WTF Community

The Impeachment of President Donald J. Trump

General Discussion
, , , ,
#691

No date yet, but the planets are aligning.

Here’s the key takeaway which is the best news of the day:

Asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether he had reached an agreement with the whistleblower and his attorneys to come before the committee, Schiff said: “Yes, we have.”

“And as (acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph) Maguire promised during the hearing, that whistleblower will be allowed to come in and come in without … a minder from the Justice Department or from the White House to tell the whistleblower what they can and cannot say. We will get the unfiltered testimony of that whistleblower,” he said.

3 Likes
#692

Giuliani can’t keep a lie straight for 30 seconds on TV. This’ll be hilarious.

3 Likes
#693

House Whistleblower Hearings - Whose on Deck

________________________________________________________________

NOTE: In the WaPo article below, I inserted dates for the hearings in [brackets] based on the Congressional letter sent to Pompeo.

… Leaders of top House committees subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Friday for documents related to their investigation into President Trump and his asking Ukraine to investigate a possible 2020 political opponent. [Documents ordered to be turned over by Friday, Oct. 4.]

They also alerted Pompeo in a separate letter that they have scheduled depositions beginning next week with five State Department officials, beginning Tuesday with former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch [Wed., Oct. 2], whom Trump disparaged during his phone conversation with the Ukrainian president in July.

The letters were signed by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), Oversight Chairman Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) and Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.).

“The Committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression,” the chairmen wrote.

Documents requested from Pompeo include a list of any State Department officials involved in the controversial July 25 call between Trump and the Ukrainian president as well as any correspondence since Trump’s inauguration about investigations that refer to Hunter Biden, Burisma Holdings — the natural gas company the former vice president’s son worked for, among others.

In addition to Yovanovitch, the chairmen have scheduled hearings with:

● Kurt Volker, U.S. special representative to Ukraine [Thurs., Oct. 3] who met with Rudolph W. Giuliani and agreed to connect him with Andrey Yermak, a top aide to Zelensky.

● George Kent, a career Foreign Service officer [Mon., Oct. 7], is deputy assistant secretary of state in the European and Eurasian Bureau, overseeing policy toward Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. He served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev from 2015 to 2018.

● T. Ulrich Brechbuhl, State Department counselor [Tues., Oct. 8] who was named in the whistleblower complaint as the State official who listened in on the Trump-Zelensky call.

● Gordon Sondland, U.S. ambassador to the European Union [Thur., Oct. 10], who Giuliani said he briefed on his conversations with Ukrainians. …

3 Likes
#694

:fire:

Trump-Supporting Lawyers diGenova and Toensing Teamed Up With Giuliani to Dig Up Ukraine Dirt on Biden

Fox News cited a U.S. official who said all three were working off the books apart from the administration, and the only person who knew “what they were doing is President Trump.”

This grenade was just lobbed into the President’s camp, and it’s coming from Fox News! He is going to have a conniption fit.

In a bombshell report Sunday morning, Fox News reported that two frequent guests on the right-leaning cable news channel were “working off the books” to help former New York City mayor and current presidential attorney Rudy Giuliani dig up dirt on President Donald Trump’s leading Democratic opponent—and that the only person who knew about their involvement was the president himself.

Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace broke the news that Giuliani wasn’t acting alone when it came to digging up Ukrainian dirt on Trump’s potential 2020 presidential opponent Joe Biden.

“Two high-profile Washington lawyers, Joe diGenova, who’s been a fierce critic of the Democratic investigation, and his wife Victoria Toensing were working with Giuliani to get oppo research on Biden,” Wallace said at the top of his broadcast.

“According to a top U.S. official, all three were working off the books apart from the administration,” Wallace added. “The only person in government who knows what they were doing is President Trump.”

Giuliani has denied working with any other attorneys in his quest for Ukrainian-provided information on the Biden family in recent appearances on Fox News, denials that the network’s own reporting now call into question.

