Sarah Chayes in the Atlantic on Hunter Biden’s legal and socially acceptable corruption:

The whistle-blower scandal that has prompted the fourth presidential impeachment process in American history has put a spectacle from earlier this decade back on display: the jaw-smacking feast of scavengers who circled around Ukraine as Viktor Yanukovych, a Moscow-linked kleptocrat, was driven from power. Ukraine’s crisis was the latest to energize a club whose culture has come to be treated as normal—a culture in which top-tier lawyers, former U.S. public officials, and policy experts (and their progeny) cash in by trading on their connections and their access to insider policy information—usually by providing services to kleptocrats like Yanukovych. The renewed focus on Ukraine raises jangling questions: How

The Washington Post reports:

The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said.

As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations,

At the Atlantic, Elaina Plott reports on a phone chat with Giuliani:

Even among the president’s closest allies, Giuliani is now the subject of scorn. When I reached him by phone this morning, following House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s release of the full whistle-blower complaint at the center of the Ukraine scandal, he was, put simply, very angry.

“It is impossible that the whistle-blower is a hero and I’m not. And I will be the hero! These morons—when this is over, I will be the hero,” Giuliani told me.

“I’m not acting as a lawyer. I’m acting as someone who has devoted most of his life to straightening out government,” he continued, sounding out of breath. “Anything I

Woman’s Place UK has a statement on what happened around that meeting in Brighton Monday which they want us to share widely:

On Monday 23rd September, Woman’s Place UK held its 24th public meeting in two years: A Woman’s Place is at Conference. It was timed to coincide with the Labour Party’s annual conference and to publicise our manifesto which contains demands we believe would significantly improve the quality of women’s lives, as well as address the structural oppression and discrimination that we face.

Members of our local organising team liaised closely with the venue and made sure they were fully informed about our campaign, and that previous meetings had been protested.

We also liaised with the local police

Reuters tells us:

A senior lawyer called on Tuesday for the top United Nations human rights body to investigate evidence that China is murdering members of the Falun Gong spiritual group and harvesting their organs for transplant.

Hamid Sabi called for urgent action as he presented the findings of the China Tribunal, an independent panel set up to examine the issue, which concluded in June that China’s organ harvesting amounted to crimes against humanity.

Beijing has repeatedly denied accusations by human rights researchers and scholars that it forcibly takes organs from prisoners of conscience and said it stopped using organs from executed prisoners in 2015.

Apparently China offers organ transplants to overseas patients customers at a very stiff price … Read the rest

The very sane and normal president of the US.

… Read the rest

One particularly crisp summary, from Susan Hennessey:

Just to clarify what is going on here, the White House appears to be engaged in massive, systemic abuse of the classification system and underlying presidential authorities in order to cover up egregious wrongdoing including impeachable conduct. This is a historic scandal.

Also self-incriminating. They can’t use any “we didn’t realize it was wrong” defense because they hid the records. Watergate all over again: chorus: It’s not the crime it’s the cover-up.… Read the rest

And in another part of the forest…Benjamin Wittes:

And we come to the part of the story where the Kremlin literally pays the president’s lawyer…

TPM:

As the House prepares to consider whether to impeach President Trump over an unprecedented plot to turn Ukraine into an opposition research factory, his personal attorney and associate Rudy Giuliani has decided to keep busy: he is scheduled to attend a pro-Russian conference in Armenia next month with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And to be paid for it, according to Wittes and others, but I haven’t seen a journalistic source for that so far.… Read the rest

Oy.

Trump is begging the NRA to help him not be impeached, and the NRA is demanding more fanatical support for More and More Guns as the price. It’s hard to know which half of that sentence is the most disgusting.

Susan Hennessey:

The President of the United States trading legislation the American public is demanding to stop the weekly slaughter of gun violence in exchange for money for his personal legal defense.

Talking Points Memo:

The squeeze is on.

With President Donald Trump facing impeachment, the NRA is reportedly looking to leverage the political moment to lock in his opposition to new gun control measures.

Trump and NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre met Friday to discuss the the

NBC News looks into the facts about Bidens and Ukraine and money.

As vice president, the elder Biden lead the U.S. diplomatic efforts to bolster the country’s fledgling democracy and root out corruption after mass protests ousted the country’s pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Biden spoke frequently with Ukrainian leaders and in April 2014, he traveled to Ukraine, bringing financial support and warning the Russians — who had recently annexed Crimea — to stop intervening in Ukrainian sovereignty.

That all seems good. But the next paragraphs…

In May 2014, Hunter Biden was hired by a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, as a board member reportedly making $50,000 a month. He stopped working with the company earlier this year.

The company

The Trump gang at the UN:

The Trump administration is calling on U.N. member nations to oppose efforts to promote access to abortion internationally, a move immediately criticized by reproductive rights groups seeking greater access to the services globally.

At a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Monday, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar spoke on behalf of the U.S. and more than a dozen other countries stating that abortion is not an international human right.

Well he’ll never need an abortion, will he.

Azar was joined by representatives from countries including Brazil, Poland and Iraq in making the statement, which was signed by a total of 19 countries including the United

Apparently Trump deleted a tweet from today. Good thing people kept records. Malcolm Nance:

How do you get @realDonaldTrump to violate the Presidential records act and delete a tweet? Mock him with his own words! You’re welcome America! #Impeachment

Also:

Wow Trump deleted this tweet

Too incriminating even for him?

Our country is at stake, and that’s why he has to go.… Read the rest

Slate:

One thing Maguire was firm on was reiterating that the still-anonymous whistleblower was judged to be “credible” by the intelligence community’s inspector general and that he deserved the full protection and security afforded to him by the law. “That individual works for me, therefore it is my job to make sure I support and defend that person. … I think the whistleblower did the right thing,” said Maguire.

Turns out his boss has a different view on the whistleblowing process! From the Los Angeles Times’ account of Trump’s remarks Thursday to a group of U.S. diplomatic staffers in New York (audio here):

“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the

Dragging myself away from the car crash for just a minute…these wonderful people who rule over us are gleefully taking free school lunches away from children who need them.

The Washington Post reported this week that President Donald Trump’s proposal to strip food stamps from three million Americans could cause a half-million children to lose free school meals “since food stamp eligibility is one way students can qualify for the lunches.”

“Trump is depriving 500,000 kids of their school lunches for no damn reason — even after 139 members of Congress warned him not to,” Sanders tweeted, referring to a letter he sent along with House and Senate lawmakers last month condemning the food stamps rule as “unconscionable.”

…

The New York Times, weirdly, chose to report information on the whistleblower…no doubt right around the time Trump was screaming threats at said whistleblower. Then it tweeted its explanation for doing so.

Dean Baquet, our executive editor, explains why we chose to publish the information about the whistle-blower http://nyti.ms/2loU4p0

That may be, but given that the subject of the whistleblower’s complaint is a raving maniac, it’s not the most urgent consideration.

(Mind you, I mentioned the chit-chat about Coats, but then I’m not the New York Times.)… Read the rest