After witnessing Rep. Devin Midnight Run Nunes, ranking Republican member of the House Intelligence Committee and unindicted co-cponspirator in Trump’s obstruction of Congress and obstruction of justice, make an unhinged opening statement this morning loaded with right-wing conspiracy theories (the “Russian hoax,” the debunked Biden conspiracy theory, the “fake news” media allies of Democrats), I can only reiterate what I have said before:
[T]he Party of Trump is a criminal enterprise led by a third-rate mafia “Don” Trump. They are all accomplices, co-conspirators and accessories to his criminality and corruption. There is not a patriot among them. They put fealty to their “Dear Leader” above all else, including loyalty to their country and our national security, and their oaths of office to defend the Constitution. Trump allies jolt into action to deflect Ukraine-whistleblower scandal.
Paul Krugman recently wrote at the New York Times, Republicans Don’t Believe in Democracy (excerpt):
The whistle-blower affair probably involves malfeasance by high government officials, quite possibly President Trump, that in some way threatens national security.
What [this story] illustrates is contempt for democracy and constitutional government. Elections are supposed to have consequences, conveying power to the winners. But when Democrats win an election, the modern G.O.P. does its best to negate the results, flouting norms and, if necessary, the law to carry on as if the voters hadn’t spoken.
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[L]ast year America’s voters chose to give Democrats control of the House of Representatives. This still leaves Democrats without the ability to pass legislation, since Republicans control the Senate and the White House. But the House, by law, has important additional powers — the right to be informed of what’s going on in the executive branch, such as complaints by whistle-blowers, and the right to issue subpoenas demanding information relevant to governing.
The Trump administration, however, has evidently decided that none of that matters. So what if Democrats demand information they’re legally entitled to? So what if they issue subpoenas? After all, law enforcement has to be carried out by the Justice Department — and under William Barr, Justice has effectively become just another arm of the G.O.P.
As Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) admitted at The Atlantic Festival this week, “I think it’s very natural for people to look at circumstances and see them in the light that’s most amenable to their maintaining power, and doing things to preserve that power.”
Republicans in Congress are aiding and abetting Trump’s coverup of his crimes. They are equally culpable at law.
The House Intelligence Committee has released the unclassified version of the whistleblower complaint (.pdf) prior to today’s committee hearing, along with the intelligence community inspector general’s letter to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
The whistleblower was not a direct witness to the president’s phone call and alleged actions, but his or her description of the call, which was based on information from multiple White House officials, aligns consistently with the memo of the phone call released by the White House.
One of the main concerns that prompted the whistleblower complaint was the White House’s handling of the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call.
Additional information from the classified appendix:
This is the lede in today’s New York Times reports, Whistle-Blower Is Said to Allege Concerns About White House Handling of Ukraine Call, and White House Tried to ‘Lock Down’ Ukraine Call Records, Whistle-Blower Says.
In short, the Trump White House attempted to conceal the president’s corrupt and illegal conduct through the use of the classified intelligence communication system. This is an abuse of power, as the whistleblower alleges.
Multiple U.S. officials told the whistleblower that Ukrainian leadership was “led to believe” that a phone call or meeting between Trump and Zelensky would depend on whether Zelensky showed a willingness to “play ball” on issues related to investigating Joe Biden for corruption.
Additional information from the classified appendix and implicated Vice President Pence:
Th inspector general’s letter to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees lays out his findings that this is an “urgent and credible” Complaint.
As it turns out, Donald Trump violated his own executive order on election interference (because he did it before and he has every intention to do it again).
Donald Trump wanted two things in exchange for security assistance to Ukraine: information about his Insane Ukraine ‘Server’ Conspiracy from the QAnon, Pizzagate, 9/11 Truther fever swamps; and information about Joe Biden and his son based upon a conspiracy theory that has been entirely discredited and debunked. In other words, please make up shit about my political opponent so I can smear him with disinformation. This falls squarely within his executive order (covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation).
