Document Dump: A cache of documents released last night by the State Department reveals repeated contact last March between Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. The documents were released under court order. 

  Although Pompeo has dodged and remained silent, the documents back up testimony by Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland that senior administration officials were in the loop on Trump and Giuliani’s efforts to get Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son. 

  Among those involved in digging direct was Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee who’s been claiming the whole impeachment investigation is a fraud. He has not revealed this himself.

  Memos refer to a so-called “Black Book” containing the names of people receiving kickbacks from Ukraine, including Biden’s son Hunter. More about the Black Book later.

  According to the documents, two men deeply involved were Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Giuliani associates who have since been indicted. Parnas has indicated a willingness to cooperate with investigators.

The Ukraine Conspiracy: President Trump was on Fox by phone again yesterday pushing the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election and is holding the Democrats’ campaign server with damaging evidence on it. He said, “They gave the server to CloudStrike or whatever it’s called and a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian and I still want to see that server.”

  Trump claims that it’s not the Russians who tried to make him President, but the Ukrainians who tried to stop him. He said, “Don’t forget, Ukraine hated me. They were after me in the election. They wanted Hillary Clinton to win. And when I won, all of a sudden they became so nice.”

  Fiona Hill, the foreign affairs specialist who worked for the National Security Council, testified in Congress that “This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

  Nonetheless, Republican Rep. Devin Nunez continued to push the Ukraine conspiracy in statements this past week. He said, “In these depositions and hearings, Republicans have cited numerous indications of Ukrainians meddling in the 2016 elections to oppose the Trump campaign.” 

  Nothing that they’ve been able to prove and it has not been backed up by US intelligence agencies. 

  Nunez has mentioned the so-called “black ledger.” The conspiracy theory has it that Ukrainians fabricated a “black ledger” implicating former Trump campaign director Paul Manafort in corruption while he was a well-paid advisor to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to create suspicion when the Trump campaign hired Manafort. Of course, Yanukovych stole millions, paid Manafort millions, and was a toady to the Russians. Manafort is in prison. 

  The conspiracy theory holds that at the same time, Ukrainian embassy officials were working with Democratic consultant Alexandra Chalupa to feed incriminating information about Trump and Manafort to reporters and intelligence agencies. CIA Director John Brennan then supposedly used the information to trick the FBI into opening its Russia investigation.

  It’s a complex web they’ve woven.

   The Clinton campaign, meanwhile — this all according to the conspiracy theory — was using the firm Fusion GPS to produce a lurid intelligence report about Trump that was made public only after the election. That’s what’s known as the Christopher Steele Dossier. All of this, they say, resulted in a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign.

  None of this … none of it … has been proven or backed up, and certainly not by the Republicans who spout it. CrowdStrike is not owned by Ukrainians. The FBI did examine the Democratic server and Ukrainians don’t have it. US intelligence agencies confirmed without doubt that the Russians hacked the DNC server. Special Counsel Robert Mueller proved that Trump associates played footsie with the Russians.

After Action Report: Several news organizations are reporting that the Inspector General will report that there were some errors and a touch of wrongdoing in the initial Russia investigation, but that the FBI was not motivated by political bias. The report does say that an FBI lawyer wrongly altered an email used to obtain a warrant for electronic surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page.

  The President claims his campaign was illegally spied upon. The IG report is expected to be released December 9^th.

Speak: Former National Security Adviser John Bolton, the missing link in the impeachment hearings, announced yesterday that his personal Twitter account had been blocked by the White House since his resignation. He tweeted, “We have now liberated the Twitter account, previously suppressed unfairly in the aftermath of my resignation as National Security Advisor.”

  Bolton wrote as if he can’t speak about President Trump and Ukraine without Twitter. He said, “Since resigning as National Security Advisor, the White House refused to return access to my personal Twitter account. Out of fear of what I may say?”

  Bolton might be sitting on information that could end the Trump presidency. He can say what he wants any time. He was asked to testify in the impeachment inquiry and refused. 

The Bulletin Board: Billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has yet to declare himself a candidate, reserved $30 million of television airtime yesterday for a campaign blitz in two dozen states. — A federal judge has ordered Iran to pay Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian and his family nearly $180 million in damages for keeping him imprisoned and torturing him for 18 months. — A New Jersey woman yesterday was found guilty of vehicular homicide in the first application of a 2012 law that places texting while driving on par with drunken driving. Alexandra Mansonet was texting about dinner when she hit another car that then struck and killed a young woman out for a walk. 

The Obit Page: Character actor Michael J. Pollard, who rose to fame in the 1967 “Bonnie and Clyde” as the dimwitted accomplice CW Moss, died in Los Angeles at age 80. In a career that started in the 1950s, he played likable but slow characters.

  Pollard plated Jerome Krebs, cousin to the memorable goof Maynard G. Krebs on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,” and Virgil, cousin to Deputy Barney Fife on “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Crime Beat: Iggy Azalea and boyfriend Playboi Carti were robbed of $300,000 worth of jewelry in a burglary at their Georgia mansion. We just wanted to do a story with those two names in it.

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