Meanwhile, Dep. Sec. of State P. Michael McKinley conveyed his own disgust that Pompeo had apparently ordered other State Dept. personnel to stand down and not defend Yovanovitch. He resigned abruptly from the department two weeks ago and defied Pompeo's order to not cooperate with the House impeachment inquiry.

Meanwhile, lawyers at the Office of Treason Weasels-- er, excuse me, I mean, the Office of Legal Counsel at Attorney General Bill Barr's Dept. of Justice argued that NSC Chief Counsel John Eisenberg is "absolutely immune from compelled congressional testimony in his capacity as senior adviser to the president" -- which, of course, would probably be news to former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean.

In three new pages of sworn testimony released Tuesday, along with his entire deposition earlier in October, EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland wrote that the depositions of top Ukraine diplomat Bill Taylor and outgoing National Security Council official Tim Morrison "have refreshed my recollection" of the conversations at the center of the pressure campaign. The dramatic new testimony confirms that Sondland told an aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that congressionally approved military aid would be contingent upon the government of Ukraine publicly announcing it would investigate the origins of the Russia probe and a gas company on which former Vice President Joe Biden's son sat.

Former national security adviser John Bolton is reportedly "willing to defy" the Trump White House and serve as a witness in the House of Representatives' impeachment inquiry.

The Washington Post, citing "people familiar with [Bolton's] views," reports that the former Trump national security adviser is willing to testify in the impeachment probe as long as he is legally cleared to do so.

"The President used extortion to cheat in the 2020 presidential election. He used military aid dollars meant to aid an ally against his Russian patrons in order to force Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 elections, in order to remain in office by corrupt means. There are various crimes that get committed along the way. But that is the core of it."

"The President is delegated vast powers to act in the national interest and he has vast discretion to determine what he or she believes the national interest is. But when he uses those powers for his own personal or financial gain they are illegitimate on their face, abuses of power and merit impeachment. The fact that he was doing so to sabotage a national election makes it vastly worse. And the fact that he was getting a foreign power to sabotage a US election makes it worse still.

"Any talk of 'quid pro quos' and this and that minutiae is a distortion of what happened. Quid pro quos are simply exchanges of one thing for another. Presidents will ask for help on one bill in exchange for another. They'll condition one kind of aid to a country on assistance on another foreign policy goal. In itself it means nothing.

"The crimes are bribery and extortion, the abuses of power are using presidential power for personal gain and the central offense against the state is the attempt to sabotage a national election, the event on which the legitimacy of the entire system rests."

the guy knows.  He sees the end.  I doubt he even realizes that himself but, IMO, he sees the end.