“The just-released transcript of President Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky confirms the president’s statement that he did nothing blameworthy with regard to the Biden investigation. The conversation was friendly and wide-ranging. There was discussion of how much the U.S. is helping Ukraine:”
—–
It is obvious what went on here. There was corruption on both sides of the deal. A Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, retained Joe Biden’s son Hunter and agreed to pay him $3 million–$600,000 a year for five years. There is no conceivable way that Hunter Biden could provide $3 million worth of legitimate services to a Ukrainian company. Undoubtedly Burisma was buying (or thought it was buying) influence with the Obama-Biden administration.
A Ukrainian prosecutor was investigating Burisma for corruption, potentially including the Biden payoff. Joe Biden has boasted that he threatened to cancel a $1 billion loan guarantee package, demanding that Ukraine fire the offending prosecutor. Ukraine’s prior government acceded to Biden’s demand. As far as I know, Hunter Biden continued to collect his $600,000 annually.
The new Ukrainian government, under President Zelensky, is commendably willing to reopen the corruption investigation that was quashed by the prior Ukrainian administration, which was friendly to the Obama-Biden administration.
So President Trump is doing the right thing in encouraging Zelensky to get to the bottom of a corruption investigation that may extend both to Ukraine and to the United States. That investigation, if it is pursued to the end, might not end happily for the Biden family, which apparently, at least, has gotten caught with its hand in a multi-million dollar cookie jar.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are rushing headlong toward impeachment. I don’t think there is much doubt that they will proceed to vote articles of impeachment. I don’t see how they can back down after the wild accusations that they are now making with one voice. To take just one example, I got an email this morning from Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota. Ellison wrote:
Trump has colluded with foreign powers to pervert our democracy, betrayed national secrets to our enemies, lined his own pockets, broken the law and violated the Constitution.
Congress owes it not to politics but to history and democracy to impeach. I applaud Speaker Pelosi for taking action yesterday to protect the rule of law.
This, and all similar talk about Trump “shredding the Constitution”–that was Joe Biden!–is simply insane, in the context of the Ukraine matter. How Trump’s conversation with Zelensky, or any related action (as yet unspecified) could possibly have “violated the Constitution” is inexplicable.
So it appears to me that we are on a collision course with the alternative reality in which the Democratic Party lives.”
“The White House has released a memorandum about the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. The document memorializes, in the form of a transcript, what the two heads of state said to each other on July 25 of this year.
It’s based on note taking by people who were in the White House situation room during the conversation. As such, while it may not be a perfect transcript, I think it must come pretty close to recording what was said.
It’s clear from what I’ll call the transcript that President Trump did not tell his Ukrainian counterpart that U.S. aid was contingent on Ukraine investigating the Bidens. There was no quid pro quo.
Initial reports were that, indeed, no quid pro quo was discussed, but that Trump repeatedly pressed Zelenskyy to investigate the Bidens. He may have, but the transcript doesn’t show this.
What it shows is that, Trump asked Zelenskyy to cooperate with Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Barr in their exploration of the matter. Trump said:
Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. . . .
There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.
I draw a distinction between a U.S. president asking a foreign leader to investigate a political rival of the president and asking a foreign leader to assist Americans who are conducting such an investigation or making inquiries.
As I see it, the former — asking a foreign leader to conduct an investigation — is wrong under almost any circumstance. But asking a foreign leader to assist in an American investigation will often be appropriate. When potential wrongdoing by an American (whether a president’s rival or not) involves actions committed overseas, it may not be possible for Americans to investigate without foreign cooperation.
Thus, if all Trump asked for was Ukrainian cooperation in the inquiries of Americans, I agree with John that Trump did nothing wrong during this conversation. And that’s all the transcript shows Trump did.
Immediately after Trump asks Zelenskyy to speak with Giuliani and Barr, the Ukrainian president volunteers that he will ask the Ukrainian prosecutor to look into Hunter Biden’s company. But that’s not what Trump asked him to do during the conversation (at least insofar as the transcript shows).
Maybe Trump or someone on Trump’s team had already communicated to Zelenskyy that this is what the president wanted. Maybe Zelenskyy understood Trump’s comments about cooperating with Giuliani and Barr as code for having his own prosecutor investigate.
However, the transcript itself establishes only that Trump wanted cooperation with American investigators. That’s not an unreasonable request (though it does raise the question of whether it was appropriate for Trump to have his private attorney, Giuliani, conducting as investigation of the Bidens that would draw in a foreign governme”
“The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel determined that the whistleblower on the phone call with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not present an “urgent concern” nor do officials have to hand over the account to Congress.”
“The intelligence community inspector general also discovered the whistleblower “showed indications of ‘political bias’ and was ‘in favor of a rival candidate’” of Trump’s.
Despite that conclusion, the House and Senate have the whistleblower’s account.
The whistleblower, who remains unknown, claimed that Trump may have violated “campaign-finance laws” during a phone call with Zelensky.
Based on hearsay, the whistleblower said Trump threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if the country’s new prosecutor did not investigate Vice President Joe Biden, who urged Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shoklin over his investigation into Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, sat on the board.
The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) reviewed the complaint, but found credibility even though they found “some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate.”
The ICIG forwarded the complaint to the DOJ. Those officials found that the “urgent concern” did not fall under the statute “because it does not concern ‘the funding, administration or operation of an intelligence activity’ under the authority of the DNI [Director of National Intelligence].”
Since it does not match the statute the DOJ does not have to hand over the whistleblower’s report to Congressional intelligence committees.
We learned this morning that Trump did not threaten Zelensky in any way if he did not investigate Biden. He suggested Zelensky, who happily agreed. During a press conference, Zelensky said no one pressured him to agree to the investigation.
Then news came out that acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire threatened to resign if Trump’s administration stopped him from testifying before Congress on Thursday.
Axios also reported that the House and Senate received the whistleblower’s account at 4PM ET today.”
——————-
Maguire has denied those reports that he threatened to resign, and since they came from anonymous sources (the only kind they ever have), I’m guessing that’s just more fake news.
Also Maguire had little choice here. If he didn’t forward this onward he would have received the Kavanaugh treatment for sure. The left would have slandered him six ways to Sunday. I understand his actions given the pressure. But he’s also a known Deep Stater, so trust him at your own peril.
“It was in the first segment that he gave a preview of what lies ahead, and it is evident that he and his client, President Trump, have been waiting for the right moment to launch their counterattack.
“The Democrats have stepped into something way beyond what they realize.”
“We’ve lost the FBI…and who knows what else?
“They have walked into a trap.”
“There’s only one reason the Chinese spent all that money: to buy Joe Biden.”
He warned, “I have the records” about the actual corruption of Biden and his son, who he said have provided “evidence of guilty knowledge.”
This impeachment effort is “[c]overing up for what will turn out to be massive corruption in the Obama administration.”
“The Clintons enriched themselves in public office to the tune of hundreds of millions.”
“Barack Obama’s presidency was the apotheosis of the radical nation-state. Democrats, who sought power on behalf of self-appointed victims, became the ruling elite. The community organizer cum president was flanked by Grecian columns at his inauguration, which since the Roman Empire have endorsed expanding political dominion. Throughout and beyond his suzerainty, Obama gave ear to those critical of the nation and champed at the bit of constitutional restraint.
During the twentieth century, there was Marx’s long “march through the institutions” due to the Western intelligentsia’s promiscuous infatuation with Soviet communism and Marxist historiography. That picked up exponential speed during the nineteen-sixties. The streets filled with Civil Rights flamethrowers, striding feminists, and flowerpot-smoking anti–Vietnam War hippies. Marxist professors strutted their propaganda in the social science departments of academia, and Saul Alinsky’s study of the Mafia and Chicago gangs harvested his Machiavellian volume of 1971, Rules for Radicals. This exerted a powerful influence, from Hillary Clinton’s breathless university thesis, “There is only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model” to Alinsky’s immortalization in Obama’s 1995 nostalgic but contrived Dreams from My Father. For both Marxists and Alinskyites, national institutions were congenitally oppressive arenas of conflict. They were owed zero loyalty.
In retrospect, it is hardly surprising that by 2016, the radical Left’s ideology (and therefore power) had conquered the bureaucracy, the educational institutions, the trade unions, the mainstream media, Hollywood’s entertainment industry, the global communications industry, human resources departments (both government and private), and the progressive churches. The radical Left had become the politically correct political establishment! Such is still the situation in 2019.
