Month: January 2020

A portrait of the late Kobe Bryant is now on view at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, as part of a special “In Memoriam” display.

The black-and-white image, which is part of the museum’s collection, is a photograph taken by Rick Chapman in 2007. In the poignant photo, Bryant’s right upper arm is on display, revealing a series of tattoos.

© 2007 Rick Chapman

“The robe’s right sleeve has been removed to reveal a large, two-part tattoo dedicate to Bryant’s wife, Vanessa. The tattoo combines her name, framed by a crown decorated with butterflies, and the inscription ‘Psalm XXVII,’ which begins, ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?'” explained Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, a senior historian at the National Portrait Gallery, in an email to CNN.

Chapman’s work can be seen in a number of collections throughout the United States including the LA County Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, George Eastman House, and the private collection of Elton John.

This isn’t the first time the museum has paid tribute to sports star upon their passing. A portrait of the late baseball player Don Larsen, who died earlier this month, hung on the wall before Bryant.

Votes for president and senators align

“It’s a very unfortunate evolution in that the checks and balances that our Founding Fathers had so emphasized … have been diminished if not completely eliminated,” Tom Daschle, the former Senate Democratic leader from South Dakota, said in an interview. “There are very few checks and balances today in large measure because of the unswerving loyalty and commitment the Republican caucus has made to President Trump over and above their commitments to the role and the character of the Senate. It’s been a diminution in stature, in authority … in the ability of our constitutional order to provide the kind of real balance and oversight that is so critical to good government.”

William Hoagland, the former longtime Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee, has been especially struck by the GOP deference to Trump as the President has eroded traditional congressional prerogatives, including redirecting funds for his border wall and systematically stonewalling subpoenas and other demands for information from the Democratic-controlled House during impeachment.

“The slap in the face of the institution, the equal branch of government, is amazing to me,” says Hoagland, now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “I don’t know where they are. I don’t understand what this guy holds over the Republicans that they don’t understand they are independent United States senators that are representing the country and an institution separate and apart from the executive branch. They should be defending that institution, and they are not.”

The electoral foundation of this new legislative order is the growing alignment between the way states vote for president and the senators they elect.

But as the ideological contrasts between the parties have grown sharper over the past quarter century, that number has significantly declined: in each presidential election since 2000, only 10% to 14% of voters cast split-ticket ballots in Senate elections, according to the American National Election Studies findings.

Little incentive for bipartisanship

The powerful impact of this change has been to make it extremely difficult for either party to win Senate seats in states that usually support the other side in presidential elections. That’s a big change from the middle decades of the 20th century. As I calculated in my 2007 book, “The Second Civil War,” Republicans after 1972 held only half of the Senate seats in the states that voted two consecutive times for President Richard Nixon; after 1984, the GOP controlled just 55% of the Senate seats in the states that twice backed President Ronald Reagan.

But that figure has steadily increased since. After 1996, Democrats held two-thirds of the Senate seats in the states that President Bill Clinton carried both times; after 2004, Republicans held three-fourths of the Senate seats in the states that twice backed President George W. Bush.

Now, Republicans hold 92% (44 of 48) of the Senate seats in the 24 states that voted for both Mitt Romney in 2012 and Trump in 2016. Democrats, meanwhile, hold 38 of the 40 Senate seats (95%) in the 20 states that voted for President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the past two elections. (Republicans hold seven of the remaining 12 seats in the six states that switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016).

Gary C. Jacobson, a University of California at San Diego political scientist who specializes in Congress, says the hardening alignment between presidential and Senate voting has made it vastly more difficult for senators to display the independence and receptivity to cross-party deal-making that once characterized the body.

“It changes things fundamentally,” he says. “Voters at the state level vote very consistently for the same party for the House, Senate and president at much higher level than they did before. You can’t really carve out a career [in Congress] with displays of independence that attract voters from the other side, or the remaining dwindling portion of people who are independent. So the career strategy has been to mobilize your base, and if that’s the case you [tend to] win the states where your party’s base is larger than the other party’s base.” With those stark electoral dynamics, he notes, senators and House members “are given very little incentive to even try” to show independence or reach bipartisan agreements.

