Impeachment Inquiry

[fraurosena]

 

[nvmbr02]

39 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Wut?

 

 

And the stable geniuses at the WH then sent those talking points off to House Democrats. Then said WH attempted to recall the message, but screenshots had already been saved. Idiots. 

[Howl]

I'm seeing Giuliani and Barr greased up like two sumo wrestlers to see who can push the other out of the ring and under the bus.  

Odds on George Conway implying that the Senate might vote for impeachment just to make Trump stroke out or sh*t himself? 

Forget Infrastructure Week. This has been an awesome Infrastructure Day. 

[Audrey2]

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Is he actually attempting to throw himself (and Pence, don't forget Pence) under the bus?

 

Hmmm.... I wonder.... could this be Trump's endgame? I know we discussed on here and I've heard other places that Trump never thought he would win the election and really didn't thoroughly plan on being president. He was more into the adulation and marketing and then, if I remember correctly, going to start a new news Network. What if Trump sees this as an out? What if he's decided he really doesn't want to be president for four more years although he loves the idea of campaigning, and realizes if he can bring himself and Pence down then he can have a graceful way to get out of the campaign? I know it's far-fetched, and the truth is more likely that he's just not thinking as far as the end of the sentence when he's talking, but it's still an interesting thing to think about.

[fraurosena]

3 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Hmmm.... I wonder.... could this be Trump's endgame? I know we discussed on here and I've heard other places that Trump never thought he would win the election and really didn't thoroughly plan on being president. He was more into the adulation and marketing and then, if I remember correctly, going to start a new news Network. What if Trump sees this as an out? What if he's decided he really doesn't want to be president for four more years although he loves the idea of campaigning, and realizes if he can bring himself and Pence down then he can have a graceful way to get out of the campaign? I know it's far-fetched, and the truth is more likely that he's just not thinking as far as the end of the sentence when he's talking, but it's still an interesting thing to think about.

It’s a fun thought experiment, but I don’t think that’s behind his thinking. Trump does not want to lose. But he is well aware that getting impeached is a real probability; the odds are stacked against him and literally getting worse by the hour. He knows what he did, and he knows he’s going down. So to soften the blow (for himself) he’s going to take down as many people with him as he can. Plus, the defense “I wasn’t the only one! Everybody was doing it!” to his mind mitigates his own culpability, makes him less of a loser. It wouldn’t surprise me if he eventually comes up with a version of “They made me do it! It wasn’t my idea. I didn’t even want to do it. But they made me!”

[laPapessaGiovanna]

CNN says that the whistleblower complaint has been declassified and will be made public with minimal redactions today.

[Dandruff]

I hope he's having nightmares and that they're nothing compared to what's coming.

2 hours ago, fraurosena said:

He knows what he did, and he knows he’s going down. So to soften the blow (for himself) he’s going to take down as many people with him as he can.

He may not be convinced quite yet, but he must be picking up on the instability of support for him.  I expect him to find at least one person - probably more - to share the blame with and, once that happens, he'll try to accept none of it.  I won't be surprised if there are some rapid defections from his inner circle.  They know how he plays.

Edited September 26, 2019 by Dandruff

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

CNN says that the whistleblower complaint has been declassified and will be made public with minimal redactions today.

I can't wait to see them. Rep. Speier on TRMS from last night said that there was more than one whistleblower complaint, but that the previous complaints were not deemed 'urgent' and therefore not sent to Congress. However, they were added to the latest whistleblower's complaint and were read by the members of Congress that were allowed to see them yesterday. I sincerely hope all of the complaints are made public.

 

Edited September 26, 2019 by fraurosena
added an '

[fraurosena]

Whistle-Blower Is Said to Allege Concerns About White House Handling of Ukraine Call

Quote

The intelligence officer who filed a whistle-blower complaint about President Trump’s interactions with the leader of Ukraine raised alarms not only about what the two men said in a phone call, but also about how the White House handled records of the conversation, according to two people briefed on the complaint.

