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Wile E. Coyote’s Latest: “Whistleblower”
The falsely styled “whistleblower,” a possible felon within the intelligence community who is seeking to subvert our Constitution, with the complicity of (fellow) Democrats and their Trump-loathing TruCon lapdogs, is already blowing up in “Wile E. Coyote’s” face.
President Trump had a wonderful time in his sit-down press availability with the Australian Prime Minister. He spoke plain truths: that the “fake news” media represented in the room had just had one of their worst weeks and was now doubling down to discredit themselves even further.
Andrew McCarthy on the “Trump whistleblower” claim, cautiously laid out the law and some of the agreed-upon facts:
In my view, Chairman Schiff’s claim, based on IGIC Atkinson’s interpretation of the statute, is wrong. Section 3033 does not apply to a president’s negotiations with or commitments to foreign powers, or to a president’s sharing of classified information with foreign powers. To repeat, the statute applies to intelligence activities by government officials acting under the authority of the DNI. If I am right, the Trump administration should not be accused of law-breaking for declining to follow Section 3033, even if the whistleblower had an “urgent concern” in the ordinary understanding of that term.
[…]
…Consistent with this principle, the Justice Department has long adhered to the so-called “clear statement” rule: If the express terms of a statute do not apply its provisions to the president, then the statute is deemed not to apply to the president if its application would conflict with the president’s constitutional powers. Section 3033 does not refer to the president. By its terms, it applies to intelligence-community officials. And, in any event, it may not properly be applied to the president if doing so would hinder the president’s capacious authority to conduct foreign policy.
At least when a Republican is in the White House, progressives are enthralled by laws that, in effect, empower bureaucrats — here, “intelligence professionals”– to second-guess and otherwise check the president’s power to direct the executive branch. That is not our system.
[…]
The president has the power to conduct foreign policy as he sees fit. The Congress has the power to subject that exercise to thorough examination. The clash of these powers is a constant in our form of government. It is politics. For once, let’s find out what happened before we leap to DEFCON 1.
As it happens, John Solomon, writing at The Hill, has done the virtual and real shoe-leather work. His analysis, based on hard evidence and quotes other reports and pontifications missed, fills in the “missing piece to the Ukraine puzzle“:
…Giuliani’s contact with Zelensky adviser and attorney Andrei Yermak this summer was encouraged and facilitated by the U.S. State Department.
Giuliani didn’t initiate it. A senior U.S. diplomat contacted him in July and asked for permission to connect Yermak with him.
Then, Giuliani met in early August with Yermak on neutral ground — in Spain — before reporting back to State everything that occurred at the meeting.
That debriefing occurred Aug. 11 by phone with two senior U.S. diplomats, one with responsibility for Ukraine and the other with responsibility for the European Union, according to electronic communications records I reviewed and interviews I conducted.
When asked on Friday, Giuliani confirmed to me that the State Department asked him to take the Yermak meeting and that he did, in fact, apprise U.S. officials every step of the way.
Notice the specific dates and identifiable actors. This set of claims is subject to fairly easy confirmation or falsification. Notice how different this looks, with senior State Department personnel apparently worried about their usual agents acting honestly. This worry is borne out by the fraudulent “whistleblower” leak.
The Ukrainians, in turn, are always right to worry. They are wedged between larger powers with no history of backing Ukraine’s sovereignty. Obama greenlighted Putin’s expansionist ambitions right from the opening days of his first term, when he canceled missile defense systems for allies in Central and Eastern Europe.
Where McCarthy only admits to knowing of claims that Vice President Joe Biden directly coerced Ukraine on behalf of his son, Joe was feeling so sure of himself that he openly boasted into a live microphone, on camera. Biden, at the Council on Foreign Relations, was among friends:
In June of 2019, ABC News caught Joe Biden on the street, questioning him about his and his son Hunter Biden’s family practice of business and politics:
So, this is not right-wing talking points. Why would the current leadership at State want to use Giuliani? How about a pattern of obstruction by political and “career” staff? More from John Solomon on Ukraine reporting U.S. corruption [emphasis added]:
Why would Ukraine want to talk to Giuliani, and why would the State Department be involved in facilitating it?
According to interviews with more than a dozen Ukrainian and U.S. officials, Ukraine’s government under recently departed President Petro Poroshenko and, now, Zelensky has been trying since summer 2018 to hand over evidence about the conduct of Americans they believe might be involved in violations of U.S. law during the Obama years.