Republican Party has been affected more

These changes have affected both parties. But most observers agree they have more fundamentally reconfigured the Republican Party, which operates with a coalition — centered on conservative white voters — that is more demographically and ideologically homogenous than the Democrats’ is. That exposes Republican legislators who break from the party consensus to greater threats than Democrats face, from condemnation by the powerful conservative information system led by Fox News to primary challenges from the right and, more recently, to tweets of condemnation from Trump.

“I think it became perceived accurately as political suicide [for Republicans] to oppose him,” Jacobson says. “Trump has shown that you can’t do this gently and get away with it — that he reacts very negatively to anything but abject praise, so all these people are walking a very fine line in trying to avoid not just criticizing him but saying anything that will attract his wrath, because they think he will be able to mobilize their base against him in their states or districts.”

Homendy said investigators believe the helicopter was flying under visual flight rules from John Wayne Airport in Orange County to just southeast of Burbank Airport.

Around Burbank, the pilot requested to fly under special permission, Homendy said. An SVFR clearance allows a pilot to fly in weather conditions worse than those allowed for regular visual flight rules (VFR).

Pilots can request the clearance before takeoff or during the flight if weather conditions suddenly change, CNN transportation analyst Peter Goelz said. SVFR clearance is “pretty normal,” Goelz said, but “it’s not something that’s often recommended.”

The helicopter circled for 12 minutes until air traffic control approved SVFR clearance, Homendy said.

When the pilot flew into the Burbank and Van Nuys airspace at 1,400 feet, heading south and then west, he requested radar assistance to avoid traffic, Homendy said. But air traffic control said the helicopter was too low to provide that assistance.

Zobayan said he was going to climb higher and air traffic controllers responded, but they never heard back. Radar data indicated the helicopter climbed 2,300 feet and began a left descending turn, she said.

The last radar contact was around 9:45 a.m Sunday, Homendy said.

Pilot had thousands of hours of flight time

He had been working with Island Express Helicopters — which owned and operated the Sikorsky S-76B — for a number of years, she said.

NTSB investigators are looking at pilot records, weather information, ATC communications and the wreckage as part of the investigation.

In a written statement posted to its website Island Express said, “We are working closely with the National Transportation Safety Board to investigate the cause of the accident and we are grateful to the first responders and local authorities for their response to this unimaginable accident.”

“It’s a workhorse,” O’Brien said. “It’s the flying Lincoln Town Car for executives. This is what corporate helicopter aviation is built on — on this Sikorsky.

Helicopter broke into pieces at impact

The impact of the crash broke the helicopter into pieces, creating a debris field of about 500 to 600 feet, Homendy said. The crash created a crater at about 1,085 feet above sea level, she said.

“There is (an) impact area on one of the hills and a piece of the tail is down the hill, on the left side of the hill,” she said. “The fuselage is over on the other side of that hill, and then the main rotor is about 100 yards beyond that.”

When reporters asked her if there was any chance of survival, Homendy said, “It was a pretty devastating accident scene.”

Investigators initially struggled to access the site of the wreckage as it’s surrounded by difficult terrain, Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said Sunday. Eventually, authorities bulldozed the road to get a car to the location.

And their job wasn’t made easier by mourners who descended near the site and in residential areas around it.

An emergency ordinance was issued, making it a misdemeanor to unlawfully access the site, Villanueva said Monday. Deputies are patrolling the rugged terrain on horseback, he said.

Three young girls were on board

Among the victims were three teenage girls on their way to a basketball game.

Her father would routinely travel with her to attend her games, OCC assistant coach Ron La Ruffa said.

Payton Chester and her mother, Sarah Chester, were also passengers on the helicopter and killed in the crash, Payton’s grandmother, Cathy Chester, wrote on Facebook. She said they were on their way to the same basketball game.

“While the world mourns the loss of a dynamic athlete and humanitarian, I mourn the loss of two people just as important…their impact was just as meaningful, their loss will be just as keenly felt, and our hearts are just as broken,” Todd Schmidt, a former principal at the elementary school Payton once attended, wrote in a Facebook post.

“My kids and I are devastated. We lost our beautiful wife and mom today in a helicopter crash,” her husband, Matt Mauser, wrote on Facebook.