The whistle-blower, moreover, identified multiple White House officials as witnesses to potential presidential misconduct who could corroborate the complaint, the people said — adding that the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, interviewed witnesses.

Mr. Atkinson eventually concluded that there was reason to believe that the president might have illegally solicited a foreign campaign contribution — and that his potential misconduct created a national security risk, according to a newly disclosed Justice Department memo.

An early portrait of the intelligence officer began to take shape on Wednesday as the White House released a rough log of a July 25 phone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, the latest extraordinary revelation set off by the whistle-blower’s complaint.

This account is based on interviews with the two people and with lawmakers who were permitted to read the complaint late in the day, as well as on details revealed in a Justice Department memo explaining the Trump administration’s legal rationale for withholding the whistle-blower’s allegations from Congress before Mr. Trump relented this week. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Atkinson also found reason to believe that the whistle-blower might not support the re-election of Mr. Trump and made clear that the complainant was not in a position to directly listen to the call or see the memo that reconstructed it before it was made public, according to the Justice Department memo, which referred only to a single phone call between Mr. Trump and an unnamed foreign leader.

Instead, the officer heard about the call secondhand from unidentified White House officials who expressed concern that Mr. Trump had “abused his authority or acted unlawfully in connection with foreign diplomacy,” the memo said. Still, Mr. Atkinson concluded after an investigation that the information in the complaint was credible.

In their first public comments, lawyers for the whistle-blower said their client hoped to remain anonymous but wanted to continue to cooperate with lawmakers conducting oversight.

Mr. Trump had brought up American aid to Ukraine with Mr. Zelensky — without mentioning that at the time he was blocking delivery of a large military assistance package that Congress had approved to help it fend off Russian aggression — and suggested that Ukraine could be doing more to help the United States, the reconstructed transcript of the call indicated.

Mr. Trump then asked the Ukrainian president to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his younger son, Hunter Biden. Mr. Zelensky agreed to have his incoming top prosecutor do so, while asking whether the United States had information to share. A previous top prosecutor in Ukraine said in May that the Bidens did nothing wrong.

Mr. Trump also pressed Mr. Zelensky to “do us a favor, though”: to use Attorney General William P. Barr’s help in opening an investigation of a company involved in the beginnings of the F.B.I. inquiry of Russia’s 2016 election interference. Both potential inquiries could benefit Mr. Trump politically.

But the two people said the whistle-blower complaint went beyond Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Zelensky. It also dealt in part with the unusual manner in which White House officials handled internal records describing the call. The atypical proceeding heightened internal concerns about the content of the call, the two people said.

Bowing to pressure, the Trump administration permitted members of the intelligence committees and congressional leaders to read a copy of the complaint, which remains classified, late on Wednesday.

Its allegations were “deeply disturbing” and “very credible,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said after emerging from reviewing the complaint.

After reading it, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee told reporters that it contained far more information that reinforced their mounting concerns. They could disclose very little, but several of the lawmakers said it discussed other witnesses.

“It was very well written and certainly provides information for the committee to follow up with other witnesses and documents,” Mr. Schiff said.

But the revelations that the whistle-blower had identified White House witnesses dovetailed with new details in the Justice Department memo, which was signed by Steven A. Engel, the head of its Office of Legal Counsel.

He argued that it was lawful for the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, to refuse to turn the whistle-blower complaint over to Congress — a stance that the Trump administration began to back off of as Democrats stepped up talk of potentially impeaching the president. Mr. Maguire was to testify about the complaint on Thursday.

After hearing about the July call, the intelligence officer agreed that Mr. Trump might be “seeking to pressure that leader to take an action to help the president’s 2020 re-election campaign,” Mr. Engel wrote, and decided to tell Congress about it, using a process that protects intelligence whistle-blowers from reprisal.

That process requires complaints to go through the inspector general and intelligence director. It says if the inspector general deems a complaint to be credible and present an urgent concern, the intelligence director shall send it to Congress within seven days.

