Cancer on the Presidency: Military aid to Ukraine was definitely stalled to extract a political promise from the president of that country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, according to a transcript of testimony by the senior envoy to Ukraine released by the House Intelligence Committee.

  William Taylor, who testified to that privately, is one of three officials scheduled to speak in the first open testimony before the intelligence committee in impeachment hearings next week. Also scheduled are George Kent, a senior diplomat who oversees policy in the region, and Marie Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine who was removed because she balked at carrying out the President’s parallel foreign policy in Ukraine.

  And just breaking today, The NY Times and Washington Post report that President Trump asked Attorney Gen. William Barr to say no laws were broken in Trump’s phone call with the president of Ukraine, and Barr refused. Trump tweeted, “The LameStream Media, which is The Enemy of the People, is working overtime with made up stories in order to drive dissension and distrust!”

   But ….. back to Taylor, who said in his testimony that it was the idea of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to withhold aid until Ukraine promised to investigate Biden and his son, Hunter. He said Giuliani made it clear he was representing the interests of the President.

  In his original testimony Taylor said getting Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to commit to the investigate was a “nightmare scenario.” He said, “The nightmare was he would mention those two, take all the heat from that, get himself in big trouble in this country and probably in his country as well, and the security assistance would not be released. That was the nightmare. The Russians loving it.” 

  Amazingly, Taylor testified that President Trump’s flippant comment in August about buying Greenland from Denmark stalled movement on Ukraine. He said National Security Adviser John Bolton was trying to get the hold on Ukraine aid lifted, but the Greenland question was taking up valuable time.

  This was the exchange with California Rep. Adam Schiff. 

Taylor: “I think this was also about the time of the Greenland question, about purchasing Greenland, which took up a lot of energy in the NSC”

Schiff: “Okay. That’s disturbing for a whole different reason.”

Taylor: “Different story. Different story.”

Get Me Roger Stone: President Trump was personally involved in efforts to obtain stolen Democratic Party emails during the 2016 campaign, according to evidence submitted in the trial of his friend and associate, Roger Stone.

  Telephone records suggest that Trump spoke to Stone repeatedly during the time when Stone was trying to get the stolen emails from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Prosecutors conceded that they did not know what Stone and Trump talked about, but that the timing coincided with the theft and release of the Democratic emails. The phone calls are the first concrete evidence that Trump was involved.

Sore Loser: Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has refused to concede Tuesday’s election to his Democratic opponent and is calling for a re-canvass of the voting machines. Democratic candidate, Andy Beshear, claimed victory with a lead of about only 5,100 votes.

  Bevins’ campaign manager said in a statement, “The people of Kentucky deserve a fair and honest election.” 

  Beshear said he would push ahead with naming cabinet members and filling a new administration.

  In Virginia, where Democrats will control the legislature next year, Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam said he plans to push for healthcare, decriminalization of marijuana, gun control, criminal justice reform, and early childhood education.

The Bulletin Board: Former Alabama senator and US Attorney General Jeff Sessions is running for the Senate again. President Trump blamed Sessions for allowing the two-year Russia investigation. — Two employees of Twitter have been arrested and charged with acting as spies for Saudi Arabia. They are accused of gathering information on US citizens. — Ford Motors rolled out a fully-electric Mustang with 900 horsepower, but sorry, it’s a concept car and not for sale.

Friends Like These: Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham said he doesn’t think the Trump administration could have pulled off the so-called “quid pro quo” stick up with Ukraine because they are too incompetent. He said, “What I can tell you about the Trump policy toward the Ukraine is that it was incoherent. They seemed incapable of forming a quid pro quo.”

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