But in its most basic substance, the case is not that much different from the one blasted out on Twitter by the President himself for months.

But toward the end of hours of argument, Dershowitz made a case for expansive presidential power, saying that a quid pro quo alone cannot be the basis for abuse of power — which he said was not in itself an impeachable offense.

“Nothing in the Bolton revelations, even if true, would rise to the level of an abuse of power or an impeachable offense, that is clear from the history. That is clear from the language of the Constitution,” Dershowitz said, in comments that could arm Republicans — who are on the spot amid calls for Bolton to testify — with an new argument.

A handful of more moderate Republicans spending the day dancing on hot bricks over whether they would vote later this week to demand testimony from Bolton and other witnesses.

“The reporting on John Bolton strengthens the case for witnesses and has prompted a number of conversations among my colleagues,” Maine’s Sen. Susan Collins said.

Utah’s Sen. Mitt Romney added: “I think with the story that came out yesterday that it is increasingly apparent that it would be important to hear from John Bolton.”

Impeachment defense leaves Republican senators little choice

The President and his most fervent fans must have been delighted as they heard arguments that had been rehearsed for months on Fox News opinion shows echo across the Senate floor.

But the all-day presentations may have significantly sharpened the dilemma for a handful of Republican senators at the center of the controversy over Democratic demands for the summoning of new witnesses.

Any vote later this week to depose Bolton or other witnesses could prolong the trial and frustrate Trump’s hopes for an acquittal by the time of the State of the Union address next week. It could also expose the minimum of four GOP senators who would be needed to advance such a step to the President’s certain wrath.

But most of Trump’s lawyers essentially offered Republican senators no choice but to buy the President’s case entirely — despite its many glaring factual deficiencies. For red state senators or those who have concluded their fates lie in sticking closely to Trump, it’s an easy political choice.

“The White House counsel has absolutely shredded, shredded, the case brought forward,” said Iowa’s Sen. Joni Ernst during a dinner break.

Texas’ GOP Sen. Ted Cruz added: “I get that the press loves to obsess over the latest bombshell.” But, he added, “the legal issue before this Senate is whether a President has the authority to investigate corruption.”

The legal approach pursued by Trump’s team leaves moderates such as Collins and Colorado’s Sen. Cory Gardner exposed to Democratic claims that they will block a fair trial if they don’t vote to hear witnesses such as Bolton.

Trump is being tried in the Senate over two articles of impeachment, alleging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, in connection with his pressure on Ukraine for an investigation into political opponents including Biden.

In the evening session, Ray offered a strongly argued case warning about the gravity of removing a President between elections, saying it would not be in the best interests of the country.

“We have witnessed the endless procession of legal theories to sustain this partisan impeachment, from treason to quid pro quo to bribery to extortion to obstruction of justice to soliciting an illegal foreign campaign contribution to a violation of the Impoundment Control Act to who knows what all is next,” Ray told senators.

Defense turns into a searing political play

But for much of the day, other members of Trump’s team, such as former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, offered far more political advocacy.

“We would prefer not to be talking about this,” Bondi said, before launching into a fearsome attack on Biden — an ironic moment, since Trump was the one who had brought up unproven claims about his rival that caused the political drama that has held Washington in thrall for months.

Ernst seemed to let slip the partisan goal of the defense argument in a conversation with reporters.

“Iowa caucuses are next Monday evening. I am really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus voters, will they be supporting Vice President Biden at this point?” she said.

Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden’s presidential campaign, hit back at Bondi.

“We didn’t realize that Breitbart was expanding into Ted Talk knockoffs. Here on planet Earth, the conspiracy theory that Bondi repeated has been conclusively refuted,” Bates said. “Joe Biden was instrumental to a bipartisan and international anti-corruption victory. It’s no surprise that such a thing is anathema to President Trump.”

The President’s team argued that he had been right to withhold aid to Ukraine because he feared corruption — and put Biden and his son Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy giant while his father oversaw policy toward Kiev, at the center of the storm.

There is little evidence in the rough transcript of a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Trump was interested in the wider issue of corruption. But he does repeatedly press for probes into Biden.

There are appropriate questions about whether Hunter Biden presented an unacceptable conflict of interest with his employment choices.

