Donald Trump has managed to succeed politically via an impressively shameless ability to obfuscate and engage in fabulism of the highest order. Between the impeachment inquiry and slow-moving wheels of justice, the wall of alternative reality he's constructed appears to be crumbling.
We now know that on the Ukraine front, besides digging for dirt on Joe Biden, Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani sought to scare up "evidence" that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the 2016 election interference, a totally debunked conspiracy theory.
And Wednesday night, the FBI arrested and Manhattan federal prosecutors indicted two Giuliani associates, Soviet-born American citizens Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, on campaign finance charges. The two allegedly laundered money from a Russian individual into at least one Trump-connected super PAC. They also contributed to the campaign of Texas GOP Rep. Pete Sessions _ who, at their behest, urged the firing of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. She was fired, clearing the way for someone Trumpier.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reports that, at the urging of Giuliani, Trump previously tried to get then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to pressure the Justice Department to drop a DOJ criminal case (run by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara) against a Giuliani client, an Iranian-Turkish gold trader.
Tillerson pushed back, but the pattern of Trump interfering in criminal proceedings for personal gain is by now impossible to ignore.
Thursday afternoon, Trump said he "didn't know" Parnas and Fruman, but he "hoped" Giuliani doesn't get indicted. That fits another pattern: Tossing acolytes overboard when the water gets choppy.