“No,” Giuliani told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures , when asked if he had worked with other attorneys. “I didn’t work with anybody to try and get dirt on Joe Biden.”

Requests for comment in response to Wallace’s report from diGenova & Toensing, LLP, their eponymous D.C.-based law firm, were not immediately returned. Requests to Giuliani and the White House have also not been returned.

Both diGenova and Toensing have been frequent guests on Fox’s opinion shows, specifically Hannity and Lou Dobbs Tonight. This week, during an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight, diGenova blasted Fox News senior judicial analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano as “a fool” for assessing that Trump had committed a crime during his July 25 call with the Ukrainian president.

The remarks sparked a multi-day, on-air scuffle between Fox News anchor Shepard Smith and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Wallace also appeared to join in the internecine fighting over the network’s coverage of the growing scandal, implicitly criticizing the on-air commentary of some of his Fox News colleagues in recent days.

Both Toensing and diGenova have been two of the president’s fiercest defenders for years. Along with being frequent guests on Fox opinion shows and other conservative media outlets, the husband-wife team has had a close relationship with the president for a while.

In March 2018, they were briefly tapped to join Trump’s special counsel legal team. Days later, however, the president decided against hiring the pair.

“The president is disappointed that conflicts prevent Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing from joining the president’s special counsel legal team,” Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said at the time. “However, those conflicts do not prevent them from assisting the president in other legal matters. The president looks forward to working with them.”

I would take this with a grain of salt since, so far, it appears to be a single source story that Wallace is attributing to a “top U.S. official.” But if true, this would be extremely damaging to Giuliani’s credibility (what’s left of it) and would further widen the list of co-conspirators (including Trump) who were working secretly with (or just plain coercing) a foreign government to influence a U.S. election. These are two more Trump lawyers who need their own lawyers. It’s time for them to testify.

Fox News segment that triggered the Daily Beast report:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPf2H4oDpC4

4 Likes
#695

Click link to read the letter :point_down:

Tonight, “60 Minutes” has obtained a letter that indicates the government whistleblower who set off the impeachment inquiry of President Trump is under federal protection, because he or she fears for their safety. These rapidly developing events began Tuesday when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ordered the investigation based on a phone call between Mr. Trump and the president of Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Mr. Trump for missiles, Mr. Trump asks Zelensky for “a favor” to investigate Mr. Trump’s Democratic rivals.

4 Likes
#696

Trump-Putin phone calls in U.S. Democrats’ sights: Schiff

Congress is determined to get access to Donald Trump’s calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders, the U.S. House Intelligence Committee’s chairman said on Sunday, citing concerns that the Republican president may have jeopardized national security.

“I think the paramount need here is to protect the national security of the United States and see whether in the conversations with other world leaders - and in particular with Putin - that the president was also undermining our security in a way that he thought would personally benefit his campaign,” Democrat Adam Schiff said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

4 Likes
#697

Absolutely! And we also need to find out what Trump and Putin talked about on the five occasions they met when Trump made extraordinary efforts to keep the conversations secret from U.S. officials who are normally privy to such meetings.

The first time they met was in Germany. President Trump took his interpreter’s notes afterward and ordered him not to disclose what he heard to anyone. Later that night, at a dinner, Mr. Trump pulled up a seat next to President Vladimir V. Putin to talk without any American witnesses at all.

Their third encounter was in Vietnam when Mr. Trump seemed to take Mr. Putin’s word that he had not interfered in American elections. A formal summit meeting followed in Helsinki, Finland, where the two leaders kicked out everyone but the interpreters. Most recently, they chatted in Buenos Aires after Mr. Trump said they would not meet because of Russian aggression. …

It’s time to question the interpreters. Yes, that would break all precedents, but it is Trump who has broken the precedents and placed us in a position where we have no choice.

