While only writing two or three
political articles a month, sometimes it seems like they are all
about the President, which isn't how this blog originally started.
With probability of impeachment approaching one hundred percent, I
felt it necessary to catalog the exact details of the news related to
Ukraine.
It came to the public's attention on
9/17/2019. Representative
Adam Schiff said that an intelligence official had refused to turn
over an 'urgent' whisteblower complaint.
Details were sparse, but a complaint, approved by Intelligence
Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, had been given
to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, and under
law, he was supposed to hand it to Schiff's House Intelligence
Committee. Instead Maguire consulted with the DOJ and gave it to
them instead.
9/18
By the next day it was clear the
complaint related to a
promise made between Trump and a foreigner leader.
The complaint covered more than a single incident and had been sent
to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, a position held by
Michael Atkinson, who was nominated to the post by Trump in 2018.
9/19
The public further learned that the
President asked the President of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's
son. Trump's lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, tweeted
that it would be ok if Trump told Ukraine to investigate the Biden
family. But did the Trump withhold military aid to Ukraine to force
them to investigate Biden?
9/20
The
President finally commented on the story by
claiming that the whistleblower must be partisan (even though he
admitted not knowing who it was), that the conversation was beautiful
(even though the he couldn't remember having it), and that “it
doesn't matter what I discuss.” Rudy
Giuliani, deployed to the daytime talk shows,
admitted, “Of
course I did,” when asked if he pressured Ukraine to investigate
Joe Biden.
9/21
Trump continued to defend himself,
admitting
he discussed Biden with Ukraine, because he was worried about
corruption.
9/23
Pressed further, Trump
claimed he didn't link Ukraine military aid to an investigation of
Joe and Hunter Biden. He also reiterated his
concern for corruption in Ukraine. The President of the United
States, the first since Nixon not to release his tax returns, who did
not divest from his business, or put his assets in a blind trust,
whose sons are running the family business and using their father's
connections, said he was concerned with corruption.
9/24
Under growing public pressure, the
Senate
unanimously called for the release of the whistleblower complaint.
The President changed
his reason for withholding military funds for Ukraine, from his
concerns about corruption, to a worry that the European Union wasn't
doing enough. Speaker
of the House Nancy Pelosi opened an impeachment inquiry
over the Ukraine investigation.
9/25
At the insistence of the Senate, the
White House released a “transcript”
of the phone call between the President and Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelensky. The document is not the official transcript, as
it informs the reader at the bottom of the first page. It is not a
verbatim account, but a rough recording based on notes and
recollections of the staff in the room. For
example, there are three ellipses (…) in the transcript.
These are commonly used to indicate when a person paused, or the
omission of superfluous dialogue. A the release of complete,
official transcript would allow the public to better judge the
conversation. We'll do our best with what we have.
The most serious
statement occurs between pages 2 and 3. At the
bottom of 2, President Zelensky said to President Trump, “We are
almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense
purposes.”
Trump replied, “I would like you to
do us a favor though, because our country has been through a lot and
Ukraine knows a lot about it. They say Crowdstrike... The server,
they say Ukraine has it.”
The bit about Crowdstrike
refers to a conspiracy theory about the beginnings of the Russia
investigation, and the Russian hack of the DNC's servers.
President Trump later continued, “I
heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down...
I would like [Rudy Giuliani] to call you. I will ask him to call you
along with the Attorney General... The other thing, There's a lot of
talk about Biden's son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot
of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the
Attorney General would be great.”
Together
the two statements ask the President of Ukraine
“to do us a favor” after Zelensky asks “to buy more Javelins
from the US for defense purposes”, and includes a request to look
into Crowdstrike, the DNC server, and “The other thing,” to
investigate Biden who pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor. This
is jumping ahead into next month, but a
letter from 2016 shows three Republican Senators urging then Ukraine
President to deal with corrupt prosecutors.
Other Republican's supported Joe Biden's efforts when VP, along with
the UK's
Prime Minister David Cameron.
On the same day as the release of the
partial transcript, the whistleblower
complaint was delivered to Congress.
In addition to including Trump and
Barr, Giuliani pulled Secretary of State Mike Pompeo into the
maelstrom, saying
on Fox News that he had contacted Ukrainian officials at the request
of the State Department, not of his own accord.