Sadly, the victims, on whose behalf the Democrats claimed power, were kept in mothballs as much as possible. This was necessary so Democrats could continue to wheel them out at every election cycle. Yet the Left was under enormous pressure to find a fresh supply in the event that their victims were no longer victimized. In the nick of time, there appeared swarms of incoming migrants from snarling, dysfunctional nations. They were on the lookout for a handout. They were available, and continue to be available, for Democrat recruitment. Then, during the star-studded Hollywood years of Obama’s celestial reign, the more poetic radicals gained inspiration from the rainbow and ushered in the sexually marginalized as an entirely new victim set. Finally, the global financiers, who backed the Democrats, in conjunction with those scientists prepared to deceive in order to obtain research grants, converged to fabricate the human-triggered Climate Change Hoax, every mooted solution to which would beggar every national economy. The U.N. and the Vatican waved their unctuous benediction and took up the agenda. The demands of all these groups, clinging to the coattails of Democrat power, now distributed throughout the national institutions, weakened the nation’s economic strength.
Why, then, despite their unprecedented political, social, ideological, cultural, and institutional victory, are the Democrats now hell-bent on destroying their legal foundation — i.e., the nation-state itself? This seemingly suicidal path has been provoked by their frothing outrage. For the first time since the end of World War Two, the radical Left has been challenged from an unexpected quarter. These malcontents were unexpected because they were, according to the ideology of the Left, the very perpetrators of oppression! These were the Donald Trump voters, who had been straitened and bankrupted by globalist Wall Street and Obama’s tripling of the national debt and horrified by the Left’s demolition of traditional Western values — none other than the deplorable “white” middle and working classes in the deplorable working middle of the country.
Determined not to relinquish their power, the radical Left Democrats have done their utmost to disrupt Trump’s presidency, even before it became a fact. They have lied and misinformed the public. They have corrupted the Rule of Law. They yearn to alter the Constitution. They seek to abolish the Electoral College. Yet because they own the institutions, they remain untouchable. Their non-state actors, the NGOs (specifically the NGO empire of globalist and Democrat donor George Soros), are working around the clock to undermine the legitimacy of this administration, including the alleged sponsoring of violence by Antifa thugs, staging disruptive events to weaken people’s resolve and pouring resources into anyone, anywhere who despises the president. This is taking a savage toll on the nation.
The Left’s apparent willingness to weaken the institutions and laws of the state becomes even more dangerous as it chimes in with the plans of other enemies who share that desire — notably radical Islam and the financial globalists. The latter are stoutly represented within both Democrat and Republican Parties, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Federal Reserve and include also the cabal of global central banks and international financial institutions. George Soros is on record as recommending that the USA ought to go into a “managed decline,” presumably so that currency-raiders (such as himself) can make further billions in profit. However, it has been clear for some time that the individual integrity of the nation within the international community has been breached and, like Humpty Dumpty, cannot be put back together again. But surely this should urge greater vigilance in protecting the still remaining institutions, privileges, and boundaries of the national government. Our freedom depends on them holding fast.”
“In an interview with ABC News Wednesday, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “it was clear” to Ukrainian officials that President Trump would communicate with them only if they agreed to discuss former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
“It was clear that Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case,” said Serhiy Leshchenko, a former member of Ukraine’s parliament and member of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. “This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood.”
Leshchenko told ABC News that the Biden investigation was encouraged by Shokin’s successor, Yuri Lutsenko, whom Leshchenko said was seeking protection from the U.S. because he thought Zelensky would fire him as prosecutor general.
“We understood that he was just trying to protect his position in the new administration using this scandal,” Leshchenko said, according to ABC News. “And he put Ukraine on this battlefield.”
Leshchenko, it should be noted, comes to the UkraineGate controversy with a considerable amount of baggage.
He was involved in Democratic opposition research efforts into former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort in 2016, and is widely credited with publicizing the so-called “black ledger” that implicated Manafort in a $12.7 million cash kickback scheme.
He also served as a source for journalist Michael Isikoff, DNC Ukrainian operative Alexandra Chalupa, and Fusion GPS.”
One name came up in all this that I found interesting.
CrowdStrike.
This is just further evidence that Trump was right to ask for investigations here. That’s what Dems are really afraid of, because they know what will be found.
“‘Ukraine-Gate’ Is About the Russian Hack That Wasn’t
President Trump asked the Ukrainian president about CrowdStrike, the politically connected cybersecurity firm that investigated the alleged Russian “hack” of the Democratic National Committee. Here’s why that matters—and why it should not be ignored.”
“One of the animating chapters in the Trump-Russian collusion saga was the claim that Russia infiltrated the Democratic National Committee’s email server in the spring of 2016. That hack, according to collusion truthers, and the subsequent release of damaging emails exchanged between top Democratic Party officials was central to Vladimir Putin’s scheme to sway the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.
But the evidence to support this widely accepted claim is sketchy at best and appears to be under appropriate scrutiny by prosecutors now examining the origins of the FBI’s pre-election investigation into the Trump campaign for “colluding” with Russia.
According to the transcript of a July call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s newly elected president, Trump raised the issue of “CrowdStrike” and suggested Ukraine might be in possession of the “server,” a reference to the DNC server.
“I would like you to do us a favor,” Trump said. “I would like you to find out what happened with the whole situation with Ukraine, with CrowdStrike. The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.”
To say the least.
While lawmakers and pundits on the Left and NeverTrump Right breezed past Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike—either out of subterfuge or ignorance—it is significant.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm with strong ties to the Democratic Party. After the DNC server was hacked in early 2016, Perkins Coie, a politically connected law firm, hired CrowdStrike on behalf of the DNC to find out who was behind the intrusion. (Perkins Coie is the same law firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up Russia-related dirt on Team Trump before the election.)
That isn’t the extent of CrowdStrike’s dubious political ties. Its co-founder, Moscow-born Dmitri Alperovitch, is associated with the Clinton Foundation; in 2015, CrowdStrike received $100 million in funding from Google whose chairman, Eric Schmidt, was a generous supporter of Hillary Clinton. CrowdStrike’s president is Shawn Henry, who headed up the FBI’s cybercrimes division during the Obama Administration when Robert Mueller was director.
According to an October 2016 profile in Esquire, at the same time, the Obama Justice Department was concocting the Trump-Russia collusion ruse, Alperovitch and Henry were working with top Justice officials on cyber “war games.” In March 2016—as the DNC email system allegedly was compromised by the Russians—Alperovitch and Henry organized “four teams of ten people—representing the government, the private sector, European and Australian allies” for the exercise. (Another participant included a former member of GCHQ, the British intelligence agency working with former CIA Director John Brennan in 2016 on the Russian collusion scheme.)
Among the officials working with CrowdStrike on the exercise was John Carlin, Mueller’s former chief of staff and then head of the Justice Department’s national security division. Carlin facilitated the October 2016 FISA warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page; he also received regular briefings from then-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe on both the Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia collusion probe. (Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general at the center of the so-called whistleblower controversy, worked directly for Carlin in 2016 and 2017.)
“RUSH: Now, let me tell you one other thing about CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike, when I saw that word in the transcript with the call between Trump and the president of Ukraine, just to remind you, CrowdStrike, private sector security firm that the Democrats hired to analyze their server that they claim was hacked. They didn’t let the FBI examine the server. And can you imagine the FBI said, “Okay”? You ever had the FBI come to your house and want to search and you say, “No, you can’t come in,” and they say, “Oh, okay,” and leave?
Well, they showed up and Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz said, get outta here, we don’t want you to look at our server, and they turned around and left. And the FBI, as they’re leaving, finds out that the Democrat National Committee hired CrowdStrike. And it is their analysis and only their analysis, CrowdStrike, the only evidence that Russia hacked the DNC. That’s all. And everybody has just assumed that the Russians were the guilty party only because the firm hired by the Democrats said so.
But CrowdStrike is alleged to have gotten something big wrong about Ukraine. CrowdStrike accused Russia of hacking a Ukrainian artillery app resulting in heavy losses, even though Ukraine has no incentive to help Russia, which is attacking them. Ukraine said it never happened. And yet CrowdStrike was asserting that Russia hacked a Ukrainian artillery app. How do I know this? Well, Andy McCarthy’s written about this in his book Ball of Collusion. Here’s the short little passage here that’s relevant.