Mr. Atkinson determined that the complaint met the criteria for an “urgent concern,” partly because it fell within Mr. Maguire’s “operational responsibility to prevent election interference.” But Mr. Engel disagreed, arguing that it did not center on intelligence activities that Mr. Maguire supervises.

In explaining his interpretation of the whistle-blower law, Mr. Engel also noted that Mr. Atkinson had found unspecified indications of “an arguable political bias,” suggesting the whistle-blower favored a rival political candidate, the memo said.

But Mr. Atkinson, a Trump appointee, nevertheless concluded that the allegations appeared to be credible and identified two layers of concern.

The first involved a possible violation of criminal law. Mr. Trump’s comments to Mr. Zelensky “could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of the campaign-finance laws,” Mr. Atkinson wrote, according to the Justice Department memo.

(Mr. Engel, while saying the allegations did not fit within the intelligence whistle-blower system that enables Congress to see complaints, said such a complaint could instead result in a criminal referral. Mr. Maguire and Mr. Atkinson then made referrals, an official said, but the Justice Department closed the matter without charges.)

The second concern Mr. Atkinson identified, according to the Justice Department memo, was that Mr. Trump’s potential misconduct might expose him “to serious national security and counterintelligence risks.”

Mr. Engel did not elaborate, and it was not clear whether he was suggesting that Mr. Trump would be subject to extortion if foreign officials threatened to expose his purported misconduct or he was referring to some other risk.

Both the reconstructed transcript and the Justice Department memo may be incomplete. The transcript contained a footnote that said it was not “verbatim,” and it contained ellipses.

And Mr. Engel’s memo, dated Sept. 24, said in a footnote that it was a revision of an original from Sept. 3, and that the department had “changed the prior version to avoid references to certain details that remain classified.”

Lawyers for the whistle-blower expressed concern in an interview on Wednesday about officials disclosing their client’s identity.

“Intelligence officers, by nature, are not people who want to be publicly known,” said Andrew P. Bakaj, the lead lawyer for the whistle-blower. “If you are an intelligence officer through and through, you are doing this for national security.”

The comments by Mr. Bakaj — who is representing the officer for free along with two other lawyers, Mark Zaid and Charles McCullough III — were the first, however limited, to the press about the case. Coming forward to the inspector general was very risky, said John Napier Tye, the founder of Whistleblower Aid, which is raising money to defray expenses for the complainant.

“To have the president of the United States tweeting about you, casting aspersions, it is scary for anyone — it is very scary for anyone who works in the intelligence community,” Mr. Tye said.

The legal team’s objective, Mr. Zaid said, is to continue to try to get information about the complaint lawfully to the congressional oversight committees. Mr. Zaid and Mr. Bakaj have sought permission from Mr. Maguire to be cleared to see the full complaint and represent their client before the House Intelligence Committee.

 

[Penny]

Saw a brief segment of Trumps speech yesterday and I agree, he seemed drugged. Someone slipped a pill in his Diet Coke. 

I hope this is the beginning of the end and soon. 

[fraurosena]

What a wonderful scenario. All the BT's heads would explode.

 

[fraurosena]

Well, duh. Barr's personally implicated, of course he's not going to investigate.

DOJ declined to investigate Trump Ukraine call

Quote

The Department of Justice declined to pursue an investigation into whether President Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky violated campaign finance law, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The decision came after a whistleblower complaint to the intelligence community's inspector general. That complaint was later sent to the Justice Department in August.

The whistleblower complaint is at the center of an impeachment inquiry launched Tuesday by House Democrats who want to know whether Trump pressured Ukraine's leaders to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, as well as whether aid to Ukraine was held up as part of that campaign.

Trump has denied those allegations.

The whistleblower complaint has not been seen by Congress, and it is not clear what allegations it makes beyond the question about a possible campaign finance violation. 

"Relying on established procedures set forth in the Justice Manual, the Department’s Criminal Division reviewed the official record of the call and determined, based on the facts and applicable law, that there was no campaign finance violation and that no further action was warranted," Justice spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement.

