Nancy Pelosi responds to the White House’s petulant “we won’t we won’t WE WON’T” letter yesterday:

“For a while, the President has tried to normalize lawlessness.  Now, he is trying to make lawlessness a virtue.  The American people have already heard the President’s own words – ‘do us a favor, though.’  The President’s actions threaten our national security, violate our Constitution and undermine the integrity of our elections.  The White House letter is only the latest attempt to cover up his betrayal of our democracy, and to insist that the President is above the law.

“This letter is manifestly wrong, and is simply another unlawful attempt to hide the facts of the Trump Administration’s brazen efforts to pressure foreign powers

We won’t we won’t we WON’T.

In a performatively outraged eight-page letter to the House of Representatives on Tuesday afternoon, the White House announced that it would not cooperate with the body’s impeachment inquiry under the circumstances in which it’s being conducted. Or, well, ever.

The tone of the letter, attributable to White House counsel Pat Cipollone, is shouty, reading as a lightly lawyered digest of the president’s tweets. It accuses House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic chairmen of three investigating committees of violating “the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent” in the way they’ve conducted the inquiry.

And compare Trump, who honors Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent in every way … Read the rest

Apparently there was much scrambling.

Aides to President Trump scrambled in the aftermath of his July 25 phone call with Ukraine’s leader — both to alert lawyers of their concerns and to contain the damage, new CNN reporting shows.

At least one National Security Council official alerted the White House’s national security lawyers about the concerns, three sources familiar with the matter said. Those same lawyers would later order the transcript of the call moved to a highly classified server typically reserved for code-word classified material.

Wait a second. What kind of “concerns” are we talking about? Concerns about the criminality and treachery of Trump’s attempt to extort campaign interference from the president of Ukraine? Or concern about the … Read the rest

So, is this the day it all comes crashing down? Or is it the day Trump seizes absolute power, and troops fill the streets?

I don’t think the second is very likely, because I don’t think Trump has that much ability to make everyone jump when he says jump any more.

But I hope his opponents hurry up and do something about this defiance of a subpoena problem.

US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland has been told by the State Department to not appear this morning before the House.

His attorney Robert Luskin said Tuesday morning he has no choice but to comply. “He is a sitting Ambassador and employee of State and is required to follow