Midnight in Washington

Adam Schiff starts this with the question of why Republicans should have voted to remove Donald Trump from the presidency. Continues with his own history joining it back to the initial question with a court case against Richard Miller. He describes his work under an attorney in Czechoslovakia (related to Vladimir Merciar's messaging), describing the breakup as "the velvet divorce".

Quotes:

  • If you are going to live in Southern California, why would anyone choose to live anywhere but the beach?
  • From chapter 6 - in November 2014, North Korea had hacked Sony Pictures before the studio released a film, The Interview - Wikipedia lists several doubts
  • Several pages cover the first Trump/Russia investigation - one such quote:

    The air of scandal around Nunes was now palpable. It seemed to me that his whole world was caving in, and not even his Republican colleagues wanted to defend him. Everywhere he went, he was trailed by a phalanx of reporters shouting questions about the "Midnight Run," and I would see him in the corridors below the Capital hurrying to escape the press, looking beleaguered and afraid.

  • From an interview with Dan Coats concerning a call with Trump Here is the president of the United States sitting in an empty White House. His wife is in New York. His family is in New York. On a Saturday night, that has to be a lonely thing to do
  • Several pages are spent quoting his "I don't think it's OK" speech, however hearing and seeing it from video carries more impact
  • Concerning Trump's call to the Ukrainian president:

    I settled on what was troubling me: Zelensky wasn't surprised by Trump's request. Nothing Trump asked for took him aback, and he never once asked what these investigations were really about. He knew. Someone had prepared Zelensky for exactly what the president would be asking.

    The mysterious coach was Rudy Giuliani.

  • Storming the SCIF:

    The double doors were flung open and a cascade of GOP rabble-rousers clamored into the room demanding to be included... They had stormed past the security guard and into the bunker, bringing their cellphones with them, an extremely serious breach of the SCIF security protocols.

    From the pictures in the news, Rodney Davis was at the back of the group. It seems to me that this provided the permission structure for the January 6 insurrection of the capital.

  • After the first impeachment: What differentiated Trump's circumstances from Nixon wasn't the absence of a recording, but the presence of Fox News and a whole information ecosystem that sustained Trump no matter how corrupt his conduct.
  • During the Ukrainian investigation:

    In her crisp British cadences, Fiona Hill had just told the Republicans on our committee - and not only them but the president as well - that they were full of it, and even worse, they were pushing out Kremlin talking points and doing Putin's bidding.

  • Schiff expresses a level of Democratic self-awareness that may be missing in some echo chambers:

    During one of (Senator) Romney's 2012 presidential debates, Obama had attacked him over his position on Russia. In a mocking tone, Obama said: "When you were asked 'What's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America?' you said Russia. Not al-Qaeda, you said Russia. ... In the time that had since passed, Romney's views of the continuing threat from Russia had proven far more prescient than Obama's