What happened
The White House’s Ukraine crisis deep-
ened this week with revelations that mul-
tiple senior administration officials were
alarmed by efforts by Rudy Giuliani,
the president’s personal lawyer, to seize
control of U.S. foreign policy in that
country. Fiona Hill, President Trump’s
former top Russia adviser, testified to
the House impeachment panel that
Giuliani muscled aside career diplomats
to pressure Ukraine for investigations
into Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden,
and his son, Hunter. According to Hill, former national security
adviser John Bolton shared her concerns over the maneuvering by
White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and European Union
Ambassador Gordon Sondland, reportedly telling Hill, “I am not
part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking
up.” Bolton showed similar scorn for Giuliani, calling him “a hand
grenade that’s going to blow us all up.”Giuliani himself now faces an investigation from federal prosecutors,
who are looking into whether he broke lobbying laws through his
work in Ukraine, for which he was reportedly paid $500,000. Two
of Giuliani’s associates were arrested at Dulles International Airport
in Washington, D.C., with one-way tickets to Frankfurt, Ger-
many. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, Soviet-born U.S. citizens who
helped Giuliani in his efforts by connecting him with prosecutors in
Ukraine, were charged with campaign finance violations for alleg-
edly funneling foreign money into U.S. elections. The men donated
$630,000 to Republican candidates and Super PACs, with at least
some of the money coming from an unnamed Russian national.
Giuliani, who is also reportedly the subject of a counterintelligence
investigation, refused to comply with a House subpoena for docu-
ments. “If they enforce it, then we’ll see what happens,” he said.What the editorials said
It turns out there’s more to the Trump administration’s Ukraine
scandal than a scheme to corruptly pressure a foreign government to
investigate the president’s political rivals, said The Washington Post.
In addition to undermining our democracy, the White House had
another end in mind: getting rid of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine,
Marie Yovanovitch, to serve “shady private interests.” Parnasand Fruman saw the “competent and
corruption-fighting ambassador” as an
obstacle to their plan to get money from
Ukraine’s gas company. And where did
they get the money to pay Giuliani and
make large Super PAC donations?“Trump can thank Giuliani” for this
mess, said the Washington Examiner.
Parnas and Fruman, the shady charac-
ters Giuliani turned to in his quest to dig
up dirt on Biden in Ukraine, shouldn’t
have been allowed in the same room
with the president. Giuliani was ostensibly working for Trump pro
bono; as we’ve come to learn over and over, though, “If you’re not
paying for the service, you aren’t the customer; you’re the product.”What the columnists said
“Donald Trump’s impeachment blockade has collapsed,” said Kyle
Cheney and Andrew Desiderio in Politico.com. Despite the White
House’s declaration that it will not cooperate, senior administra-
tion officials have agreed to provide testimony. Former ambassador
Sondland was expected to testify that a text he sent insisting there
was “no quid pro quo” in Ukraine was dictated to him by President
Trump—and that he doesn’t know if that was actually true. The in-
vestigation is “moving fast,” said Alayna Treene in Axios.com. “The
White House is tense—and some aides are frantic.”We need to know a lot more about these secretive impeachment
hearings, said Byron York in the WashingtonExaminer.com. So
far, House Democrats have kept their inquiry behind closed doors,
with highly selective leaks. Keeping the impeachment “shrouded in
secrecy” is unfair to the American people. “Don’t they have the right
to know what the president’s accusers say?”Trump has publicly admitted he asked Ukraine to investigate the
Bidens, said Greg Sargent in The Washington Post. The White
House’s official defense is that the president did “nothing wrong,”
but virtually everyone around Trump “knew that it was grievously
wrong.” Trump’s defenders are in retreat, said Matt Lewis in The
DailyBeast.com, saying that his conduct was indefensible, but not
impeachable. “If Trump’s behavior isn’t worthy of impeachment and
removal, then what behavior would constitute removal?”Panas and Fruman (second and third from left)Sc
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Impeachment inquiry targets Giuliani
... and how they were covered NEWS 5
It wasn’t all bad QSimone Biles has made history, again. The American gymnast
became an international sensation after her dominant perfor-
mance in the 2016 Olympics, and she’s continued to improve,
landing an unprecedented “triple-double” flip in August. And
following her five gold wins at the world championships in Ger-
many last week, Biles is now
the most decorated gymnast
in the event’s history. Biles
won the top of the podium in
team competition, all-around,
and vault as well as floor and
beam. That brings her career
medal total in the cham-
pionships to 25, two more
than the previous record.
“It’s [higher] than my age,”
Biles said of her tally, “so I’m
pretty thrilled with it.”QLindsy Wolke and Megan Grant
were browsing at a Tennessee
antiques store when they spotted
a pile of love letters from World
War II. Intrigued, they bought all 21
and read every line of correspon-
dence between Elias Maxwell, then
18 and serving on the USS Rankin,
and Ilaine Murray, a 19-year-old
back home in New Jersey. Some
internet sleuthing revealed that the
pair later married and had a family,
and that their daughter Barbara
Murray lived in Clementon, N.J.
Wolke and Grant drove 800 miles
to hand-deliver the letters to her.
“There really are nice people still
left in the world,” said Murray, 65.QRetired Illinois schoolteacher
Bobbe Greenberg only learned
how to swim in her late 50s. Now,
at age 73, she’s a two-time Iron-
man champ. At the Ironman World
Championship in Hawaii last week,
Greenberg swam 2.4 miles, biked
112 miles, and then ran 26.2 miles in
an impressive 14 hours, 7 minutes,
and 11 seconds. For the second year
running, she was faster than any-
one else in the women ages 70–
bracket. “It’s like a drug,” Greenberg,
who has completed 17 triathlons
this year, says of racing. “[I’m in] a
positive state the whole time.” Biles: A record medal haul