Letter from Chairman Cummings to DOD Secretary, Mark Esper dated, 09/18/19. Turnberry follow up
2 Likes
Cross-posting. Thanks 
3 Likes
5 Likes
Breaking - Whisleblower news
"White House records indicate that Trump had had conversations or interactions with at least five foreign leaders in the preceding five weeks.
“Among them was a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the White House initiated on July 31.”
Possible calls were to N. Korea (Kim Jong Un) and Russia (Putin)
The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
By Greg Miller ,
Ellen Nakashima and
Shane Harris
September 18 at 8:56 PMThe whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver, but his direct involvement in the matter has not been previously disclosed. It raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information and may further strain his relationship with U.S. spy agencies. One former official said the communication was a phone call.
The White House declined to comment. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and a lawyer representing the whistleblower declined to comment.
Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of “urgent concern,” a legal threshold that ordinarily requires notification of congressional oversight committees.
But acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire has refused to share details about Trump’s alleged transgression with lawmakers, touching off a legal and political dispute that has spilled into public and prompted speculation that the spy chief is improperly protecting the president.
3 Likes
Could this have been a traitorous act? It looks like Trump made a promise to a foreign leader that was so outrageous that this person felt compelled to blow the whistle on him. We have a right to get to the bottom of this now. And we have a right to know why it’s being covered up and who is covering it up. 
The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver, but his direct involvement in the matter has not been previously disclosed. It raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information and may further strain his relationship with U.S. spy agencies. One former official said the communication was a phone call.
…
Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson determined that the complaint was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of “urgent concern,” a legal threshold that ordinarily requires notification of congressional oversight committees.But acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire has refused to share details about Trump’s alleged transgression with lawmakers, touching off a legal and political dispute that has spilled into public and prompted speculation that the spy chief is improperly protecting the president.
The dispute is expected to escalate Thursday when Atkinson is scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee in a classified session closed to the public. The hearing is the latest move by committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) to compel U.S. intelligence officials to disclose the full details of the whistleblower complaint to Congress.
Maguire has agreed to testify before the committee next week, according to a statement by Schiff. He declined to comment for this story.
The inspector general “determined that this complaint is both credible and urgent,” Schiff said in the statement released Wednesday evening. “The committee places the highest importance on the protection of whistleblowers and their complaints to Congress.”
The complaint was filed with Atkinson’s office on Aug. 12, a date on which Trump was at his golf resort in New Jersey. White House records indicate that Trump had had conversations or interactions with at least five foreign leaders in the preceding five weeks.
Among them was a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the White House initiated on July 31. Trump also received at least two letters from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during the summer, describing them as “beautiful” messages. In June, Trump said publicly that he was opposed to certain CIA spying operations against North Korea. Referring to a Wall Street Journal report that the agency had recruited Kim’s half-brother, Trump said, “I would tell him that would not happen under my auspices.”
Trump met with other foreign leaders at the White House in July, including the prime minister of Pakistan, the prime minister of the Netherlands, and the emir of Qatar.
Trump’s handling of classified information has been a source of concern to U.S. intelligence officials since the outset of his presidency. In May 2017, Trump revealed classified information about espionage operations in Syria to senior Russian officials in the Oval Office, disclosures that prompted a scramble among White House officials to contain the potential damage.
…
Schiff has demanded full disclosure of the whistleblower complaint. Maguire has defended his refusal by asserting that the subject of the complaint is beyond his jurisdiction.
…
After fielding the complaint on Aug. 12, Atkinson submitted it to Maguire two weeks later. By law, Maguire is required to transmit such complaints to Congress within seven days. But in this case, he refrained from doing so after turning for legal guidance to officials at the Justice Department.
…
Schiff responded with almost immediate indignation, firing off a letter demanding a copy of the complaint and warning that he was prepared to subpoena senior U.S. intelligence officials.
And BTW, why do we still not know what Trump and Putin discussed in five separate meetings?
The proceedings of meetings between our President and other heads of state are never kept secret from members of the administration, except when the meetings involve Trump and Putin.