And remember that fist pump at the G20 dinner in 2017 just before Trump met with Putin in an isolated area of the banquet hall? Watch it here:
At G20 dinner, Trump appeared to gesture to Putin - CNN Video

3 Likes
#698

:boom:

A former member of the Ukrainian parliament and adviser to Ukraine’s president told CBS News it was a “well-known fact” there that President Donald Trump wanted “compromising” information on former Vice President Joe Biden. Serhiy Leshchenko added that Ukraine’s president knew that U.S. aid to his country was at stake.

“I am sure that issue of Biden was forever on the table between Zelensky and Trump,” said Leshchenko. As a former lawmaker and adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Leschenko believes it was clear that President Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate his Democratic rivals.

0930-ctm-giulianiukrainelatest-saberi-1942907-640x360.jpg
Former member of the Ukrainian parliament and adviser to Ukraine’s president Serhiy Leshchenko. CBS NEWS

“Of course, he wanted political privileges, favors, for his re-election from Ukraine,” he said.

“In return for military aid?” asked correspondent Roxana Saberi.

“I would say yes,” Leshchenko replied.

4 Likes
#699

I have a thread on this topic, full of articles. I believe it’s been more than 5 times now, but definitely the degree of secrecy around Trump’s meetings with Putin is mind-blowing.

2 Likes
#700

If you haven’t kept up with Trump’s false claims this morning…

…besides referencing a Civil War if he is removed on Sunday, he also inadvertently admitted that his win over Hillary Clinton in 2016 was impeachable, because he is dumb:

image
image646×702 74.4 KB

He falsely suggested that somebody changed the whistleblower rules, though there is no way that could just randomly happen under his own watch:

image

He again repeated lies that he released the call (it’s not a transcript, it’s a memo) immediately (he was forced into it after this all came to light), that the whistleblower complaint is not holding up (it is, 100%), and that being a 2nd-hand description means something (it does not in the slightest, and the fact that it HAS been so heavily corroborated by what’s been released gives it MORE credence, not less).

image

He accused Adam Schiff of making things up and suggested he be arrested for treason, which is obstruction of justice:

image

He threatened the free press, warning them to stay away from this story (they won’t) and calling them more corrupt than the Bidens (who were exonerated):

image

And he admitted, again, to digging up dirt on the Bidens.

image

That’s pretty much the highlights.

3 Likes
#701

KEY POINTS

  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says the Senate would have no choice but to take up impeachment if the House votes to effectively charge President Donald Trump.
  • The Republican-held Senate is unlikely to vote to convict Trump and remove him from office.
2 Likes
#702

:woman_shrugging:t2:

President Trump on Monday questioned whether the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff, should be arrested for treason for his description of a phone call Mr. Trump had with the president of Ukraine during a recent congressional hearing.

A day earlier, Mr. Trump called for Mr. Schiff — the California Democrat who is the de facto head of an impeachment inquiry into the call — to be “questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason.”

Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Schiff, of lying to Congress when Mr. Schiff summarized a portion of what Mr. Trump said to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine during a July 25 phone call. Mr. Trump asked Mr. Zelensky to “do us a favor” and investigate Democrats — a request Democrats say is an abuse of power for personal gain. They have started an impeachment inquiry.

3 Likes
#703

Column: Civil War, treason and #FakeWhistleblower: Trump is handling impeachment perfectly

1 Like
#704

Oh holy hell, how far down does this spiral?

Trump Pressed Australian Leader to Help Barr Investigate Mueller Inquiry’s Origins

The discussion was another instance of the president using American diplomacy for potential personal gain.

Pompeo Took Part in Trump-Zelensky Phone Call, Official Says

Oh look, more obstruction and witness intimidation

Trump demands to meet whistleblower, warns of ‘Big Consequences’

DV%20-%20Shoefall%202
DV%20-%20Shoefall%202600×600 195 KB

DV%20-%20Vertigo%202
DV%20-%20Vertigo%2021000×1000 615 KB

3 Likes
#705

FFS. Italy, not you too!


2 Likes
#706

Cross-posting

2 Likes
#707

You gotta love another BOOM :boom:

and WTF-ery.

Why? Because Barr/T can discredit our intelligence gathering, and give Russia an out to do more of its meddling.