“CrowdStrike widely believed to have been wrong in a controversial 2016 judgment when it claimed that Russia hacked a Ukrainian artillery app resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in combat against separatists used by Moscow.” That’s a pretty big thing to be wrong about, and the only reason to point it out is, okay, if they’re wrong about that, what if the Democrat National Committee server was not hacked?
Do you realize how convenient it was for them to be able to say that Russia hacked their server and then link Trump to Russia? The FBI never assumed that because they never got to investigate it. So the presence of CrowdStrike, Trump asking the president of Ukraine to look into CrowdStrike as well as Biden and his son.
Now, just a little bit more about CrowdStrike ’cause I have paid attention, there’s not a single — I haven’t seen a single report focus on CrowdStrike in this transcript. Now, I know why the Democrats are ignoring it. The Democrats are bent out of shape that Trump even knows about CrowdStrike. They think Trump’s an idiot. With Trump specifically zeroing in on CrowdStrike the Democrats have learned today, after reading that transcript, what Trump is really doing here.
Trump is soliciting assistance from allies all over the world to help Barr prove the scam run against him. That’s what’s going on. That’s what the Democrats have learned today with that word “CrowdStrike” being in the transcript. CrowdStrike, the founder of CrowdStrike is a Russian emigre who hates Putin with a purple passion. It seems to color CrowdStrike’s security work.
Prime example being when CrowdStrike claimed that the Russians had hacked the Ukraine artillery software during the time Russia was invading Ukraine. CrowdStrike claimed the Russian hack caused the Ukrainians to fire on their own troops, killing thousands of them. They were dead wrong about it! And that’s a massive thing to be wrong about. Because the only problem was Ukraine said there was no such hack and no such battle and there were no such casualties.
They said that CrowdStrike had made all of it up. And guess what? CrowdStrike withdrew its report and admitted that it was wrong. Now, this, whether it sounds like it or not, don’t doubt me, this is highly relevant to this entire Russian collusion story, which is why Trump was asking about it and why the Democrats don’t want the Ukrainians to reinvestigate it.”
“icture the 2020 presidential debate between Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee. The challenger turns to the president and charges: “You asked the Ukrainian president to investigate your opponent’s son’s shady business dealings.”
He adds, “you released the transcript of your phone call last year with him in which you said, ‘there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.’
“And then you said, and I quote, ‘Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me.’”
Finally, arriving at his rhetorical crescendo, the nominee declares victoriously, “Horrible? What’s horrible wasn’t me as vice president using the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees that Ukraine needed to stay solvent to get the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating my son’s client fired. No, what’s horrible is a president of the United States using the power of his office to dig up foreign dirt on a political opponent.”
It doesn’t quite work, does it? In fact, it would, if you will, trump Joe Biden’s long history of verbal blunders as the gaffe of all gaffes of the entirety of his four-and-a-half decades in Washington.
Democrats — from high-ranking party operatives to rank-and-file primary voters — know this, which is why the transcript released by the Trump White House on Wednesday dooms Biden’s 2020 chances, not Trump’s.
“We have to remember that the whistleblower never heard any of the information firsthand and read a few articles. It’s all hearsay. From Fox News:
The complaint cites “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call” and accuses Trump of attempting “to pressure the Ukranian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid.” It then presents allegations that the White House tried to “restrict access” to records of the call.
“In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced–as is customary–by the White House Situation Room,” the complaint says.
The complaint goes on to allege that White House officials said they were “directed” by White House attorneys to remove the transcript of the call from the computer system where they are normally kept. Instead, the transcript was allegedly kept on a different system normally used for classified information.
Trump released the phone call transcript with Zelensky on Wednesday. It showed he did not threaten to withhold aid if Ukraine did not investigate Vice President Joe Biden. It did show he suggested Zelensky investigate Biden.
Zelensky said himself that no one applied pressure to him when it came to Biden.”
“Dems Worry Rudy Would Send Impeachment Hearing Off the Rails
Giuliani isn’t really known for his staid public appearances these days, and that’s exactly what gives some Democrats pause.”
“If Congress is to get to the bottom of President Trump’s efforts to get the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, Rudolph W. Giuliani is an obvious choice for the witness list.
But Democrats are split as to whether he would do more harm than good to their nascent impeachment inquiry and some expressed concern that hauling a loose cannon like Giuliani in front of a committee would risk a replay of the circus-like atmosphere created by Trump loyalist and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski—a scene few Democrats are eager to recreate.
Still, aside from acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and the anonymous whistleblower who first raised Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Giuliani would perhaps be the next most important witness in the Ukraine-focused probe that House Democrats are promising to conduct. “
Hot take from a smart guy: “Just read whistleblowers complaint. Theory, this is a cover up, not just of Biden, but the whole Clintons obama Biden collusion debacle riff with illegality. The complaint is someone in that mix trying to cover their ass.”
In other irritating news–since I’m ignoring the above.
My county survived being held hostage, er, our preparedness “drill” lest P, G & E turn off electricity in an area to “protect” us in case from potential fire on a day when temperatures soared over 100 degrees.
Massive headlines in the paper this morning about the 5500 people who survived the power outage.
Buried on a back page was this interesting description of the “hardship” one woman endured:
“the power shut-off did not have much of an impact on her home.
“After the 2017 wildfire, F and her husband purchased a solar power system for their home that includes three Telsa [sic] Powerwall batteries. Early Wednesday morning, when the power went out, the batteries kicked in and started supplying her electricity.
“By Wednesday afternoon, with the sun out, her solar system was supplying her home with 7.5 kilowatts — 4.7 kilowatts coming from the home’s solar arrays and 2.7 kilowatts coming from the Tesla batteries.
“I’m down to 92 percent on my batteries,” she said. “When I get to 90 percent, I’ll turn off the air conditioner.”
I checked, each Tesla battery costs $14K+ without the solar package.
Do you find this a little over the top?
Meanwhile, a letter writer suggested P, G. & E provide everyone with a Tesla battery so we can survive without power for a few days.
At my house, where we don’t have air conditioning, I just shut the windows mid-morning and opened them in the evening. I didn’t even turn on the fan.
I’d have been far more sympathetic, proud even, had the woman needed the electricity to keep someone alive. Then I’d say yes, give her a battery.
No word, of course, on how much in subsidies tax payers paid to the solar companies and Tesla so she could run her air conditioner on a batter for several hours . . .
Impeachment: Here’s one of the more glaring examples of the wide difference in the way something is covered by today’s news outlets. I read several versions last night, it was like a (completely) different story was being covered depending on which outlet you read. And your poor average, non-partisan reader has to somehow make sense of it. Most probably just give up.
Rather than approach the story from a particular premise, journalists should be stepping back and out of the picture, presenting the facts, the reactions, and what both sides are saying. I read one article last night, on Politico I think, that tried to take that approach but you could tell by the choice of words that there was still an underlying working premise there — that this time Trump had finally been nailed (but he still had his supporters and some others who just thought impeachment was a bad way to go for the nation).
It is disturbing and outrageous that Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff opens up a hearing of this importance with improvised fake dialogue between President Trump and President Zelenskyy. We should focus on the facts.
If the conversation were as damning as Schiff et al would like, he would have simply read directly from it, instead of making up dialogue. Probably not surprising in light of the extravagant collusion claims he made for 2 years. https://t.co/UfefK3kQYj
They don’t care if it’s believable. Their base and NTers will eat it up anyway.
When you don’t have facts on your side some just make it up. The opening statement by their ring leader was #FullofSchiff. House Dems blatantly lying to justify their impeachment inquiry is horribly timed, poorly written and badly intentioned.
“U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating Ukraine’s role in potential 2016 election interference, the Justice Department confirmed Wednesday, the same day transcripts showed that President Trump’s famous call to the Ukrainian president centered around that country’s possible aid in a probe of a missing Democratic email server.
Attorney General William P. Barr this year tapped Mr. Durham, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to look into the origins of the FBI probe into alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential race, an investigation that ultimately gave way to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
The Mueller investigation ended earlier this year after concluding that Mr. Trump and key campaign figures did not conspire with Russia to sway the election.
Mr. Durham has been silent about what he has uncovered, but the Justice Department said he has set his sights on Ukraine.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.”