6 Likes
With the Congressional investigations dragging on and being met by relentless stonewalling from Republicans, I’m beginning to think that the only way we can finally uncover the truth about Trump is through a whistleblower such as this. I wish more would find the courage to step forward. We need a Daniel Ellsberg.
4 Likes
A break in who’s willing to put their neck out…and reveal what’s really going on…
4 Likes
Could this be the whistle blower…??
She left the position in August…
WASHINGTON—President Trump’s top Russia adviser is leaving her position in August and will be succeeded by the current head of the National Security Council’s office of nonproliferation, Tim Morrison, a spokesman for the council said.
Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and staunch critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has held the position since March 2017.
Mr. Morrison joined the NSC in July 2018, shortly after John Bolton became the president’s top national security adviser. Mr. Morrison previously served as the Policy Director on the House Armed Services Committee.
Ms. Hill had just assumed her position at the NSC when Mr. Trump invited Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and its top diplomat to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, into the Oval Office for a meeting, drawing criticism from many in the foreign policy community.
It was later reported that Mr. Trump shared classified information he had received from Israel with the Russian visitors.
Ms. Hill was also part of Mr. Trump’s expanded meetings with Mr. Putin. Before joining the White House, she had written extensively about the need to exert greater pressure on Russia. She came to the White House from the Brookings Institution after serving as the National Intelligence Council’s top intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia.>
Her 2013 biography, “Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin,” portrayed a corrupt leader attempting to balance his various public personas in an effort to hang on to power.
3 Likes
And could this be the phone call? It fits the time frame. And it was a call that the White House was very reluctant to admit even occurred. They said it was about adoptions, I mean wildfires.
3 Likes
4 Likes
Chairman Schiff Announces Upcoming Committee Events Related to Whistleblower Complaint
Today, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, released the following statement:
“The Intelligence Community Inspector General (IC IG) has agreed to appear before the House Intelligence Committee for a briefing on the handling of the whistleblower complaint tomorrow morning, September 19, in closed session at 9:00 am.
“The Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has agreed to testify in open session before the Committee next Thursday, September 26 at 9:00 am.
“The IC IG determined that this complaint is both credible and urgent, and that it should be transmitted to Congress under the clear letter of the law. The Committee places the highest importance on the protection of whistleblowers and their complaints to Congress.”
1 Like
More on Fiona Hill…She was known as a ‘realist’ on her views about Russia - and this article is from Sept 2018…so she hung around T for a while. She sounds like a straight shooter (so to speak.)
WASHINGTON — Three days after Chechen terrorists killed more than 300 people at a school they’d seized in southern Russia in 2004, Fiona Hill, a British-American scholar, visited Russian President Vladimir Putin at Novo-Ogaryovo, his estate outside of Moscow.
Hill was part of a delegation of Westerners invited to hear about how the Kremlin planned to counter the insurgency that had roiled Chechnya for more than a decade. She came away impressed and at least partially convinced, as she made evident in an op-ed subsequently published in the New York Times: “Stop Blaming Putin and Start Helping Him.”
Last summer, Hill sat across from the Russian president once again. This time, the setting was the presidential palace in Helsinki, at the bilateral summit between Putin and President Trump. Hill, who’d joined the National Security Council two months into the Trump presidency as director of Russian and European affairs, sat between White House chief of staff John Kelly and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at a working lunch with senior diplomats. She was one of only two women in the room.
Coverage of the Helsinki summit focused on the joint press conference afterward, during which the American president declined to reprimand his Russian counterpart for interfering in the 2016 elections.
But Helsinki also represented a remarkable achievement for a woman who may understand Putin better than anyone in the American foreign policy establishment. Even more remarkable is that she has brought that expertise to an administration that has been accused of coddling the Kremlin.
For nearly two decades, Hill has followed Putin’s trajectory, from the glum apparatchik presiding over the chaotic post-Yeltsin years to the modern-day czar who flouts international law and is suspected of hiding tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth abroad. That has earned her a top position in a White House split between those who admire the Kremlin and those who fear it. Between them stands a coal miner’s daughter, trying to negotiate a path both factions can countenance.
Trump has bestowed considerable authority on a woman who has none of the usual markers of influence in the Trump administration. Hill is not a billionaire, nor a Fox News regular. She does not golf or tweet. In a city of partisanship and self-promotion, Hill eschews both. People who’ve known her for years profess not to know her political affiliation.
