Today’s edition of quick hits:
* The important thing is whether the administration will comply with the order: “A judge on Wednesday ordered the State Department to begin producing within 30 days documents related to the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine, saying the records were of obvious public interest.”
* Parnas and Fruman: “Two associates of Rudy Giuliani linked to the Ukraine scandal pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of funneling money from foreign entities to U.S. candidates in a plot to buy political influence. Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were carrying one-way tickets to Vienna when they were arrested at Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C., on Oct. 9.”
* On a related note, this was quite a surprise: “One of the two indicted associates of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, on Wednesday tied the case to the president himself, saying that some of the evidence gathered in the investigation could be subject to executive privilege.”
* This is another wild, related angle: “When two business associates of Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, were arrested this month on charges that they funneled foreign money into U.S. elections, federal prosecutors working on a different case in Chicago took note.”
* Yet another angle of note: “Igor Fruman, one of the two associates of Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani facing criminal charges, has retained a lawyer who is also representing former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.”
* Laura Cooper’s delayed testimony: “The closed-door testimony by Laura Cooper, the top Pentagon official overseeing U.S. policy regarding Ukraine, got underway Wednesday after a five-hour delay caused by a group of House Republicans who stormed the secure room where the deposition was taking place.” * Erdogan is no doubt pleased: “President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he would lift all sanctions against Turkey after the country agreed to make the cease-fire in Syria ‘permanent.’” * That’s a lot of kids: “Nationwide, more than a million children disappeared from the rolls of the two main state-federal health programs for lower-income children, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, between December 2017 and June, the most recent month with complete data.” See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
