directive (available via PrepareForYourCare.org). Both are likely to be wildly helpul to your family, should you or they find themselves in a similar situation. Please consider clicking on those links when you find some time.

Then, we're joined by the great NICOLE SANDLER of The Nicole Sandler Show who filled in for us, with absolutely no notice, over the past month (with some occasional help from Angie Coiro along the way) even as she did her own show as well nearly every damned day! Desi and I cannot thank her enough. Though we try to today.

Since Nicole filled in for us during what was clearly a very very slow news month, she gets us caught up on what we missed while we were "gone", from the Impeachment process now under way in the House in response to Trump's strong-arming of the Ukrainian President for (apparently false) dirt on Joe Biden and the 2016 election; to Trump's disturbing sudden withdraw of U.S. troops in the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Syria (and the death and chaos and escaped ISIS detainees and new deal cut between our previously-allied and now-abandoned Kurds and the Russian-supported Syrians in its wake); to the corporate media still falling for Trump's B.S. on everything from his "new impeachment attorney", former Rep. Trey Gowdy (who doesn't appear to have been hired after all) to his new trade deal with China (which may not be a deal after all); to the latest in the 2020 race for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

After a month off the grid, we're wading gently back in today and this week with a little help from our friends. My thanks to so many of you for your kind words while we were gone, and our thanks to all of our listeners and affiliate stations for tolerating our unexpected and unprecedented absence! Hope you'll enjoy today's program as we gently get back into the swing of things...

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It's NICOLE SANDLER back with you again today, guest hosting the BradCast. The good news is that Brad and Desi will return on Monday, so you'll just have to deal with me for one more day.

As has been the case the entire time Brad's been gone, the news is non-stop. We begin the show, as usual, with the latest. Then I check in to commiserate with our UK Correspondent- journalist, author and broadcaster DENIS CAMPBELL.

The new term of the Supreme Court convened on Monday, coinciding with the release of a new book, The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, from our guest THOM HARTMANN.

Download MP3 or listen online below...