To no one’s surprise, Chairman Adam Schiff went all drama king, even making up quotes from the phone call transcript. Throughout the hearing, Schiff kept trying to put words into Maguire’s mouth, especially with leading questions.
Maguire almost lost his cool:
But after maintaining his composure for most of the morning, his frustration showed through at the end, when Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., repeatedly pressed him to agree that the matter should be investigated.
Maguire stressed that the committee now has all of the relevant information, including the whistleblower complaint itself that was released publicly Thursday morning, and said it’s up to them to decide how to proceed.
“The horse has left the barn,” Maguire said. “You have all of the information. You have the whistleblower complaint. You have the letter from the ICIG. You have the Office of Legal Counsel opinion and you have the transcript from the president.”
Maguire also acknowledged that the whistleblower’s account is hearsay and no one has corroborated his complaint:
“This is second-hand information. I am not criticizing the whistleblower,” Macguire said. “… I am in no position to tell the committee to do an investigation or not to do an investigation.”
Schiff vowed at the end “we are gonna find out” the backstory, including whether U.S. aid was tied in any way to Trump’s investigation request, which the president denies.
The committee tried to get Maguire to admit to situations that he could not detail like conversations with Trump. It seemed like no one could comprehend why Maguire could not say anything:
Joseph Maguire told several members of the House Intelligence Committee multiple times that his conversations with Trump are “privileged,” as he rebuffed questions about whether he and the president have discussed the whistleblower’s complaint.
Maguire noted that he is a member of the executive branch of the government, and said it “would destroy my relationship with the president in intelligence matters to divulge any of my conversations with the president of the United States.”
Maguire told Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-New York, when asked if he was “denying” that he discussed the complaint with the president, “I speak to the president, and anything I say to the president is confidential.”
The Democrats on the committee tried to put Maguire “on the hot seat” because he did not immediately release the whistleblower complaint to Congress. Again, they could not (or would not) comprehend why it took awhile when it’s quite simple: There is a process (emphasis mine):
Maguire was on the hot seat before the Intelligence Committee because of concerns by Democratic members that he had failed to comply with the law by not turning over that complaint to the committee by a statutory deadline.
Maguire justified his actions by saying, “I was just trying to work through the law the way it was written,” meaning he wanted to determine if the complaint had to be disclosed under the law, and whether there was a possibility that its release to Congress would be blocked because of a claim that its contents were subject to “executive privilege.”
He said he took the complaint to the White House and the Justice Department as part of that review.
“We consulted with the White House Counsel’s Office and we were advised that much of the information in the complaint was, in fact, subject to executive privilege,” Maguire said.”
“Former Rep. Darrell Issa Running for Congress in California’s 50th District
Other Republicans dropped out to throw their support behind the former Congressman”
“Issa served as a Congressman from 2001 to 2019 where he eventually became Chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
Rep. Duncan Hunter currently represents California’s 50th district. Hunter and his wife were recently indicted for “charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, and violating campaign finance laws,” reports the WaEx:
Issa is now running against Hunter in a military-heavy district that encompasses the central and northeastern parts of San Diego County. Under California’s election rules, the top two vote-getters face off against each other no matter what party. So, a Republican-on-Republican fight is realistic in the 50th District, where the GOP has an 11-point voter registration edge.
In August 2018, Hunter and his wife were indicted on charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, and violating campaign finance laws. In June, his wife pleaded guilty to corruption and named him as a co-conspirator in using campaign funds for personal expenses. His trial begins in February 2020, weeks ahead of the March primary.
Issa’s announcement prompted other Republican candidates to bow out and throw their support behind the former Congressman.”
When dealing with these clowns, it’s best to take an offensive approach. 🙂
ICE Director Tom Homan calls out @RepJayapal for attacking the Trump Admin. for doing the same thing the Obama Admin.
"We [repurposed money] under the Obama Administration and I don’t remember any hearings on that … the cages were built under the Obama Admin. I was there.” pic.twitter.com/2kqlK8LryZ
"Last hearing I was called a racist and a bigot because I enforced the laws that you enacted. If I'm a racist and bigot for enforcing the laws you've enacted, what's that make you? You wrote the law."pic.twitter.com/n1Ppl4ep9E
Trump: "You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now." https://t.co/8OLSxoRbzD
Breathless takes like the one Mona Charen links to really aren’t helpful. Neither Trump nor any of his supporters is really suggesting the whistleblower is equivalent to Aldrich Ames or has done anything like sharing nuclear secrets, and nobody is preparing an official case to prosecute the whistleblower for a capital crime. This is the kind of hyperanalysis that reads phantom quid pro quo into the Zalensky transcript out of the pervasive weird Trump hate that has taken hold on everybody.
Now that Amash is an Independent, Will Hurd is my favorite Republican Congressman. He is retiring, but still should have a bright future after The Cult disbands.
There is a lot in the whistleblower complaint that is concerning. We need to fully investigate all of the allegations addressed in the letter, and the first step is to talk to the whistleblower.
SP, If Trump is going to spout out nonsense, you have to expect people to refute the nonsense. After all, some Trumpkins like and repeat the nonsense. See 6:31.
The stuff at 6:31 is what I was talking about when I said last night that Trump will make things worse for himself. If he would shut up, he should have about a 75% of acquittal in the Senate. However, every time he delights his cult by “making liberals heads explode”, he makes it easier for those Republican Senators to vote to convict.
HRW perfectly dealt with the “quid pro quo” question at 8:05 last night, and all of the Republican Senators understand what was going on. They may not admit it, but they know. Nunes may actually be too clueless to understand, but I’ve looked at the list and if there is a Nunes in the Senate, she is a Democrat.
The civil war at Pravda continues; Hannity thinks Trump is in trouble; and Paul Ryan attempts to steer Fox News back to conservatism and out of The Cult.
Chaos inside Fox News as impeachment looms. Mgmt told Smith to stop attacking Carlson. Hannity privately says whistleblower is really bad for Trump. Paul Ryan has told Lachlan to plan for a post-Trump future.https://t.co/b2MmBKrWkF
So I thought I’d read the transcript ……
Its obvious Trump is asking a foregin power to find dirt on his possible opponent. There doesn’t need to be but there is a quid pro quo
Zelenskyy…….. “I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.”
Later,
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
So Zelenskyy wants the military aid thats been frozen ie the Javelins. Trump wants a favour though…..And a few minutes later he wants another favour….
As Lindsey Graham said in 1999 its time to restore honour and dignity to the office and inmpeach the president.
I did do it but where’s the snitch? You know what we used to do to snitches….
AJ,
Post about the Bidens and their possible corruption is a distraction. It doesn’t excuse Trump’s attempts to use a foreign power to get dirt on his opponent. Perhaps both are involved in corruption but only one is currently President. The Republicans need to take the log out of their eye before they take the stick out of the Democrat’s eye.
Imagine the Republican reaction if Clinton talked about Linda Tripp in this manner…..
Wandering Views 
Despite the lies of some critics….. real lawyers say there’s no there there.
TRANSCRIPT SHOWS NO WRONGDOING BY PRESIDENT TRUMP
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/transcript-shows-no-wrongdoing-by-president-trump.php
“The just-released transcript of President Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky confirms the president’s statement that he did nothing blameworthy with regard to the Biden investigation. The conversation was friendly and wide-ranging. There was discussion of how much the U.S. is helping Ukraine:”
—–
It is obvious what went on here. There was corruption on both sides of the deal. A Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, retained Joe Biden’s son Hunter and agreed to pay him $3 million–$600,000 a year for five years. There is no conceivable way that Hunter Biden could provide $3 million worth of legitimate services to a Ukrainian company. Undoubtedly Burisma was buying (or thought it was buying) influence with the Obama-Biden administration.
A Ukrainian prosecutor was investigating Burisma for corruption, potentially including the Biden payoff. Joe Biden has boasted that he threatened to cancel a $1 billion loan guarantee package, demanding that Ukraine fire the offending prosecutor. Ukraine’s prior government acceded to Biden’s demand. As far as I know, Hunter Biden continued to collect his $600,000 annually.
The new Ukrainian government, under President Zelensky, is commendably willing to reopen the corruption investigation that was quashed by the prior Ukrainian administration, which was friendly to the Obama-Biden administration.