The Ukrainians say their efforts to get their allegations to U.S. authorities were thwarted first by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, which failed to issue timely visas allowing them to visit America.
Then the Ukrainians hired a former U.S. attorney — not Giuliani — to hand-deliver the evidence of wrongdoing to the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, but the federal prosecutors never responded.
The U.S. attorney, a respected American, confirmed the Ukrainians’ story to me. The allegations that Ukrainian officials wanted to pass on involved both efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure Ukraine to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election as well as Joe Biden’s son’s effort to make money in Ukraine while the former vice president managed U.S.-Ukraine relations, the retired U.S. attorney told me.
…
Ukrainian officials also are discussing privately the possibility of creating a parliamentary committee to assemble the evidence and formally send it to the U.S. Congress, after failed attempts to get the Department of Justice’s attention, my sources say.
Such machinations are common when two countries are navigating diplomatic challenges, and, often, extracurricular activities with private citizens are part of the strategy, even if they are not apparent to the American public.
So, now the latest lawless bureaucrat’s attack on the Constitution is unraveling, giving reason to talk about Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who was thrown out of the Naval Reserve after being caught using cocaine through a periodic unit drug test. All uniformed members of the military, in all components, are supposed to be tested on a random basis, at least once every 12 months. It took some real arrogance on Biden’s part, some incredible sense of entitlement, to think he could get away with snorting blow…arrogance bred from his old man helping him shake down governments for dough, apparently.
As the weekend started, the story only got better:
“Trump Didn’t Mention Foreign Aid ‘Quid Pro Quo’ During Call with Ukrainian President: Report” — credit to National Review for some truth-telling.
President Trump didn’t mention an offer of providing foreign aid to Ukraine during a recent call with president Volodymyr Zelensky, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Trump urged Zelensky to launch an investigation into Vice President Joe Biden’s son on eight separate occasions during the July call but did not make an offer of foreign aid in exchange for the opening of a probe, as has been widely speculated.
John Hinderaker aptly summarized the situation: “TRUMP VS. THE MEDIA, PART 2,563,901 [WITH COMMENT BY PAUL]:”
Here, Joe Biden revealed the real scandal. A Ukrainian prosecutor was investigating a company in which Hunter Biden was involved, and Joe bragged that he had gotten Ukraine’s government to fire the prosecutor by threatening to cut off $1 billion in loan guarantees. That, folks, is a real scandal, and a real abuse of executive power.
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I don’t agree with Paul that it was improper for Trump to ask Ukraine’s Zelensky to deal with his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, on the investigation rather than going through the usual diplomatic channels. By this time, Trump is well aware that the usual diplomatic channels are bitterly hostile to him. I don’t blame him for wanting to avoid them under these sensitive circumstances. His caution was borne out, apparently, when a Democratic Party loyalist embedded in the bureaucracy leaked news of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky anonymously, under the absurd guise of being a “whistle blower,” a pose that the press has, of course, enthusiastically adopted.
Paul Mirengoff, a Trump hater who fights back from complete TDS to occasional lucid objections about bureaucrats behaving badly, offered a game response, already weakened by the John Solomon story linked at the top of the Power Line page:
It seems to me, though, that on any set of facts the choice between injecting Rudy Giuliani into this matter and having it handled through normal diplomatic channels is a false one. Mike Pompeo, the Secretary of State, is anything but bitterly hostile to President Trump. He and those in his innermost circle could have handled the matter without bringing in any Democratic loyalists.
This is nonsense, not responsive to the facts offered by Solomon and Mirengoff’s fellow Power Line contributors. Secretary Pompeo has no “innermost circle” that can be trusted. Then things got even worse for those who cannot abide The Great Big Ugly Man who came up and tied his horse to them. Brit Hume reports succinctly:
Here’s a “new revelation” in this article: the whistleblower complaint is based on hearsay. From the article: “The whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications, an official briefed on the matter told CNN.” https://t.co/rPPVRD88Qp
— Brit Hume (@brithume) September 21, 2019
Now the Washington Post is on to insinuating a quid-pro-quo linkage, by President Trump, of foreign aid to Ukraine investigating the admitted Biden actions. This is classic projection and bold distraction from the offal storm rising against the Democrats. It is just icing on the cake that people like Bill Kristol and David French are deciding to surf that wave.
Still Not Tired of Winning?
Published in Politics
When will these people realize Trump is playing 4-D chess and they’re the pawns. It’s so hilarious. And meanwhile, over on the lefty sub at Reddit, there were umpteen triumphant posts and comments on the “whistleblower scandal,” all of them sure his presidency would be over within 48 hours. There were way more than this, but you get the idea.