But despite Trump’s false claims, in fact, Joe Biden’s pressure for Ukraine to fire a prosecutor seen in Washington and Europe as corrupt would have made it more likely that Burisma, the company for which Hunter Biden was working, would be investigated.

Still, the President’s legal team has the luxury of knowing that its efforts are almost certain to be rewarded given the reality that not enough Republicans will vote to convict their own party’s President. That gives them all sorts of leeway to please their boss — and to advance his political goals.

Newport Beach, California

Dozens of balloons and flowers lined the grass outside the gates of the housing development where Bryant lived in Newport Beach, California, on Monday.

‘House of Kobe’ gym, Philippines

Staples Center, Los Angeles

Fans buried their heads in their hands Sunday and mourned the former NBA and Los Angeles Lakers player in front of Staples Center, where the team plays. A makeshift memorial appeared the day fans learned of Bryant’s death.

Lower Merion High School, Pennsylvania

Some of Bryant’s jerseys, a pile of basketballs and bouquets of flowers lined the entrance of the gym at Lower Merion High School, where Bryant went to high school in Ardmore, Pennsylvania.

Mamba Sports Academy, California

Baby clothes and other memorabilia were added to a small memorial Sunday outside Mamba Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, California. Bryant and his daughter were heading there for a basketball game scheduled for Sunday afternoon. Bryant was to coach his daughter’s team in the game.

Reggio Emilia, Italy

‘Don’t be such a baby’

In a sneering public statement after the Friday interview, Pompeo made claims about the terms of the conversation that NPR promptly proved were untrue.

Pompeo’s stunning statement, released on Saturday and bearing the State Department seal, seemed intended for one particular audience — and appears to have hit its target. Just a day after it was released, Trump endorsed a tweet from conservative radio host Mark Levin, who wrote, “Why does NPR still exist? We have thousands of radio stations in the U.S. Plus Satellite radio. Podcasts. Why are we paying for this big-government, Democrat Party propaganda operation.”

Levin included a link to a Fox News piece about Pompeo’s response to the NPR reporter. “A very good question!” Trump wrote along with his retweet on Sunday.

But other supporters weren’t so impressed. “For goodness sake, Mr. Secretary, don’t be such a baby,” Steve Hilton, host of Fox News’ “Next Revolution,” said Sunday. Hilton said he appreciated Pompeo’s tough stance on issues, but criticized him for “unleashing a four-letter word tirade and putting out a ridiculous statement whining about what questions he agreed to answer.”

“You should be able to handle tough questions by now and don’t be such a bully,” Hilton said. “Foul mouth ranting at a reporter doing her job is an embarrassment to you and the administration. You should apologize and people will think much more of you if you do.”

In an escalation of the controversy, the State Department removed another NPR reporter from the press pool for Pompeo’s trip to Europe and central Asia later this week, the State Department Correspondents’ Association announced Monday.

Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened,” not only appears set to counter Pompeo’s declaration, but will also reportedly assert that Pompeo was fully aware of the White House agenda for Kiev. According to the New York Times, Bolton describes Trump saying that he wanted to keep $391 million in security aid to Ukraine frozen until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats, including Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

‘Mount Mike’

Even Pompeo’s ability to fulfill his core duty as the leading US diplomat has come in for implicit criticism.

During his outburst at the NPR reporter, Pompeo questioned whether Americans “care” about Ukraine, prompting a public rebuttal from his former top diplomat in Ukraine. Bill Taylor, the retired ambassador who returned to lead the embassy in Kiev at the Trump administration’s request, was subpoenaed in the House impeachment inquiry and proved to be a pivotal witness.

While in Kiev, Pompeo will meet with President Volodymr Zelensky as well as the foreign and defense ministers to “highlight US support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the State Department said in its trip announcement. The secretary will also attend a wreath laying ceremony to honor those who have fallen amid ongoing conflict with Russia, and meet with religious, civil society, and business community leaders.

At the State Department there was little surprise about the secretary’s eruption with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.

Pompeo is known to get angry and yell at those who work for him. For those staffers, the NPR outburst was simply a public example his private behavior. “And there were have it. A Mount Mike eruption on the record,” one State official told CNN.