In that sense, she’s almost certainly not part of the “resistance” described in a recent op-ed in the New York Times by a senior member of the Trump administration, who praised the president’s national security team for countering Trump’s worst instincts, including his “preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia.” Hill was proposed by some, including CNN’s Chris Cillizza, as the author of the op-ed. But at least one person who knows her says that’s impossible. Little in her career suggests the kind of sly political maneuvering the Times op-ed represented.
Yet Hill and her peers have managed to craft a Russia policy that is, by any measure — sanctions, expulsions, military buildup — tougher than that of the Obama administration. Trump has not always championed this approach, but he apparently hasn’t hindered Hill and her colleagues on the National Security Council or in the State Department from doing their work. He has, in effect, sanctioned a Russia policy that is entirely at odds with his own pronouncements.
One person who knows Hill well and worked with her on the NSC says Hill is not a Russia “hawk,” a term that suggests a desire for war, but “a realist,” one who “doesn’t want to be duped by the Russians,” the former official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order not to jeopardize past or present professional affiliations. Hill, whom the NSC declined to make available for an interview, is also unlikely to be rattled by Trump’s tweets, or by the baroque shows of disloyalty that regularly emanate from the White House. “Her job is not to keep up with the craziness of D.C.,” the former official said. That may be why Hill has kept her job, even as many around her have lost theirs.
4 Likes
Pelosi says she would have held Lewandowski in contempt ‘right then and there’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of lawmakers Wednesday evening that Corey Lewandowski should have been held in contempt “right then and there” when he talked over members, dodged their questions and promoted his possible Senate campaign from a House hearing.
In a small huddle with lawmakers from across the caucus, Pelosi (D-Calif.) complained that no witness should be able to treat members of Congress like President Trump’s former campaign manager did during a Tuesday hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, according to three people familiar with the exchange.
“I would have held him in contempt right then and there,” she said.
Several lawmakers in the room took her remarks as a dig at House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chose not to hold Lewandowski in contempt for his defiant behavior on Tuesday
3 Likes
So true. Also, there’s absolutely nothing about this on the Fox News page. Except there is this:
Wonder if Trump’s echo chamber will ask him anything about this – should be interesting to hear what spin he’s concocted.
2 Likes
Yes…with that call to Putin about Wildfires/adoptions/whatevs…that content of the call was elaborated a bit more by the Russians. (from Slate Article - mentioned by @Keaton_James)
For one thing, the Trump administration stayed silent for several hours after the Russian government and media publicized the call earlier today. The Russian statement heralded the call as “a sign that fully-fledged bilateral relations could be restored in the future.”
and more questionable interactions with foreign heads, and possible set-ups for promises T would like to offer…
1 Like
T has broken his silence…a mere 12 hours since this story hit the airwaves. (I haven’t listened to the Fox & Friends episode yet.)
He starts off with an insult…“Anybody dumb enough…”
Here comes the spew…
4 Likes
The internal watchdog for American spy agencies declined repeatedly in a briefing on Thursday to disclose to lawmakers the content of a potentially explosive whistle-blower complaint that is said to involve a discussion between President Trump and a foreign leader, according to two people familiar with the briefing.
During a private session on Capitol Hill, Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, told lawmakers he was unable to confirm or deny anything about the substance of the complaint, including whether it involved the president, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the closed-door conversation. The meeting was still underway
3 Likes
[My hand shoots up.] “Ooh, ooh, me, in the back, I’m dumb enough to believe it.”
[Trump continues.] …that I would say something inappropriate with a foreign leader while on a potentially “heavily populated call. I would only do what is right anyway, and only do good for the USA!”
[My hand is up again.] Sir, how populated was the room when you asked Russia to hack Hillary’s email? I believe several million were listening. Other than saying this would be a really stupid crime, do you have any actual defense? BTW, we’re not talking about something “inappropriate” here or it never would have been flagged by the Inspector General. We’re talking about something potentially treasonous. Also BTW, what is up with those quotation marks – who are you quoting, sir? Yourself? Thank you for answering my qu…
[Trump turns and boards helicopter.]
3 Likes