After it was reported that, not so fast, this is blowing back on Biden, some of them tried to say that was just the Right attempting to spin it (I have a feeling the posters and commenters have an average age of 22 and are unemployable due to their degrees in Gender Fluid Philosophy of Dream Analysis):
When in the world is the press going to start reporting both sides of all these accusations from the Dems we are subjected to on a constant basis. Do they just report the latest press release coming from an “unnamed source?”
I don’t know about trump and 4D chess. The Dems are playing a game where Trump is guilty of all this. The middle up for grabs voters just hears the part where Trump did this, Trump did that, then this fades away and the part where this is fiction never makes it to their level. Even if Trump gets elected with all his known corruption, illegality, racism, sexual abuse this will just play into the impeachment trials.
Oh, I am so stealing that …
Yes, this is a real concern.
“There is no pink elephant in the room.”
“Pink elephant? What about a pink elephant?”
The pink elephant in the room is Sleepy Joe. His candidacy is dead. This will be the blow back of this, another fake Trump scandal.
Those in the middle ? If they are truly in the middle. You can only cry wolf to them so many times before the crier is viewed with disdain and seen as a liar. Trump win !
I used to think that Biden was a dead candidate walking. Julian Castro tried to start the dog pile and then Jimmy Carter tried to undermine Biden. It seemed like there was a building energy to dog pile, but this changes everything. Just like when Trump criticized the Squad and all the Dems came out to defend them, now all the Dems will feel obliged to defend corrupt Joe. The Dems know it is a long-term mistake, but cannot help but resist Trump. It is their drug. Maybe Trump is forcing the Dems to support Biden this year, because he is weaker than Warren next year.
People get tired of the bickering and will chose somebody else. Trump Fatigue is a real thing.
Excellent, thank you.
Those in charge should at least be able to clear Trump, and quickly. Then they can dedicate their efforts to Joe Biden. It stinks to high heaven. Thanks, Clifford, for an excellent post.
I’m not sure this is the effect on this group of voters, referring to those we generally call independent, not registered D or R. I have always thought these are voters who pay attention and are not captured by a single source for their news feed.
Very good post. I was going to post something similar, but with fewer backup links.
I think I have said in the past that my wife and I pay no attention to the MSM during the week and get our news from other sources. Our penance for this is to spend Sunday afternoon listening to the CSPAN replays of the Sunday talking-head shows. Before that, we try to predict what subjects we think are important will be ignored and what the spin will be.
Today was beyond the pale. Chuck Todd started off – and most of the others followed – with spinning this as Trump colluding with the Ukraine to get ‘dirt’ on Joe Biden. They ignored the quotes from the Ukrainian President and others (as described in the OP) that set the story straight.
My great fear is that most of the people who only get their news from the MSM will believe this and not look any further.
My wife found something that illustrates this perfectly – unfortunately, we don’t know the source.
The only bright spot was Rudy Giuliani steam-rollering John Roberts on Fox News Sunday with the facts. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I just saw that and was getting ready to comment on it. Stomped on every talking point the left has been selling.
Go back to William Casey in his first staff meeting after becoming CIA Director under President Reagan in 1981:
If true, then this is the second election in a row in which Democrats will run an unprosecuted felon for the highest political office. It becomes harder to cut their misinformed voters any slack.
Remember when this current campaign first started Joe Biden said America had no issues related to China? Did I misstate that, I don’t remember his exact words?
On a related note:
This is wonderful! Thanks.
Stipulate that the Kathleen and Hunter Biden divorce filings are not the best picture of a person:
1. How did they manage such an expensive property and such a lavish lifestyle to start with? Hunter clearly needed loads of dough for more than blow.2. Why is the son of a prominent Democrat, whose brand is “ordinary Joe,” living so recklessly? Oh. Never mind. To my point about arrogance, see this 2014 story on Hunter Biden’s failed drug test in the Naval Reserve:
Facts are rather stubborn things, a stumbling block even to Swamp Fox News:
If Fox really thinks CNN is biased, exactly why did they hire away a CNN anchor? It is a sham.
But he’s been with Fox for years, and Tucker also used to be at CNN.
Trump is wrong, and seriously wrong here. For a US president to ask a foreign nation, one who desperately wants our aid, to investigate a political rival is way past acceptable.
