WTF Community

Day 978

Whoa. Coming out now:

AG Barr is involved.

And it is NOT a verbatim transcript. Meaning it’s not actually a transcript at all.

The transcript, in keeping with White House practice, is a memorandum of a telephone conversation and is not a verbatim account of the conversation.

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@Windthin You nailed it! The call alone is sufficient to impeach the President (his crime is right there in black and white no matter how the Republicans try to spin it), but even more importantly, this crime was developing over a period of several months and involves a concerted conspiracy between Trump and Giuliani. The fact that Zelenesky brings up Giuliani demonstrates that his administration had already been working with Giuliani on this. We need to start talking about Trump and Giuliani as co-conspirators – that is a precise description of their relationship.

It’s stunning as well as extremely incriminating that Trump told Zelensky that Barr would also call him. Just think let that sink in for a minute: Trump had already enlisted or intended to enlist the head of our Department of Justice in this conspiracy! Wow.

Because it’s so crucial to the big picture here, I’m reposting @Windthin’s link to the in-depth investigative piece from the WaPo that exposes the broad conspiracy that Trump and Giuliani had been working on for months. This will all come out during the impeachment inquiry. Thank god that process has started. Giuliani will be called and other witnesses will be called as well who knew what Giuliani and his client (co-conspirator), Trump, were up to. As @Windthin pointed out, this is about far, far more than one phone call and there will be plenty of testimony and documents to prove Trump and Giuliani’s guilt in this criminal conspiracy at the highest levels of our government. :boom:

Here’s more on Trump’s incrimination of Barr and the Justice Department. The DoJ has scrambled to deny any involvement. We shall see. But the mere fact that Trump explicitly invoked Barr’s name to further his criminal conspiracy is damning in and of itself.

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OMG, you guys, you have to read the “transcript” in full, it’s kinda incredible. This is what the President released to clear his name?! What an idiot. :joy::joy::joy:

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Yup. There’s a smocking gun if I ever saw one.

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And here comes Bill Barr, out to set a new lie-speed record by exonerating Trump already.

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what do you make of this (it is from Senator Chuck Grassley’s facebook):

Senator Chuck Grassley, president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, today released the following statement regarding the release of a White House transcript of a call between the presidents of the United States and Ukraine.

“Speaker Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry even before seeing the call transcript or hearing from the alleged whistleblower or the director of national intelligence. That says all anyone needs to know about the legitimacy of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry: impeach now, facts later.

“I’ve read the transcript in its entirety. It shows that there was no quid pro quo. The Ukrainian President admitted problems with corruption in the country and agreed that the issue at hand warranted looking into further.

“The firing of a prosecutor looking into former Vice President Joe Biden’s son following pressure from Mr. Biden himself is worthy of investigation. That a president who ran on an anti-corruption platform would look into this matter is unsurprising and is in both the U.S. and Ukrainian national interest.

“For years, Democrats have decried foreign interference in U.S. elections. But this seems to be a one-way street. Democrats are wholly uninterested in looking into past Ukrainian efforts to help former Vice President Biden, as well as the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, which reportedly used Ukraine to undermine the Trump campaign. That’s not how the rule of law works.

“National media attention to only one side of this issue is disappointing even if unsurprising. The Obama administration used the Department of Justice and its intelligence agencies to investigate a political opponent in then-candidate Trump while using foreign government sources to further the investigation. But it’s supposedly unacceptable for the Trump administration to encourage a foreign nation to look into a matter that it was prevented from fully investigating by the previous administration with clear conflicts of interest. That’s not a standard that makes any sense.”

“Democrats’ cries for impeachment grow stronger by the day, but their case for impeachment grows weaker. Democrats should instead focus on the issues Americans care about, such as lowering prescription drug prices, rebuilding our infrastructure and passing the USMCA.”

Thanks for highlighting Giuliani’s role he may be considered also the “fall guy” as well as the co-conspirator… @Keaton_James @Windthin and @Pet_Proletariat

So much reporting now…and Esquire tracks all of Giuliani’s statements in the last several days as well this last 24 hours…He’s changing his tune, and he’s in there so deep.