The DNI was recently expressly tasked with foreign interference in U.S. elections, and the actions outlined in the whistleblower complaint were found to be both an “urgent” concern and “credible.”
Nevertheless, the Trump “Injustice” Department sought to bury the whistleblower complaint. This is of particular concern because Attorney General William “Coverup” Barr was specifically referenced in president Trump’s call to President Zelenski five times. That makes him a potential fact witness in this matter, and he should have recused himself from having anything to do with this whistleblower complaint. He has not.
The Washington Post reports, Justice Dept. rejected investigation of Trump phone call just weeks after it began examining the matter:
Just weeks after intelligence leaders asked the Justice Department and FBI to consider examining a summer phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the head of the department’s criminal division determined there was not sufficient cause to even launch an investigation, senior Justice Department officials said.
Department officials and career public integrity prosecutors reviewed a rough transcript of the call and verified its authenticity, but — because a case was not opened — took no other steps, such as conducting interviews, the officials said. They looked only at whether Trump might have violated campaign finance laws, not federal corruption statutes, even though some legal analysts said there seemed to be evidence of both.
Repeatedly in the July 25 phone call, Trump pressed Zelensky to launch an investigation into Biden and his son, and to greenlight another inquiry into the origins of the special counsel probe that once dogged Trump’s presidency, according to a rough transcript released by the administration Wednesday He interspersed his demands with casual references to help that the U.S. government had given Ukraine, and a vague promise of how Zelensky might one day be able to meet Trump at the White House, the document shows.
Trump also mentioned that his attorney general, William P. Barr, and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, could aid the inquiries he wanted.
Legal analysts said that was suggestive not only that Trump was seeking a contribution from a foreigner — which would violate campaign finance laws — but that he also seemed to hint at a corrupt bargain in which Zelensky would get a White House meeting or other help in exchange for digging up dirt on Trump’s political foe.
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The matter first came to the Justice Department’s attention in late August, soon after the inspector general for the intelligence community gave to the acting director of national intelligence a whistleblower complaint alleging that unnamed White House officials had expressed concern about Trump’s call.
The inspector general determined that the complaint represented an “urgent” concern, and should be forwarded to the congressional intelligence committees. But the acting director of national intelligence contacted the Justice Department, wondering whether the unusual circumstances warranted something else.
The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and its head, Steven A. Engel, soon began exploring what to do. According to senior Justice Department officials, the acting director of national intelligence around the same time made a criminal referral, passing to the department the inspector general’s concern that campaign finance laws might have been violated.
On Sept. 3, Engel issued a classified memo declaring that the acting director of national intelligence need not turn over the complaint to Congress. Such a step would be taken only if the complaint was about an intelligence activity, Engel wrote in a later, public version of the document. The whistleblower’s secondhand allegation about Trump’s call, he wrote, would be more properly referred to the Justice Department.
On Sept. 4, the inspector general made a separate, written referral to the FBI, senior Justice Department officials said. By that time, the officials said, the Justice Department already had assigned its criminal division and public integrity prosecutors — which normally handle campaign finance cases — to explore whether there was enough evidence to open an investigation. The FBI, the officials said, deferred to the Justice Department. An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.
On Sept. 9, the inspector general notified Congress of the complaint, but did not share its contents. A day later, Schiff demanded to see it … That very week — unbeknown to the public — the Justice Department decided there was not enough evidence to proceed with a campaign finance investigation. The decision, senior Justice Department officials said, was made by Brian Benczkowski, who heads the Justice Department’s criminal division. They said career prosecutors agreed with the decision.
The criminal divisions’s analysis of Trump’s call essentially started and ended with the decision that a Ukrainian investigation into Biden could not be assigned a specific value.
“If you cannot quantify what the thing of value would be, then it’s fatal,” a senior Justice Department official said.
Richard Hasen, an election law professor, said he thought the Justice Department’s determination that Trump’s request could not be quantified was “laughable.”