So President Trump is doing the right thing in encouraging Zelensky to get to the bottom of a corruption investigation that may extend both to Ukraine and to the United States. That investigation, if it is pursued to the end, might not end happily for the Biden family, which apparently, at least, has gotten caught with its hand in a multi-million dollar cookie jar.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are rushing headlong toward impeachment. I don’t think there is much doubt that they will proceed to vote articles of impeachment. I don’t see how they can back down after the wild accusations that they are now making with one voice. To take just one example, I got an email this morning from Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota. Ellison wrote:
Trump has colluded with foreign powers to pervert our democracy, betrayed national secrets to our enemies, lined his own pockets, broken the law and violated the Constitution.
Congress owes it not to politics but to history and democracy to impeach. I applaud Speaker Pelosi for taking action yesterday to protect the rule of law.
This, and all similar talk about Trump “shredding the Constitution”–that was Joe Biden!–is simply insane, in the context of the Ukraine matter. How Trump’s conversation with Zelensky, or any related action (as yet unspecified) could possibly have “violated the Constitution” is inexplicable.
So it appears to me that we are on a collision course with the alternative reality in which the Democratic Party lives.”
—————
Along with their Never-Trump BFFs.
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THE UKRAINE TRANSCRIPT, NOT DAMNING AND NOT AS ADVERTISED
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/09/the-ukraine-transcript-not-damning-and-not-as-advertised.php
“The White House has released a memorandum about the conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy. The document memorializes, in the form of a transcript, what the two heads of state said to each other on July 25 of this year.
It’s based on note taking by people who were in the White House situation room during the conversation. As such, while it may not be a perfect transcript, I think it must come pretty close to recording what was said.
It’s clear from what I’ll call the transcript that President Trump did not tell his Ukrainian counterpart that U.S. aid was contingent on Ukraine investigating the Bidens. There was no quid pro quo.
Initial reports were that, indeed, no quid pro quo was discussed, but that Trump repeatedly pressed Zelenskyy to investigate the Bidens. He may have, but the transcript doesn’t show this.
What it shows is that, Trump asked Zelenskyy to cooperate with Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General Barr in their exploration of the matter. Trump said:
Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great. . . .
There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.
I draw a distinction between a U.S. president asking a foreign leader to investigate a political rival of the president and asking a foreign leader to assist Americans who are conducting such an investigation or making inquiries.
As I see it, the former — asking a foreign leader to conduct an investigation — is wrong under almost any circumstance. But asking a foreign leader to assist in an American investigation will often be appropriate. When potential wrongdoing by an American (whether a president’s rival or not) involves actions committed overseas, it may not be possible for Americans to investigate without foreign cooperation.
Thus, if all Trump asked for was Ukrainian cooperation in the inquiries of Americans, I agree with John that Trump did nothing wrong during this conversation. And that’s all the transcript shows Trump did.
Immediately after Trump asks Zelenskyy to speak with Giuliani and Barr, the Ukrainian president volunteers that he will ask the Ukrainian prosecutor to look into Hunter Biden’s company. But that’s not what Trump asked him to do during the conversation (at least insofar as the transcript shows).
Maybe Trump or someone on Trump’s team had already communicated to Zelenskyy that this is what the president wanted. Maybe Zelenskyy understood Trump’s comments about cooperating with Giuliani and Barr as code for having his own prosecutor investigate.
However, the transcript itself establishes only that Trump wanted cooperation with American investigators. That’s not an unreasonable request (though it does raise the question of whether it was appropriate for Trump to have his private attorney, Giuliani, conducting as investigation of the Bidens that would draw in a foreign governme”
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And certainly not the “Urgent Concern” that the fraud partisan whose not even a real whistle blower and his slimy lawyers allege.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/olc-memo-says-whistleblower-complaint-not-an-urgent-concern-hands-it-over-to-congress/
“The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel determined that the whistleblower on the phone call with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not present an “urgent concern” nor do officials have to hand over the account to Congress.”
“The intelligence community inspector general also discovered the whistleblower “showed indications of ‘political bias’ and was ‘in favor of a rival candidate’” of Trump’s.
Despite that conclusion, the House and Senate have the whistleblower’s account.
The whistleblower, who remains unknown, claimed that Trump may have violated “campaign-finance laws” during a phone call with Zelensky.
Based on hearsay, the whistleblower said Trump threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if the country’s new prosecutor did not investigate Vice President Joe Biden, who urged Ukraine to fire prosecutor Viktor Shoklin over his investigation into Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden, Joe’s son, sat on the board.
The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) reviewed the complaint, but found credibility even though they found “some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate.”
The ICIG forwarded the complaint to the DOJ. Those officials found that the “urgent concern” did not fall under the statute “because it does not concern ‘the funding, administration or operation of an intelligence activity’ under the authority of the DNI [Director of National Intelligence].”
Since it does not match the statute the DOJ does not have to hand over the whistleblower’s report to Congressional intelligence committees.
We learned this morning that Trump did not threaten Zelensky in any way if he did not investigate Biden. He suggested Zelensky, who happily agreed. During a press conference, Zelensky said no one pressured him to agree to the investigation.
Then news came out that acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire threatened to resign if Trump’s administration stopped him from testifying before Congress on Thursday.
Axios also reported that the House and Senate received the whistleblower’s account at 4PM ET today.”
——————-
Maguire has denied those reports that he threatened to resign, and since they came from anonymous sources (the only kind they ever have), I’m guessing that’s just more fake news.
Also Maguire had little choice here. If he didn’t forward this onward he would have received the Kavanaugh treatment for sure. The left would have slandered him six ways to Sunday. I understand his actions given the pressure. But he’s also a known Deep Stater, so trust him at your own peril.
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It’s a trap!
Rudy’s interview was a hoot. 🙂
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/rudy_giuliani_tells_dems_theyve_walked_into_a_trap.html
“It was in the first segment that he gave a preview of what lies ahead, and it is evident that he and his client, President Trump, have been waiting for the right moment to launch their counterattack.
“The Democrats have stepped into something way beyond what they realize.”
“We’ve lost the FBI…and who knows what else?
“They have walked into a trap.”
“There’s only one reason the Chinese spent all that money: to buy Joe Biden.”
He warned, “I have the records” about the actual corruption of Biden and his son, who he said have provided “evidence of guilty knowledge.”
This impeachment effort is “[c]overing up for what will turn out to be massive corruption in the Obama administration.”
“The Clintons enriched themselves in public office to the tune of hundreds of millions.”
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A,
Final answer. And you can include NTers right along with these traitorous whelps.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/09/the_radical_left_enemy_of_the_state_or_loyal_opposition.html
“Barack Obama’s presidency was the apotheosis of the radical nation-state. Democrats, who sought power on behalf of self-appointed victims, became the ruling elite. The community organizer cum president was flanked by Grecian columns at his inauguration, which since the Roman Empire have endorsed expanding political dominion. Throughout and beyond his suzerainty, Obama gave ear to those critical of the nation and champed at the bit of constitutional restraint.
During the twentieth century, there was Marx’s long “march through the institutions” due to the Western intelligentsia’s promiscuous infatuation with Soviet communism and Marxist historiography. That picked up exponential speed during the nineteen-sixties. The streets filled with Civil Rights flamethrowers, striding feminists, and flowerpot-smoking anti–Vietnam War hippies. Marxist professors strutted their propaganda in the social science departments of academia, and Saul Alinsky’s study of the Mafia and Chicago gangs harvested his Machiavellian volume of 1971, Rules for Radicals. This exerted a powerful influence, from Hillary Clinton’s breathless university thesis, “There is only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model” to Alinsky’s immortalization in Obama’s 1995 nostalgic but contrived Dreams from My Father. For both Marxists and Alinskyites, national institutions were congenitally oppressive arenas of conflict. They were owed zero loyalty.
In retrospect, it is hardly surprising that by 2016, the radical Left’s ideology (and therefore power) had conquered the bureaucracy, the educational institutions, the trade unions, the mainstream media, Hollywood’s entertainment industry, the global communications industry, human resources departments (both government and private), and the progressive churches. The radical Left had become the politically correct political establishment! Such is still the situation in 2019.