Giuliani’s constant TV appearances telling us that his work with the President to discover the Biden’s “wrongs” and his participation in pressuring the Ukrainian officials are manipulations of the truth. It was outright corrupt behavior on the part of T, Giuliani and now Barr who is implicated as well and reflects an abuse of power on all fronts.

Reminder that there is not any attorney-client privilege if there is a crime involved, so Rudy does not have a leg to stand on for his own defense with regard to his ‘official’ role as the President’s lawyer.

But could we see Articles of Impeachment on T and his role in the Ukrainian calls soon. Yes…clearly extortion tactics were used and intent is obvious. :pray:

A new report from the Washington Post , which has nailed the Ukraine story throughout, centers Giuliani in a caper wherein the State Department and other official channels were shoved aside so that the Presidential Lawyer could get up to…something…in Ukraine. Actually, we know what the something was: both Trump and Giuliani have openly admitted they pressured the president of Ukraine to open an investigation that could damage Joe Biden.

But the whole WaPo report centers on Giuliani’s role, and based on his appearances across Fox News’ many fine offerings last night and this morning, he’s aware of his new status as a protagonist in the story of an impeachable offense. Vox’s Aaron Rupar traced Giuliani’s merry dance across cable news and, we can only assume, his dark internal journey into the cavernous depths of delusion required to survive working on the president’s behalf. First, he joined the program hosted by Laura Ingraham, who lives in fear of The Children who want a habitable planet.

Rudy Giuliani is losing it. This is Infowars-type stuff. pic.twitter.com/qMlKLX74Sa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2019

Giuliani is now lying and spouting off conspiracy theories to try to stay out of the fire, but you’ve got to believe Trump will shove him the rest of the way in if necessary.

Later, he addressed head-on the report from WaPo that he’d circumvented official State Department channels to do his thing over there:

Wow. Here’s Rudy Giuliani throwing the State Department under the bus and saying State officials called him and asked him to get involved in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/HIhQDmhzjh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2019

Ah! He held up his phone’s home screen

This is what innocence looks like, folks. It was also on display at 1:23 a.m., not too long after the Presidential Lawyer departed the Fox News premises, when he took to Twitter to perform some InfoWars Mad Libs.

We know corrupt Ukrainian oligarch laundered $3 million to the Biden Family. But $3 to $4m more was laundered to Biden. So release all the financial records of all businesses involving Biden, Kerry’s stepson and notorious mobster Whitey Bulger’s nephew.

— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) September 25, 2019

But wait—there’s more. Giuliani returned to the airwaves this fine Wednesday morning to debut a new line of obvious bullshit.

Rudy Giuliani’s new talking point this morning is that the president of Ukraine just wanted to investigate Biden on his own and Trump didn’t even have to push him pic.twitter.com/5TZ9TgXGuV

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2019

It’s too late, Rudy. You already admitted on television that you pressured the Ukrainians to ensnare the Bidens in an investigation. The president already admitted he pressured his Ukrainian counterpart to do so. Saying, maybe the Ukrainian president brought it up , then laughing maniacally, is not as clever as you seem to think.

Elsewhere on Fox and Friends , Giuliani tried to somehow make this about Obama and even the three geniuses were not impressed. And then there was this:

Here is Rudy Giuliani, who is not a government official, saying on Fox & Friends that the transcript of Trump’s call to president of Ukraine – one that’s at the heart of a whistleblower complaint – was read to him. Congress still hasn’t been able to see it. pic.twitter.com/CpioFcAsqX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2019

Why did Giuliani get a look at The Transcript before Congress and the general public?

Here are some explosive CNN interviews with Giuliani who breaks down the claims that the Bidens needed investigating, and what actually transpired with the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor.

Take a look at this :point_down:

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Check out the headlines for these major newspapers for 9.25.19

Powerful…

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They have their talking points lined up. Trump’s been re-tweeted everybody saying “no quid pro quo” and that is all they’re parroting.

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why is he saying that it is ok for Trump to cancel and redirect funds that congress voted on?

why is he saying that it is ok for Trump to ask a foreign government to investigate a US citizen?

Why is he saying that this is legal because Obama did it too?

I must have missed something, could you clarify here what Obama did too? I don’t disbelieve you, I’d just like a resource to look at.