“You’re talking about information on a potential rival that could be used in a presidential campaign, a presidential campaign which likely would run into the billions of dollars,” Hasen said. “I don’t think there’s any question that a prosecutor could go forward with the theory.”
The officials said Barr was “generally knowledgeable” of discussions about the Office of Legal Counsel decision, but was not involved in making the call not to move forward with an investigation. Legal analysts and Democrats said Wednesday that Barr should step aside from the matter entirely.
“The President dragged the Attorney General into this mess,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote on Twitter. “At a minimum, AG Barr must recuse himself until we get to the bottom of this matter.”
For his part, Trump seemed to focus on another allegation that legal analysts said he might have faced: trying to extort or solicit a bribe from Ukraine’s government. The president insisted he had not offered a “quid pro quo” to his Ukrainian counterpart, which is an aspect of a federal corruption case.
“It’s all a hoax, folks, it’s all a big hoax,” he said in New York on Wednesday. “No push, no pressure, no nothing . . . There was no quid pro quo.”
Legal analysts noted that the context of Trump’s call — at the time, the administration was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from Ukraine at Trump’s direction — suggests he was trying to strike a bargain. Eliason, the former federal prosecutor, noted that in most bribery cases, those accused seldom offer an explicit bargain.
“You normally don’t have a quid pro quo stated expressly,” Eliason said. “This is almost as close as you can get.”
Paul Waldman of The Post adds, William Barr’s role is about to get a lot more scrutiny:
[This] raises some questions. We know that Giuliani pressured Ukraine to open an investigation that might produce some dirt on Biden and his son. Was Barr involved, as the president wanted? Did he communicate with any Ukrainian officials? Did he have any communication with Giuliani, who was apparently running a kind of shadow State Department? And if Barr did, what could that possibly have to do with his job as America’s chief law enforcement official?
The Justice Department just issued a denial, saying Trump never asked Barr to get involved with Ukraine. Even if that’s true (and let’s just say we should keep an open mind), Barr’s part in this story doesn’t end there.
On Tuesday, Schiff sent a remarkable letter to the attorney general, in which he raised the possibility that the Justice Department “has participated in a dangerous cover-up to protect the President.”
To remind you, when a whistleblower files a complaint with the inspector general of the intelligence community, the IG determines if the complaint is credible and is of “urgent concern.” If it is, the director of national intelligence then must pass it on to the intelligence committees. Not if the DNI wants to, not if he thinks it has merit, not if he’s in the mood — the DNI “shall” give it to Congress, the law states. But he didn’t.
Why? The Justice Department gave the DNI a written legal opinion justifying his refusal to turn over the whistleblower’s complaint. In his letter, Schiff asks why this happened, suggesting that the Justice Department shouldn’t have overridden what the IG’s conclusion requires the DNI to do:
In effect, the Department appears to have usurped the IC IG’s fact-finding role in an unprecedented manner, and then disguised its reversal of the IC IG’s findings in a purportedly non-partisan legal opinion from the OLC.
In what Schiff referred to in his news conference as a “completely contorted rationalization,” they said that in fact this whole matter was outside the purview of the intelligence community, and therefore it doesn’t constitute an “urgent concern,” and therefore the DNI doesn’t have to turn over the whistleblower’s complaint to Congress.
The Justice Department is run by William Barr, and given the magnitude of this matter, it seems impossible that at a minimum he wouldn’t have been kept informed of every development. What was his role in the production of the opinion telling the DNI to keep the whistleblower’s complaint secret?
At this point we should remind ourselves that the entire reason Barr is attorney general is that he made clear that, unlike his predecessor, he would make protecting Trump his highest priority.
One thing we know for sure is that if Donald Trump wanted to use the powers of government to cover up his misdeeds, William Barr would be the first person he’d call.
Axios reports, the intelligence community whistleblower behind the complaint reportedly linked to President Trump and Ukraine has agreed to potentially meet with congressional lawmakers if certain conditions are met, according to correspondence with the whistleblower’s lawyer released Wednesday.
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