Sadly, the victims, on whose behalf the Democrats claimed power, were kept in mothballs as much as possible. This was necessary so Democrats could continue to wheel them out at every election cycle. Yet the Left was under enormous pressure to find a fresh supply in the event that their victims were no longer victimized. In the nick of time, there appeared swarms of incoming migrants from snarling, dysfunctional nations. They were on the lookout for a handout. They were available, and continue to be available, for Democrat recruitment. Then, during the star-studded Hollywood years of Obama’s celestial reign, the more poetic radicals gained inspiration from the rainbow and ushered in the sexually marginalized as an entirely new victim set. Finally, the global financiers, who backed the Democrats, in conjunction with those scientists prepared to deceive in order to obtain research grants, converged to fabricate the human-triggered Climate Change Hoax, every mooted solution to which would beggar every national economy. The U.N. and the Vatican waved their unctuous benediction and took up the agenda. The demands of all these groups, clinging to the coattails of Democrat power, now distributed throughout the national institutions, weakened the nation’s economic strength.
Why, then, despite their unprecedented political, social, ideological, cultural, and institutional victory, are the Democrats now hell-bent on destroying their legal foundation — i.e., the nation-state itself? This seemingly suicidal path has been provoked by their frothing outrage. For the first time since the end of World War Two, the radical Left has been challenged from an unexpected quarter. These malcontents were unexpected because they were, according to the ideology of the Left, the very perpetrators of oppression! These were the Donald Trump voters, who had been straitened and bankrupted by globalist Wall Street and Obama’s tripling of the national debt and horrified by the Left’s demolition of traditional Western values — none other than the deplorable “white” middle and working classes in the deplorable working middle of the country.
Determined not to relinquish their power, the radical Left Democrats have done their utmost to disrupt Trump’s presidency, even before it became a fact. They have lied and misinformed the public. They have corrupted the Rule of Law. They yearn to alter the Constitution. They seek to abolish the Electoral College. Yet because they own the institutions, they remain untouchable. Their non-state actors, the NGOs (specifically the NGO empire of globalist and Democrat donor George Soros), are working around the clock to undermine the legitimacy of this administration, including the alleged sponsoring of violence by Antifa thugs, staging disruptive events to weaken people’s resolve and pouring resources into anyone, anywhere who despises the president. This is taking a savage toll on the nation.
The Left’s apparent willingness to weaken the institutions and laws of the state becomes even more dangerous as it chimes in with the plans of other enemies who share that desire — notably radical Islam and the financial globalists. The latter are stoutly represented within both Democrat and Republican Parties, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Federal Reserve and include also the cabal of global central banks and international financial institutions. George Soros is on record as recommending that the USA ought to go into a “managed decline,” presumably so that currency-raiders (such as himself) can make further billions in profit. However, it has been clear for some time that the individual integrity of the nation within the international community has been breached and, like Humpty Dumpty, cannot be put back together again. But surely this should urge greater vigilance in protecting the still remaining institutions, privileges, and boundaries of the national government. Our freedom depends on them holding fast.”
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ABC is so desperate to get Trump that they rolled out some Ukrainian to push the Dem talking points.
But the guy is about as unreliable a source as there is.
“In an interview with ABC News Wednesday, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “it was clear” to Ukrainian officials that President Trump would communicate with them only if they agreed to discuss former Vice President Joe Biden and his son.
“It was clear that Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case,” said Serhiy Leshchenko, a former member of Ukraine’s parliament and member of Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau. “This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood.”
Leshchenko told ABC News that the Biden investigation was encouraged by Shokin’s successor, Yuri Lutsenko, whom Leshchenko said was seeking protection from the U.S. because he thought Zelensky would fire him as prosecutor general.
“We understood that he was just trying to protect his position in the new administration using this scandal,” Leshchenko said, according to ABC News. “And he put Ukraine on this battlefield.”
Leshchenko, it should be noted, comes to the UkraineGate controversy with a considerable amount of baggage.
He was involved in Democratic opposition research efforts into former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort in 2016, and is widely credited with publicizing the so-called “black ledger” that implicated Manafort in a $12.7 million cash kickback scheme.
He also served as a source for journalist Michael Isikoff, DNC Ukrainian operative Alexandra Chalupa, and Fusion GPS.”
—————
So totally unbiased…… 🙄
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One name came up in all this that I found interesting.
CrowdStrike.
This is just further evidence that Trump was right to ask for investigations here. That’s what Dems are really afraid of, because they know what will be found.
“‘Ukraine-Gate’ Is About the Russian Hack That Wasn’t
President Trump asked the Ukrainian president about CrowdStrike, the politically connected cybersecurity firm that investigated the alleged Russian “hack” of the Democratic National Committee. Here’s why that matters—and why it should not be ignored.”
“One of the animating chapters in the Trump-Russian collusion saga was the claim that Russia infiltrated the Democratic National Committee’s email server in the spring of 2016. That hack, according to collusion truthers, and the subsequent release of damaging emails exchanged between top Democratic Party officials was central to Vladimir Putin’s scheme to sway the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.
But the evidence to support this widely accepted claim is sketchy at best and appears to be under appropriate scrutiny by prosecutors now examining the origins of the FBI’s pre-election investigation into the Trump campaign for “colluding” with Russia.
According to the transcript of a July call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s newly elected president, Trump raised the issue of “CrowdStrike” and suggested Ukraine might be in possession of the “server,” a reference to the DNC server.
“I would like you to do us a favor,” Trump said. “I would like you to find out what happened with the whole situation with Ukraine, with CrowdStrike. The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.”
To say the least.
While lawmakers and pundits on the Left and NeverTrump Right breezed past Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike—either out of subterfuge or ignorance—it is significant.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm with strong ties to the Democratic Party. After the DNC server was hacked in early 2016, Perkins Coie, a politically connected law firm, hired CrowdStrike on behalf of the DNC to find out who was behind the intrusion. (Perkins Coie is the same law firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up Russia-related dirt on Team Trump before the election.)
That isn’t the extent of CrowdStrike’s dubious political ties. Its co-founder, Moscow-born Dmitri Alperovitch, is associated with the Clinton Foundation; in 2015, CrowdStrike received $100 million in funding from Google whose chairman, Eric Schmidt, was a generous supporter of Hillary Clinton. CrowdStrike’s president is Shawn Henry, who headed up the FBI’s cybercrimes division during the Obama Administration when Robert Mueller was director.
According to an October 2016 profile in Esquire, at the same time, the Obama Justice Department was concocting the Trump-Russia collusion ruse, Alperovitch and Henry were working with top Justice officials on cyber “war games.” In March 2016—as the DNC email system allegedly was compromised by the Russians—Alperovitch and Henry organized “four teams of ten people—representing the government, the private sector, European and Australian allies” for the exercise. (Another participant included a former member of GCHQ, the British intelligence agency working with former CIA Director John Brennan in 2016 on the Russian collusion scheme.)
Among the officials working with CrowdStrike on the exercise was John Carlin, Mueller’s former chief of staff and then head of the Justice Department’s national security division. Carlin facilitated the October 2016 FISA warrant for Trump campaign aide Carter Page; he also received regular briefings from then-deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe on both the Clinton email investigation and the Trump-Russia collusion probe. (Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general at the center of the so-called whistleblower controversy, worked directly for Carlin in 2016 and 2017.)
Probably just a coincidence, right?”
—————
Yeah… it’s not.
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Well look at that. I just went over to RealClearPolitics and found this. Seems I’m not the only one interested in that name.
https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/09/25/why-trumps-mention-of-crowdstrike-is-so-key/
“RUSH: Now, let me tell you one other thing about CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike, when I saw that word in the transcript with the call between Trump and the president of Ukraine, just to remind you, CrowdStrike, private sector security firm that the Democrats hired to analyze their server that they claim was hacked. They didn’t let the FBI examine the server. And can you imagine the FBI said, “Okay”? You ever had the FBI come to your house and want to search and you say, “No, you can’t come in,” and they say, “Oh, okay,” and leave?
Well, they showed up and Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz said, get outta here, we don’t want you to look at our server, and they turned around and left. And the FBI, as they’re leaving, finds out that the Democrat National Committee hired CrowdStrike. And it is their analysis and only their analysis, CrowdStrike, the only evidence that Russia hacked the DNC. That’s all. And everybody has just assumed that the Russians were the guilty party only because the firm hired by the Democrats said so.