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@angrypeony
With that last question I was referring to this quote from Chuck Grassely:

I don’t remember anything about Obama asking Ukraine to investigate Trump during the last election. I feel like I have been asleep for the last three years.

Grassley is posing misinformation. The “transcript” or memo of the TELCON actually says,

The President is referring to Crowdstrike, the cyber security company the DNC used to discover the 2016 email hack. This is part of a conspiracy theory being spread on the Right, concerning Seth Rich and the hack being an “inside job”. Which was proven to be a Russian disinformation campaign in the Mueller report.

It’s bonkers that Grassley is repeating this story.

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Thank you so much for this clarification–I continue to feel like I’m living in a Twilight Zone timeline where the facts are made up and the law doesn’t matter.

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The GOP-parroted talking point is “no quid pro quo,”


This. Is the dumbest conspiracy. EVER.

White House mistakenly sends Trump-Ukraine talking points to Democrats

EVER!

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Smart move by Acting DNI head Maguire to threaten to resign unless T"N Co offered their justification for preventing him from releasing the whistleblower complaint.

He knew they were playing with fire.:fire:

****Acting director of national intelligence threatened to resign if he couldn’t speak freely before Congress

The acting Director of National Intelligence threatened to resign over concerns that the White House might attempt to force him to stonewall Congress when he testifies Thursday about an explosive whistleblower complaint about the president, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The revelation reflects the extraordinary tensions between the White House and the nation’s highest-ranking intelligence official over a matter that has triggered impeachment proceedings against President Trump.

The officials said that Joseph Maguire, who was thrust into the top intelligence post last month, warned the White House that he was not willing to withhold information from Congress, where he is scheduled to testify in open and closed hearings on Thursday.

The move was in part designed to force the White House to make an explicit legal decision on whether it was going to assert executive privilege over the whistleblower complaint, which centers on a call that Trump made with the leader of Ukraine in late July.

In essence, Maguire was serving notice that he intended to cooperate with lawmakers unless the White House moved forward with a legal case to prevent him from doing so, the officials said.

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I am through today. I have hit my stupid quota. Trump just played the “butter e-mails” card.
image

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Open Session Thursday 9 AM ET

“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.”

Showdown tomorrow with acting DNI :popcorn::popcorn::popcorn:

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@Tindwyl Thanks for this – I wasn’t aware Grassley had made a statement. Others here have done a great job of debunking what he said, but I would just like to address his first paragraph which really sticks in my craw and shows me that he is practicing “willful ignorance” like the vast majority of the Republican party.

Grassley says:

“Speaker Pelosi announced an impeachment inquiry even before seeing the call transcript or hearing from the alleged whistleblower or the director of national intelligence. That says all anyone needs to know about the legitimacy of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry: impeach now, facts later."

The accusation embedded in that last sentence certainly has a nice ring to it, “Impeach now, facts later.” It sounds like something Hannity would say and it’s something Trump’s base can really get indignant about. But it’s just a complete load of B.S.

I would just say this to Mr. Grassley: We, the Democrats, are not “impeaching now” – we are opening an impeachment inquiry (something you, in fact, just said in your preceding words). Instead of ignoring the facts, we are searching diligently for the facts. We can’t find the facts without an inquiry because Trump, Barr, and the rest of the GOP, including yourself, are all stonewalling requests for information. Trump and his enablers broke the law by refusing to release the whistleblower complaint. What other choice did we have except to announce a formal inquiry? If we hadn’t announced it, Trump would still be blocking us from seeing the complaint.

So Mr. Grassley: Won’t you help us with our inquiry? Won’t you help us find the facts instead of stonewalling us? If the facts point to an impeachable offense, then and only then would we take the next step and impeach. And if that becomes the case, we would hope, as a patriot, you would then join us. In the meantime, how dare you accuse us of impeaching before we have the facts. That is a flat out lie, sir.

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@Windthin I pulled these off twitter. Omfg! :clown_face::circus_tent::tickets:

:joy::joy::joy: these people!

RE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-mistakenly-sends-trump-ukraine-talking-points-to-democrats/2019/09/25/5170aa52-dfb2-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html

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