Other staff members said the NPR incident revived their unhappiness over Pompeo’s dealings with the Ukraine scandal. They pointed in particular to his failure to back the career diplomats who were subpoenaed to appear before the House impeachment inquiry and his silence over the ouster of former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

The highly respected career diplomat was abruptly removed from her post after a smear campaign by the President’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. She was told at the time that her safety was in question and has testified to the House that no senior official at State has ever explained why she was removed. Trump has repeatedly denigrated her publicly.

Asked if he owes Yovanovitch an apology, Pompeo insisted to NPR that he has defended “every State Department official,” despite the fact that he has never publicly defended Yovanovitch. He didn’t respond when Kelly asked him to point to specific actions he’s taken in defense of Yovanovitch and never addressed the idea of apologizing to her. The gap between Pompeo’s words and actions and his behavior with NPR in general left many at State unsurprised, said one staffer who added that many see the secretary as hypocritical.

This person and others pointed to Pompeo’s move to unveil an “ethos” statement in April, hanging huge banners inside the department that declare, among other things, that staffers will “serve with unfailing professionalism, in both my demeanor and my actions, even in the face of adversity,” act with “uncompromising personal and professional integrity,” and take “ownership of and responsibility for my actions and decisions.”

‘Unfailing respect’

At the event to unveil the ethos statement, Pompeo went into detail about the ideas of integrity, professionalism and respect. “Professionalism isn’t dependent on position or salary. It’s about disagreeing without being uncivil,” Pompeo said before stressing the need to “show unfailing respect for each other, simply because we are all human beings created by God.”

One State Department official, speaking on background, said that after the NPR outburst, they and their colleagues were “angry, embarrassed, and disappointed that Secretary Pompeo is not living up to the ethos that he recently implemented.”

The State Department did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Pam Bondi, former Florida attorney general and a member of President Trump’s defense team, outlined the issue of Hunter Biden’s involvement on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company, during her 30-minute presentation.

This was the first direct reference to the Bidens during the defense team’s presentations.

House managers, she said, “repeatedly referenced” Biden and Burisma more than “400 times” during their presentations last week, “but they never gave you the full picture.”

“We would prefer not to be talking about this,” she claimed, “But the House managers have placed this squarely at issue, so we must address it.” 

Citing multiple news reports and testimony from State Department official George Kent and other witnesses, Bondi cast the company as corrupt and Biden’s involvement as a conflict of interest. She questioned his qualifications to serve on the board, an opportunity she called “nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst.”

There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Joe or Hunter Biden.

Bondi noted that then-Vice President Joe Biden sought to remove Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma. However, she did not note that Shokin was widely accused of corruption and a Shokin deputy has said the Burisma probe was dormant. 

“There was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue, and that is enough,” Bondi said.

Watch part of the defense’s exhibit on Biden:

Over 24 hours spread out over three full days last week, often for up to nine hours a day, the team laid out their arguments in meticulous fashion, weaving hundreds of hours of testimony and reams of evidence into a well-structured story about their views of what the President did, why he did it, and why he deserves to be removed from office.

“We know already this is going to be an issue,” one source familiar with the ongoing preparations told CNN. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe or Hunter Biden.

Given the Bolton news, Democrats are now renewing their push for witnesses.

“There can be no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense and therefore must be called as a witness at the impeachment trial of President Trump,” the managers said in a statement released Sunday night.

In reality, the Democratic managers are appealing to two audiences: the 100 senators sitting before them in the chamber but also the American public watching or listening at home. If a critical mass of GOP senators can’t be convinced of the President’s wrongdoing, the Democrats can hope to reach voters nine months before the next election.

Observations from the press gallery as well as interviews with eight sources on Capitol Hill reveal how the House Democrats prepared for a marathon stretch of arguments in the first week of the impeachment trial, and how their performances were perceived.

Like a federal criminal prosecution

“They are doing this right out of the federal prosecutor’s playbook,” said Elie Honig, a CNN contributor and a former prosecutor in the SDNY who worked with Goldman as well as another attorney on the team, Daniel Noble. Honig pointed to the way the managers have presented videos and documents from the impeachment hearings to contextualize their arguments.

“It’s a hallmark of certainly the SDNY way,” Honig said.