But CrowdStrike is alleged to have gotten something big wrong about Ukraine. CrowdStrike accused Russia of hacking a Ukrainian artillery app resulting in heavy losses, even though Ukraine has no incentive to help Russia, which is attacking them. Ukraine said it never happened. And yet CrowdStrike was asserting that Russia hacked a Ukrainian artillery app. How do I know this? Well, Andy McCarthy’s written about this in his book Ball of Collusion. Here’s the short little passage here that’s relevant.
“CrowdStrike widely believed to have been wrong in a controversial 2016 judgment when it claimed that Russia hacked a Ukrainian artillery app resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in combat against separatists used by Moscow.” That’s a pretty big thing to be wrong about, and the only reason to point it out is, okay, if they’re wrong about that, what if the Democrat National Committee server was not hacked?
Do you realize how convenient it was for them to be able to say that Russia hacked their server and then link Trump to Russia? The FBI never assumed that because they never got to investigate it. So the presence of CrowdStrike, Trump asking the president of Ukraine to look into CrowdStrike as well as Biden and his son.
Now, just a little bit more about CrowdStrike ’cause I have paid attention, there’s not a single — I haven’t seen a single report focus on CrowdStrike in this transcript. Now, I know why the Democrats are ignoring it. The Democrats are bent out of shape that Trump even knows about CrowdStrike. They think Trump’s an idiot. With Trump specifically zeroing in on CrowdStrike the Democrats have learned today, after reading that transcript, what Trump is really doing here.
Trump is soliciting assistance from allies all over the world to help Barr prove the scam run against him. That’s what’s going on. That’s what the Democrats have learned today with that word “CrowdStrike” being in the transcript. CrowdStrike, the founder of CrowdStrike is a Russian emigre who hates Putin with a purple passion. It seems to color CrowdStrike’s security work.
Prime example being when CrowdStrike claimed that the Russians had hacked the Ukraine artillery software during the time Russia was invading Ukraine. CrowdStrike claimed the Russian hack caused the Ukrainians to fire on their own troops, killing thousands of them. They were dead wrong about it! And that’s a massive thing to be wrong about. Because the only problem was Ukraine said there was no such hack and no such battle and there were no such casualties.
They said that CrowdStrike had made all of it up. And guess what? CrowdStrike withdrew its report and admitted that it was wrong. Now, this, whether it sounds like it or not, don’t doubt me, this is highly relevant to this entire Russian collusion story, which is why Trump was asking about it and why the Democrats don’t want the Ukrainians to reinvestigate it.”
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The Transcript Is Damning — To Biden, Not Trump
“icture the 2020 presidential debate between Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee. The challenger turns to the president and charges: “You asked the Ukrainian president to investigate your opponent’s son’s shady business dealings.”
He adds, “you released the transcript of your phone call last year with him in which you said, ‘there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.’
“And then you said, and I quote, ‘Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me.’”
Finally, arriving at his rhetorical crescendo, the nominee declares victoriously, “Horrible? What’s horrible wasn’t me as vice president using the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees that Ukraine needed to stay solvent to get the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating my son’s client fired. No, what’s horrible is a president of the United States using the power of his office to dig up foreign dirt on a political opponent.”
It doesn’t quite work, does it? In fact, it would, if you will, trump Joe Biden’s long history of verbal blunders as the gaffe of all gaffes of the entirety of his four-and-a-half decades in Washington.
Democrats — from high-ranking party operatives to rank-and-file primary voters — know this, which is why the transcript released by the Trump White House on Wednesday dooms Biden’s 2020 chances, not Trump’s.
At The Root Of Trump-Zelensky: Hunter Biden”
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QoD
1. How many people do you think really care about any of this?
2. How many votes will it change?
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Never heard any of it firsthand, and only have hearsay, and, get this, what they read in news accounts.
Bwahahahaha! 😂🤣😂
They got nothing.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/live-acting-dni-director-joseph-maguire-testifies-over-trump-ukraine-whistleblower-complaint/
“We have to remember that the whistleblower never heard any of the information firsthand and read a few articles. It’s all hearsay. From Fox News:
The complaint cites “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call” and accuses Trump of attempting “to pressure the Ukranian leader to take actions to help the President’s 2020 reelection bid.” It then presents allegations that the White House tried to “restrict access” to records of the call.
“In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced–as is customary–by the White House Situation Room,” the complaint says.
The complaint goes on to allege that White House officials said they were “directed” by White House attorneys to remove the transcript of the call from the computer system where they are normally kept. Instead, the transcript was allegedly kept on a different system normally used for classified information.
Trump released the phone call transcript with Zelensky on Wednesday. It showed he did not threaten to withhold aid if Ukraine did not investigate Vice President Joe Biden. It did show he suggested Zelensky investigate Biden.
Zelensky said himself that no one applied pressure to him when it came to Biden.”
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Rudy knows too much, so they can’t have that.
But if they want a circus, then give them an epic one. 🙂
https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-worry-rudy-giuliani-would-send-trump-impeachment-hearing-off-the-rails
“Dems Worry Rudy Would Send Impeachment Hearing Off the Rails
Giuliani isn’t really known for his staid public appearances these days, and that’s exactly what gives some Democrats pause.”
“If Congress is to get to the bottom of President Trump’s efforts to get the Ukrainian government to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, Rudolph W. Giuliani is an obvious choice for the witness list.
But Democrats are split as to whether he would do more harm than good to their nascent impeachment inquiry and some expressed concern that hauling a loose cannon like Giuliani in front of a committee would risk a replay of the circus-like atmosphere created by Trump loyalist and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski—a scene few Democrats are eager to recreate.
Still, aside from acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and the anonymous whistleblower who first raised Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Giuliani would perhaps be the next most important witness in the Ukraine-focused probe that House Democrats are promising to conduct. “
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Never-Trumper Hugh Hewitt.
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In other irritating news–since I’m ignoring the above.
My county survived being held hostage, er, our preparedness “drill” lest P, G & E turn off electricity in an area to “protect” us in case from potential fire on a day when temperatures soared over 100 degrees.
Massive headlines in the paper this morning about the 5500 people who survived the power outage.
Buried on a back page was this interesting description of the “hardship” one woman endured:
“the power shut-off did not have much of an impact on her home.
“After the 2017 wildfire, F and her husband purchased a solar power system for their home that includes three Telsa [sic] Powerwall batteries. Early Wednesday morning, when the power went out, the batteries kicked in and started supplying her electricity.
“By Wednesday afternoon, with the sun out, her solar system was supplying her home with 7.5 kilowatts — 4.7 kilowatts coming from the home’s solar arrays and 2.7 kilowatts coming from the Tesla batteries.
“I’m down to 92 percent on my batteries,” she said. “When I get to 90 percent, I’ll turn off the air conditioner.”
I checked, each Tesla battery costs $14K+ without the solar package.
Do you find this a little over the top?
Meanwhile, a letter writer suggested P, G. & E provide everyone with a Tesla battery so we can survive without power for a few days.
At my house, where we don’t have air conditioning, I just shut the windows mid-morning and opened them in the evening. I didn’t even turn on the fan.
I’d have been far more sympathetic, proud even, had the woman needed the electricity to keep someone alive. Then I’d say yes, give her a battery.
No word, of course, on how much in subsidies tax payers paid to the solar companies and Tesla so she could run her air conditioner on a batter for several hours . . .
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My neighbors were looking into solar, some company came over to talk to them about it. Outrageously expensive, she said, so no go.
Not to mention those solar panels on roofs are downright ugly.
Our inland valley/mountain areas in SoCal also are subject to power shutoffs when the winds start to blow.
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Impeachment: Here’s one of the more glaring examples of the wide difference in the way something is covered by today’s news outlets. I read several versions last night, it was like a (completely) different story was being covered depending on which outlet you read. And your poor average, non-partisan reader has to somehow make sense of it. Most probably just give up.
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Rather than approach the story from a particular premise, journalists should be stepping back and out of the picture, presenting the facts, the reactions, and what both sides are saying. I read one article last night, on Politico I think, that tried to take that approach but you could tell by the choice of words that there was still an underlying working premise there — that this time Trump had finally been nailed (but he still had his supporters and some others who just thought impeachment was a bad way to go for the nation).
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Oh there’s parody here. You pretending to be a Congressman. You are the joke Shifty.
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————
Still waitin’ on that evidence he swore he had 2 years ago.
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They don’t care if it’s believable. Their base and NTers will eat it up anyway.