While it may not be illegal, and most likely is not, it is more than troubling and of all the things done by Trump, might be the one thing which will have some republicans entertaining impeachment.
The Ukraine is a nation in need of help. Now, given Trump’s temperament, would he approve aid to the Ukraine if the Ukraine reported no corruption found relative to Hunter Biden? This is certainly going to color the result.
This is now congressional oversight of foreign policy, a constitutional duty of the legislative branch. This is not an investigation. Any failure by the administration to provide the call transcript would be definite grounds under which to consider impeachment.
Trump is his own worst enemy and continues to even be more out of control.
This is not fiction. Giuliani first denied this then admitted it in the same interview. And Trump has also said as much. Asking foreign leaders to dig dirt on political opponents is past the line.
So @billnelson, if Joe and Hunter Biden were breaking the law (as in Biden’s offering a clear quid-pro-quo to the Ukrainians), would it be fair for Trump to ask the Ukrainians’ assistance in investigating this possibility? If in negotiating with the Chinese, Biden “asked” the Chinese to “employ” his son, is it fair for Trump to ask their help in negotiating this charge? In spite of Biden’s being a political opponent? Or should Trump back off on an investigation of illegal acts that might have cost our country millions of dollars, because it looks like he’s trying to bury his political opponent? And finally, would it be a good idea to get more facts before we impeach Trump?
If the Bidens aren’t investigated, then running for high office is a “Get out of Jail Free” card.
I have seen reports (John Solomon is one) where the Ukrainians tried through the State department, then the Justice department to get information about the Biden involvement to the administration. Both departments stonewalled, then they went to the top and arranged for a meeting with Giuliani to transfer the information. Their worry – according to these reports – was that they would jeopardize their relationship with the Trump administration if their investigation into internal corruption led to the Bidens. Trump’s call was to reassure them that they should follow the investigation even if it went to the Bidens.
Giuliani’s recent interviews were not so clear on this point, so I think we need more information, but a report from a “whistleblower” who heard about the call second hand will not help.
No, it really isn’t.
The thing he’s asking them to investigate is a crime, and saying “yeah, we can’t investigate the Bidens for a crime because they’re political” is a dumb idea.
We’ve spent the last couple of years investigating a “crime” involving Trump. The only “evidence” for that was invented by Democrat employees, but now you want the US government to NOT investigate something that Dumb Old Joe basically admitted already?
Nope.
Let’s take that the other way – how do you feel about having the VP of the United States threaten an allied country financially if they don’t bury an investigation into his son’s crimes?
That is a bunch of baloney. Are you kidding.
No. And “fair” means nothing here. If the DOJ had an ongoing investigation, they can ask for assistance through the established channels. And because of the sensitivity, Trump should never know about this (go back to Obama and possible knowledge of the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign).
Trump is wrong. It cannot be excused. And it cannot be allowed to stand. The Senate must closely examine any agreement made or not made with Ukraine.
Trump must run US foreign policy for the benefit of the US. Not for the benefit of Donald Trump.
This is the job of the DOJ if there is a crime committed within the jurisdiction of the US. It is not Trump’s job. This is a purely political move for Trump’s benefit which creates a horrible precedent. Imagine a Pres. Warren asking foreign nations (12 in total) to investigate any possible “corruption” related to Trump properties.
It is a serious abuse of power of the presidency.
Biden is wrong, and seriously wrong here. For a US Vice President to ask a foreign nation, one who desperately wants our aid, to fire a prosecutor who is investigating a company which includes his son is way past acceptable.
While it may not be illegal, and most likely is not, it is more than troubling and of all the things done by Obama/Biden , might be the one thing which will have some of the MSM entertaining actually doing reporting.
When Ukraine was being dismantled by Russia, Obama/Biden gave them blankets and I think MRE’s. Trump has given them real weapons that will help.
This is another ephemeral thing for Schiff to hang a kangaroo trial. If Trump gives them these transcripts, they will find a reason to demand those. It is certainly a reason to contribute to Schiff’s opponent in 2020.
The MSM and partisans like Schiff continue to be our worst enemy and continue to even be more out of control.
Joe Biden ADMITTED it. He BRAGGED about it. He got the prosecutor fired, and then told everyone he did it.
“They were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, … we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, ‘You have no authority. You’re not the president.’ … I said, call him. I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. … I looked at them and said, ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”
So you can take that “fair” and toss it in the trash, because it’s a few years too late for that.
Trump knows about it because – and you need to understand this – Biden is a gold-plated, empty-headed, corrupt moron.