Attorney General William P. Barr has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help in a Justice Department inquiry that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of possible connections between Russia and members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

Barr’s personal involvement is likely to stoke further criticism from Democrats pursuing impeachment that he is helping the Trump administration use executive branch powers to augment investigations aimed primarily at the president’s adversaries.

But the high-level Justice Department focus on intelligence operatives’ conduct will likely cheer Trump and other conservatives for whom “investigate the investigators” has become a rallying cry. Barr has voiced his own concerns, telling lawmakers in April that he believed “spying did occur” when it came to the U.S. investigation of the Trump campaign.

2 Likes
#708

We’ve known about this other whistleblower - Thanks @Keaton_James

But just another reminder of all the lengths with underhanded and obfuscating methods this Administration has gone to hide its obvious misdoings.

Wait, you thought I meant the whistleblower from the intelligence community ?

Nope. I’m talking about a completely different whistleblower, whose claims have gotten significantly less attention but could prove no less consequential. This whistleblower alleges a whole different category of impropriety: that someone has been secretly meddling with the Internal Revenue Service’s audit of the president.

…

In defiance of a half-century norm, Trump has kept his tax returns secret.

We don’t know exactly what he might be hiding. His bizarre behavior, though, suggests it’s really bad.

Maybe these documents would reveal something embarrassing but not criminal (e.g., the relatively puny size of his fortune). Maybe they’d reveal that some of his financial dealings are legally dubious or even fraudulent, which would be consistent with past Trump-family tax behavior.

3 Likes
#709

The House Judiciary Committee are bearing down on getting those Grand Jury notes which their lawyers petitioned again for today in hopes of nailing down whether T did lie about his knowledge of the Wikileaks dumps. With the Impeachment Inquiry rolling now, their lawyers requests may get some better traction with finding those notes and seeing if they do indeed reveal that T did know more about Wikileaks.

I bet they may be right…and looking for more smoking guns within all the obfuscation.

Lawyers for the House of Representatives revealed on Monday that they have reason to believe that the grand-jury redactions in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report show that President Donald Trump lied about his knowledge of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks.

The attorneys made the stunning suggestion in a court filing as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s bid for Mueller’s grand-jury materials, which have remained secret by law.

“Not only could those materials demonstrate the president’s motives for obstructing the special counsel’s investigation, they also could reveal that Trump was aware of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks,” the lawyers wrote in the filing, which was in response to the Justice Department’s opposition to the disclosure of the grand-jury information.

To back up their claim, the House’s legal team — led by House General Counsel Douglas Letter — cited a passage in Mueller’s report about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s testimony that he “recalled” Trump asking to be kept “updated” about WikiLeaks’ disclosures of Democratic National Committee emails. There is a grand-jury redaction in that passage, the lawyers note.

“The text redacted … and any underlying evidence to which it may point are critical to the committee’s investigation,” they wrote.

“Those materials therefore have direct bearing on whether the president was untruthful, and further obstructed the special counsel’s investigation, when in providing written responses to the special counsel’s questions he denied being aware of any communications between his campaign and WikiLeaks,” they added.

In a text message to POLITICO, Jay Sekulow, Trump’s personal attorney, said the suggestion that Trump lied to Mueller’s investigators is “absurd.”

…

Monday’s filing also referenced the most recent scandal engulfing the Trump White House — the president’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden — which caused Speaker Nancy Pelosi to formalize an impeachment inquiry. Letter, the House general counsel, and his deputies argued that Mueller’s grand-jury evidence could also be useful for the House’s ongoing Ukraine probe.

“Those events may also be relevant to the House’s investigation of the president’s solicitation of Ukrainian interference in the 2020 election,” the lawyers wrote, referencing Trump’s efforts to curtail the Mueller probe.

4 Likes
#710

BREAKING: Australian Ambassador Joe Hockey’s May 2019 letter to US Attorney General offering to assist with investigation:


image
image473×658 54.1 KB

2 Likes