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At least some Democrats haven’t drank the Cool-Aid.
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This is what they fear, and what they’re trying to get out ahead of with this garbage. They know it’s about to blow up.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/sep/25/john-durham-probing-ukraine-as-part-of-trump-russi/
“U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating Ukraine’s role in potential 2016 election interference, the Justice Department confirmed Wednesday, the same day transcripts showed that President Trump’s famous call to the Ukrainian president centered around that country’s possible aid in a probe of a missing Democratic email server.
Attorney General William P. Barr this year tapped Mr. Durham, the top federal prosecutor in Connecticut, to look into the origins of the FBI probe into alleged links between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential race, an investigation that ultimately gave way to special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.
The Mueller investigation ended earlier this year after concluding that Mr. Trump and key campaign figures did not conspire with Russia to sway the election.
Mr. Durham has been silent about what he has uncovered, but the Justice Department said he has set his sights on Ukraine.
“A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement.”
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And the WaPo’s report that he threatened to quit was just more fake news, debunked under oath by the only guy that would know.
I’m sure they’ll be out with a retraction next week some time.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/dni-director-to-house-committee-denies-wapo-report-that-he-threatened-to-resign/
“DNI Director Maguire Denies WaPo Report That He Threatened to Resign
“At no time have I considered resigning my position since assuming this role on Aug. 16, 2019.”
———
With video.
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And he says the rest of it is “‘Hearsay,’ Not ‘Corroborated’”
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/live-acting-dni-director-joseph-maguire-testifies-over-trump-ukraine-whistleblower-complaint/
“The Hearing
To no one’s surprise, Chairman Adam Schiff went all drama king, even making up quotes from the phone call transcript. Throughout the hearing, Schiff kept trying to put words into Maguire’s mouth, especially with leading questions.
Maguire almost lost his cool:
But after maintaining his composure for most of the morning, his frustration showed through at the end, when Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., repeatedly pressed him to agree that the matter should be investigated.
Maguire stressed that the committee now has all of the relevant information, including the whistleblower complaint itself that was released publicly Thursday morning, and said it’s up to them to decide how to proceed.
“The horse has left the barn,” Maguire said. “You have all of the information. You have the whistleblower complaint. You have the letter from the ICIG. You have the Office of Legal Counsel opinion and you have the transcript from the president.”
Maguire also acknowledged that the whistleblower’s account is hearsay and no one has corroborated his complaint:
“This is second-hand information. I am not criticizing the whistleblower,” Macguire said. “… I am in no position to tell the committee to do an investigation or not to do an investigation.”
Schiff vowed at the end “we are gonna find out” the backstory, including whether U.S. aid was tied in any way to Trump’s investigation request, which the president denies.
The committee tried to get Maguire to admit to situations that he could not detail like conversations with Trump. It seemed like no one could comprehend why Maguire could not say anything:
Joseph Maguire told several members of the House Intelligence Committee multiple times that his conversations with Trump are “privileged,” as he rebuffed questions about whether he and the president have discussed the whistleblower’s complaint.
Maguire noted that he is a member of the executive branch of the government, and said it “would destroy my relationship with the president in intelligence matters to divulge any of my conversations with the president of the United States.”
Maguire told Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, D-New York, when asked if he was “denying” that he discussed the complaint with the president, “I speak to the president, and anything I say to the president is confidential.”
The Democrats on the committee tried to put Maguire “on the hot seat” because he did not immediately release the whistleblower complaint to Congress. Again, they could not (or would not) comprehend why it took awhile when it’s quite simple: There is a process (emphasis mine):
Maguire was on the hot seat before the Intelligence Committee because of concerns by Democratic members that he had failed to comply with the law by not turning over that complaint to the committee by a statutory deadline.
Maguire justified his actions by saying, “I was just trying to work through the law the way it was written,” meaning he wanted to determine if the complaint had to be disclosed under the law, and whether there was a possibility that its release to Congress would be blocked because of a claim that its contents were subject to “executive privilege.”
He said he took the complaint to the White House and the Justice Department as part of that review.
“We consulted with the White House Counsel’s Office and we were advised that much of the information in the complaint was, in fact, subject to executive privilege,” Maguire said.”
——-
And again, with video.
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A comeback.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2019/09/former-rep-darrell-issa-running-for-congress-in-californias-50th-district/
“Former Rep. Darrell Issa Running for Congress in California’s 50th District
Other Republicans dropped out to throw their support behind the former Congressman”
“Issa served as a Congressman from 2001 to 2019 where he eventually became Chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
Rep. Duncan Hunter currently represents California’s 50th district. Hunter and his wife were recently indicted for “charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, and violating campaign finance laws,” reports the WaEx:
Issa is now running against Hunter in a military-heavy district that encompasses the central and northeastern parts of San Diego County. Under California’s election rules, the top two vote-getters face off against each other no matter what party. So, a Republican-on-Republican fight is realistic in the 50th District, where the GOP has an 11-point voter registration edge.
In August 2018, Hunter and his wife were indicted on charges including conspiracy, wire fraud, and violating campaign finance laws. In June, his wife pleaded guilty to corruption and named him as a co-conspirator in using campaign funds for personal expenses. His trial begins in February 2020, weeks ahead of the March primary.
Issa’s announcement prompted other Republican candidates to bow out and throw their support behind the former Congressman.”
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When dealing with these clowns, it’s best to take an offensive approach. 🙂
———–
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https://twitter.com/Beethovenlover5/status/1177316567736037377
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Yeah, we were smarter back then…..
Liberal heads explode (again) in 3…2…
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We need to know. Is DJ actually “The Reagan Battalion”?
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Breathless takes like the one Mona Charen links to really aren’t helpful. Neither Trump nor any of his supporters is really suggesting the whistleblower is equivalent to Aldrich Ames or has done anything like sharing nuclear secrets, and nobody is preparing an official case to prosecute the whistleblower for a capital crime. This is the kind of hyperanalysis that reads phantom quid pro quo into the Zalensky transcript out of the pervasive weird Trump hate that has taken hold on everybody.
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Now that Amash is an Independent, Will Hurd is my favorite Republican Congressman. He is retiring, but still should have a bright future after The Cult disbands.
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SP, If Trump is going to spout out nonsense, you have to expect people to refute the nonsense. After all, some Trumpkins like and repeat the nonsense. See 6:31.
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The stuff at 6:31 is what I was talking about when I said last night that Trump will make things worse for himself. If he would shut up, he should have about a 75% of acquittal in the Senate. However, every time he delights his cult by “making liberals heads explode”, he makes it easier for those Republican Senators to vote to convict.
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HRW perfectly dealt with the “quid pro quo” question at 8:05 last night, and all of the Republican Senators understand what was going on. They may not admit it, but they know. Nunes may actually be too clueless to understand, but I’ve looked at the list and if there is a Nunes in the Senate, she is a Democrat.
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The civil war at Pravda continues; Hannity thinks Trump is in trouble; and Paul Ryan attempts to steer Fox News back to conservatism and out of The Cult.
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Even Diamond and Silk are worried.
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The Cult has now put out a bounty on the whistleblower.
https://twitter.com/sahilcdesaic/status/1177318049457868805?s=21
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So I thought I’d read the transcript ……
Its obvious Trump is asking a foregin power to find dirt on his possible opponent. There doesn’t need to be but there is a quid pro quo
Zelenskyy…….. “I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost. ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.
The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.”
Later,
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.”
So Zelenskyy wants the military aid thats been frozen ie the Javelins. Trump wants a favour though…..And a few minutes later he wants another favour….
As Lindsey Graham said in 1999 its time to restore honour and dignity to the office and inmpeach the president.
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Trump’s reaction;
I didn’t do it
I did do it but its no big deal
I did do it but hey look at Biden
I did do it but where’s the snitch? You know what we used to do to snitches….
AJ,
Post about the Bidens and their possible corruption is a distraction. It doesn’t excuse Trump’s attempts to use a foreign power to get dirt on his opponent. Perhaps both are involved in corruption but only one is currently President. The Republicans need to take the log out of their eye before they take the stick out of the Democrat’s eye.
Imagine the Republican reaction if Clinton talked about Linda Tripp in this manner…..
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I think there is some truth to this. Someone who is utterly amoral can act shameless better than others.
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Signs of courage and sanity at NR:
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So you still have nothing.
As usual.
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