"All relevant components of the Department agreed with this legal conclusion, and the Department has concluded the matter," she added.

The White House on Wednesday released a partial transcript of the July 25 call between Zelensky and Trump. In the call, Trump asked Zelensky to work with his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and expressed hope that he could look into Biden’s role in the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor.

The Justice Department on Wednesday also released an Office of Legal Counsel opinion finding that the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s call was not an “urgent concern” and was not required to be transmitted to congressional intelligence committees.

 

[lumpentheologie]

The whistleblower complaint is out to the public now. You can download it here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/sep/26/donald-trump-ukraine-live-news-latest-us-politics

[lumpentheologie]

In a few minutes acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire will testify before the House Intelligence Committee.  Watch it live here: https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/463142-live-coverage-house-panel-to-hear-about-whistleblower-complaint

[GreyhoundFan]

A picture for the ages:

 

[lumpentheologie]

Notable points from the complaint: 

• Ukraine was the first to acknowledge the call and said that during the call "Trump expressed his conviction that the new Ukrainian government will be able to [...] complete the investigation of corruption cases that have held back cooperation between Ukraine and the United States."  But the only corruption cases discussed were about Biden and the 2016 election.
• There is a word for word transcript of the phone call. 
• On Aug 2nd Giuliani met with Zelensky's advisor in Madrid as a "direct follow up" to the phone call.
• Transcripts of other phone calls have also been stored separately for political, rather than national security reasons.

(Merged second comment)

Wow, Nunes seems pretty nervous as he's rattling off all those lies.  

The willingness of Republican elected officials to straight up lie to the public when there is obvious evidence contradicting them continues to shock and appall me. 

Edited September 26, 2019 by lumpentheologie

[fraurosena]

Oh boy,  MacGuire is not up to Schiff's questioning and upholding his integrity at the same time.

[GreyhoundFan]

Nunes (R-Moo) is such an ass. The showboating is exhausting. I had to turn the sound off.

[fraurosena]

Nunes is fumbling around trying to get MaGuire to aid him in disparaging the House Dems on the Intelligence Committee, but MaGuire is not exactly helping him 

 

[lumpentheologie]

I can barely stand to listen to Nunes.  But when he asked if anyone in Maguire's office leaked this to the press, Maguire had a good answer: Sir, this is the intelligence community.  We know how to keep a secret. 

[fraurosena]

I literally lolled just now when MaGuire actually contradicted Nunes and got into the specifics of the complaint (12 witnesses). Nunes is quite taken aback and is now simply giving up and yielding back!

[lumpentheologie]

Also I flinch every time Nunes says "in the public" instead of "in public."  Grrrr. 

[front hugs > duggs]

I'm not currently watching this, but I remember Nunes being such a bovine during the Mueller hearing too. Not surprised. 

 

ETA: Just saw this on CNN:

Fact check: Devin Nunes made a false claim about Joe Biden in his opening statement

THE HEARING / From CNN's Daniel Dale

Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the committee, falsely alleged in his opening statement that former vice president Joe Biden boasted of pressuring Ukraine to fire a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, "Who happened to be investigating Biden's own son."

There is no evidence Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was ever under investigation.

As we explained in this detailed fact check, the investigation was into the business dealings of Mykola Zlochevsky, who owned a natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, for which Hunter Biden had sat on the board of directors.

And it's unclear even if the investigation into Zlochevsky was active at the time Biden applied his pressure on the Ukrainians. Former deputy prosecutor Vitaliy Kasko, who had resigned alleging corruption in the prosecutor's office, told Bloomberg News this year that the investigation had been allowed to become dormant.

Edited September 26, 2019 by front hugs > duggs

[fraurosena]

I like Rep Hines line of questioning. He's not taking any prevarication from MaGuire. Why was the congressional subpoena ignored?

 

[lumpentheologie]

Rep Conaway was sounding almost like a Democrat there.  Interesting.