Danya Perry, another former prosecutor at the SDNY who worked with Goldman, told CNN that the Democrats’ arguments during the trial “seemed to have his fingerprints all over them.”

“Like some of Danny’s jury addresses, Chairman Schiff’s remarks packed some passion and some soaring language, but for the most part they were straightforward, plainspoken, and to the point,” Perry said.

Staff work behind the scenes

Inside the Senate chamber during the trial, the managers sit cramped into small chairs at three adjoining tables. Most of them face the Democratic senators and with their backs to the presiding chair, Chief Justice John Roberts. Four to five staffers sit across from the managers, poring over thick folders of materials. The tables are frequently covered in papers.

When one manager speaks from the podium in the middle of the chamber, the others generally remain seated, listening or reading. Seated next to Schiff is a staffer with a laptop, whose primary role appears to be clicking through each slide or video clip for the presentation.

Invisible even to observers in the gallery is the anteroom off the Senate chamber, where the bulk of the Democratic staff works to supplement the team on the floor. Full of snacks, computers and printers, the anteroom is also the source of the rotating staffers who switch out into the chamber periodically.

The amount of preparation is reflected in how smoothly the presentations went. The managers rarely have to interrupt to direct a staffer moving through the slides.

It has helped that the staff work has been doled out in an orderly way.

Preparing the trial materials — creating hundreds of slides, organizing more than 200 video clips, and writing more than 24 hours of oral arguments — has been split along committee lines, one person familiar with the situation told CNN. Staffers from the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees focused on the article accusing the President of abusing his power, while staff from the House Oversight Committee worked largely on the article concerning the obstruction of Congress.

Communications for the team, including frequent background calls with reporters, has fallen to the staff members of both the Intelligence Committee and the speaker’s office. Judiciary, meanwhile, has taken the lead on the legal briefs that were filed for the trial.

The most effective prep work has been the culling of hours of impeachment hearing testimony and other relevant video, such as clips of Trump’s own words. The video clips break up the managers’ speeches and have noticeably reignited interest from listless senators.

At least two GOP senators, Jim Risch of Idaho and Richard Shelby of Alabama, appeared to nod off at their desks at some point during the week.

Mixed reactions

When the House Democrats did manage to grab the attention of the chamber, it did not always help their case. Most often, this happened when they departed from the sober, just-the-facts tone and let their emotions get the best of them.

Nadler’s remark also angered two key Senate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, both of whom the Democrats need on their side to have any chance of hearing from witnesses next week.

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The New York Times reported that a draft manuscript for Bolton’s yet-to-be published book reveals that he was told by Trump to maintain a hold on military aid until officials in Ukraine opened investigations into former Vice President Joe Biden. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Joe Biden or his son, Hunter Biden, and Joe Biden has repeatedly defended his son and himself.

Such a revelation would bolster Democratic claims that Trump abused a public trust and taxpayer cash to try to leverage a foreign government’s help in the 2020 election against one of his possible top opponents.

It would also undermine a key rationale of his defense team’s argument that there were other reasons Trump withheld aid — including his concern over corruption — a claim challenged by substantial previous evidence.

House impeachment managers said in a statement that the Times report made it imperative that the Senate hears from Bolton.

“During our impeachment inquiry, the President blocked our request for Mr. Bolton’s testimony. Now we see why,” the managers said in the statement.

“The President knows how devastating his testimony would be, and, according to the report, the White House has had a draft of his manuscript for review. President Trump’s cover-up must come to an end.”

“The witness vote was always going to be tough,” said one source involved in the strategy. “The story makes that clear again.”

In another twist, Bolton’s lawyer Charles Cooper said that the draft manuscript had been submitted to the National Security Council for a regular review to ensure it did not disclose classified material. But he suggested in a statement that the information reported by the Times meant the process had been “corrupted” and the document had been improperly accessed.

Before the reports about Bolton broke, there had been no signs yet that the four Republican votes needed for a Senate majority to back subpoenas would materialize. That being the case, the trial could end later this week, ushering a post-impeachment period in which the drama’s political aftershocks will be crucial to November’s election.