Pompeo was involved in prematurely recalling Marie Yovanovitch, the
career diplomat serving as U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
But the real
issue was the release of the military aid. It
was approved to be released to Ukraine by Feburary 28th.
Then the White House said it would be delivered by May 23rd,
but it was still withheld. On September 11th the
Administration finally released the money. In mid-July Mick Mulvaney
said the money was to be withheld because the President had concerns
about the necessity of aid. This decision was made about a week
before the phone call.
9/26
The White House finally released
the whistleblower complaint, and it stated that
“I have received information from multiple U.S. Government
officials that the President of the United States is using the power
of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the
2020 U.S. Election.” Written on August 12th,
the complaint supports the contents of the transcript,
that the President asked for an investigation into Biden in return
for the release of military aid. But it also alleged that the
President's team went above and beyond in hiding the information, by
storing
a common interaction on a computer system reserved for classified
data.
Later, Acting Director of
National Intelligence Joseph
Maguire spoke at a fairly uncontentious House Intelligence Committee
hearing about his actions. When presented with
the whistleblower complaint by the inspector, he strangely chose to
hand it over to the very people it was trying to warn the public
about: the White House. Under orders from the Department of Justice,
he refused to give it to the House Intelligence Committee as required
by law.
On the same day, the President, in a
private meeting, called
the whistleblower a spy, and then said, “You
know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right?
The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than
we do now.” That's the President of the United States accusing a
whistleblower of treason and threatening them with execution.
9/27
Friday featured fewer events, but the
first was startling. Professional diplomat Kurt
Volker, who had been assigned as an envoy to Ukraine, resigned
admit reports that he had helped Rudy Giuliani pressure Ukrainian
officials into opening an investigation into Biden in return for
foreign aid.
Then three
House committees subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
for documents related to their investigation whether the President
pressured Ukraine for dirt on his political rival.
9/28
A leak, attempting to provide a measure
of cover for
Attorney General Willaim Barr, reported he was "surprised and
angry" that the President had said Ukraine
should talk to him about Joe Biden.
9/29
The next day,
the President demanded
to meet the whistleblower, and then accused
Democratic Representative Adam Schiff of committing treason.
For the first, the reason whistleblower protections exist are to
prevent the retribution Trump seems intent on inflicting. On the
second, as many people have pointed out, Treason
is defined in the Constitution as “only in levying war against [the
United States], or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and
comfort.” The President either doesn't know what treason is, or
doesn't mind inflaming his followers. He then threatened
the nation with civil war if he was removed
from office.
This bluster was countered by ex-Trump
Official, Tom
Bossert, who said he was “deeply disturbed” by the Ukraine
affair, and that the Trump Administration had
brought itself to this point over a completely debunked conspiracy
theory. Former
UK Prime Minister David Cameron also voiced his support for the
actions of Joe Biden in Ukraine, saying that
the UK stood behind his past efforts to tackle corruption.
9/30
On the final day of the month, Trump
called for the arrest of his political Representative Adam Schiff,
and said “We're
trying to find out,” the identity of the whistleblower.
The President has put the whistleblower's life at risk by
threatening him with execution, and encouraging people to discover
their identity.
The Wall Street Journal discovered that
Secretary
of State, Mike Pompeo, who had denied reading the transcript of the
call between Trump and the President of Ukraine,
was on
the call when Trump made it!
And, recognizing the probability of
impeachment by the House, Mitch
McConnell promised a vote in the Senate.
Note:
Joe Biden's son, Hunter, clearly
used his father's connections to earn a lucrative position at a
corrupt company in Ukraine. He was unqualified, he was
ill-prepared, but he had his father's name. There is no indication
that Biden was directly involved, or that he urged the firing of a
Ukrainian prosecutor to halt an investigation of his son (the
prosecutor wasn't investigating the company at the time). Multiple
Republican Senators at the time, along with other European allies,
including David Cameron, wanted the prosecutor fired for corrupt
acts. But
Biden and his son engaged in the sort of every day corruption allowed
by the rich, powerful, and well connected. The President engaged
in egregious political behavior with bribery, and Biden's son did
something less. Democrats
shouldn't nominate Biden for the 2020 election.
Neither of them should be President.
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