Democrats condemn Trump over ‘threat’ to Schiff

Trump’s fury over impeachment indicates that he is unlikely to be magnanimous when the trial ends. On Sunday he launched a fierce attack on California Rep. Adam Schiff who is leading the Democratic case against him.

“He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!” Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

“This is a wrathful and vindictive president. I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. And if you think there is, look at the President’s tweets about me today, saying that I should pay a price,” Schiff said.

But speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Republican Sen. James Lankford, defended Trump.

“I don’t think the President’s trying to be able to do a death threat here or do some sort of intimidation,” Lankford told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“It’s no different than what Adam Schiff and what Speaker Pelosi were saying … that folks will be paying a price at the ballot box, or that they will pay a price for this in the future, or that people hold them accountable for that.”

The debate about witnesses will define how the impeachment trial ends.

Trump’s lawyers have two more days to lay out their case — after which there will be a 16-hour period in which senators can submit questions to both legal teams. Only then will the question of whether to call witnesses potentially come to a vote.

Republicans are arguing that Democratic House leaders could have challenged Trump’s blocking tactics to the courts and that it is not the Senate’s job to continue investigating the case.

But Democrats counter that since Trump was threatening the fairness of the 2020 election they needed to act fast and censured the President’s conduct in a second article of impeachment alleging obstruction of Congress.

They are also using the issue to paint the GOP as shielding a corrupt President and denying the American people a fair trial.

“If they’re successful in depriving the country of a fair trial, there is no exoneration,” Schiff said on “Meet the Press.”

“There is no exoneration. Americans will recognize that the country did not get what the Founders intended because they put the word ‘try’ in the Constitution for a reason.”

Democrats pile pressure on handful of Republicans over witnesses

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Tennessee’s retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander and Colorado’s Cory Gardner have also been in Democratic sights.

But before the New York Times report broke, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer admitted on Sunday that he did not know whether Republicans would bow to the pressure.

“There’s no good answer why there shouldn’t be witnesses and documents, and no one has given one — not the President’s lawyers, not the Republican senators, not Mitch McConnell,” Schumer said in a news conference in New York.

“But there’s a lot of pressure not to do it, speed up the trial, do this, do that. But I am always hopeful,” Schumer said.

“It’s up to four Senate Republicans to ensure that John Bolton, Mick Mulvaney, and the others with direct knowledge of President Trump’s actions testify in the Senate trial, Schumer tweeted.

Trump’s legal team will resume their defense of the President when the trial reopens later on Monday.

“We don’t believe that they have come anywhere close to meeting their burden for what they’re asking you to do,” White House counsel Pat Cipollone said. “In fact, we believe that when you hear the facts, and that’s what we intend to cover today — the facts — you will find that the President did absolutely nothing wrong.”

And they also turned the tables on Democratic claims that the President’s actions were intended to interfere in the next presidential election, accusing Democrats of trying to overturn the 2016 election and to stack the decks against the President’s reelection bid.

Davide Giudici, a friend and former childhood teammate of Kobe Bryant, spoke to CNN today about the passing of the NBA legend.

Giudici played with Bryant in the 1990s in the small Italian city of Reggio Emilia. As 11 and 12-year-olds, they practiced several days a week together on Cantine Riunite, a junior basketball team named for a local winemaker of region’s signature sparkling red.

Kobe’s father, Joe Bryant, played in Italy for several years, and was already locally famous when they moved to Reggio Emilia, Giudici said.

“We spent two years with Kobe and he spoke very fluent, very perfect Italian so he was like a friend of ours,” Giudici said.

Kobe Bryant’s time in Reggio remains a point of pride for many, the kind of thing that comes up in conversation when people explain where their hometown is. Giudici says that even locals who have no interest in basketball claim Kobe Bryant as their own.

Giudici who is now a graphic designer, but plays locally, said he first found out about Bryant’s death through a flood of messages from friends.

“I saw like 40 Whatsapp messages: ‘Can you believe it? Did you see what happened? Did you hear what happened to Kobe?’” he said.

“My first concern was for his family. And it’s unbelievable, almost comic, that he died bringing his daughter to play basketball,” he said.

 “It’s unbelievable. We are all fragile,” Giudici said. “Even if Kobe is like a superstar, a superman, unfortunately we are all fragile.”