President Donald Trump - Formal Impeachment Inquiry Announced

mcmoustache

It seems like Pompeo was on the call.

I don't get it. It was such a perfect call. Why was he not the first out the gate to back up what Trump with this first-hand knowledge? Surely he didn't think there was anything wrong with the call?

Water John

If he wasn't on the call, he would have been immediately circulated with its contents.

Overheal

NYT: Australian PM was also pressed by Trump, to help AG Barr dig up dirt on the start of the Mueller probe

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/us/politics/trump-australia-barr-mueller.html

The Phantom Jipper

Overheal wrote: »

NYT: Australian PM was also pressed by Trump, to help AG Barr dig up dirt on the start of the Mueller probe

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/us/politics/trump-australia-barr-mueller.html

More importantly, why are you ignoring Elizabeth Warren's role in all of this Australian business?

Overheal

The Phantom Jipper wrote: »

More importantly, why are you ignoring Elizabeth Warren's role in all of this Australian business?

What does that have to do with Impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump? Seems like a pretty off-base deflection, a kevin-bacon-like reference because the keyword Australia got mentioned.

The Phantom Jipper

Overheal wrote: »

The Phantom Jipper wrote: »

More importantly, why are you ignoring Elizabeth Warren's role in all of this Australian business?

What does that have to do with Impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump? Seems like a pretty off-base deflection, a kevin-bacon-like reference because the keyword Australia got mentioned.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Now that Warren is the odds on favourite for the nomination, I'm surprised she isn't being dragged into these scandals somehow.

mcmoustache

The Phantom Jipper wrote: »

Sorry, couldn't resist. Now that Warren is the odds on favourite for the nomination, I'm surprised she isn't being dragged into these scandals somehow.

Someone in here is going to repeat that.


You have to be careful around here when you pretend to be an idiot. It's hard to distinguish between someone acting the idiot and someone with sincerely held beliefs that they picked up from RT or those twitter accounts with all the stars and flags in their handle.

Overheal

(Not that I'm even sure what he's on about, I tried googling and nothing came up)

Overheal

Latest news out is that AG Barr held private meetings overseas with foreign intel officials seeking their help in a DOJ inquiry that, Trump hoped, will discredit the US Intelligence Apparatus' dozen-or-so agency analysis that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/attorney-general-barr-personally-asked-foreign-officials-to-aid-inquiry-into-cia-fbi-activities-in-2016/2019/09/30/d50cd5c4-e3a5-11e9-b403-f738899982d2_story.html

mcmoustache

Remember all that stuff about second hand information? It turns out that they were full of sh!t for some reason.

The Disclosure of Urgent Concern form the Complainant submitted on August 12, 2019 is the same form the ICIG has had in place since May 24, 2018, which went into effect before Inspector General Atkinson entered on duty as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community on May 29, 2018, following his swearing in as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community on May 17, 2018. Although the form requests information about whether the Complainant possesses first-hand knowledge about the matter about which he or she is lodging the complaint, there is no such requirement set forth in the statute. In fact, by law the Complainant – or any individual in the Intelligence Community who wants to report information with respect to an urgent concern to the congressional intelligence committees – need not possess first-hand information in order to file a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern. The ICIG cannot add conditions to the filing of an urgent concern that do not exist in law. Since Inspector General Atkinson entered on duty as the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community, the ICIG has not rejected the filing of an alleged urgent concern due to a whistleblower’s lack of first-hand knowledge of the allegations.

The Complainant on the form he or she submitted on August 12, 2019 in fact checked two relevant boxes: The first box stated that, “I have personal and/or direct knowledge of events or records involved”; and the second box stated that, “Other employees have told me about events or records involved.”

So, the complaint was from someone with first hand info and even if he didn't have first hand info, the complaint was still legit.

Not that this is surprising. These stupid talking points rarely stand up to scrutiny but those who repeat them either don't care or never figure it out.

Here's the link.

mcmoustache

Overheal wrote: »

(Not that I'm even sure what he's on about, I tried googling and nothing came up)

He was just having a giggle. Just made up something so stupid that you could see actually becoming a Trump talking point.

Overheal

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

"Hunting down"? He said: "We’re trying to find out about a whistleblower"

Clickbait nonsense

Re:

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/lawyers-say-trump-is-clearly-trying-to-retaliate-against-whistleblower-which-is-a-violation-of-federal-law/

Seems US legal analysts disagree with your armchair opinion: this is illegal activity in broad daylight by the President of the United States of America, violating the Whistleblower Protection Act.

This only adds weight toward impeachment. I expect further shift in the polls, and frankly I expect the GOP May start hedging on their escape plans from the Trump train before it whoomps into a solid wall (that Mexico would probably elect to pay for)

mcmoustache

Overheal wrote: »

Latest news out is that AG Barr held private meetings overseas with foreign intel officials seeking their help in a DOJ inquiry that, Trump hoped, will discredit the US Intelligence Apparatus' dozen-or-so agency analysis that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/attorney-general-barr-personally-asked-foreign-officials-to-aid-inquiry-into-cia-fbi-activities-in-2016/2019/09/30/d50cd5c4-e3a5-11e9-b403-f738899982d2_story.html

I should point out as I did in the reality-based thread that the DOJ asking another government for assistance isn't strictly illegal.



Not to be confused with a president looking for election assistance or any other thing of value from a foreign government.


Expect to see some blurring of those lines tomorrow.

Calhoun

Overheal wrote: »

Re:

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/lawyers-say-trump-is-clearly-trying-to-retaliate-against-whistleblower-which-is-a-violation-of-federal-law/

Seems US legal analysts disagree with your armchair opinion: this is illegal activity in broad daylight by the President of the United States of America, violating the Whistleblower Protection Act.

This only adds weight toward impeachment. I expect further shift in the polls, and frankly I expect the GOP May start hedging on their escape plans from the Trump train before it whoomps into a solid wall (that Mexico would probably elect to pay for)

Even with an armchair opinion he has shown he is irrational and spiteful. I wouldn't put it past him to be looking for a leak.

Overheal

"In any case, the IG’s process for handling whistleblower allegations is determined not by a form but by the law and related policy documents. The key document, ICD 120, has been virtually unchanged since 2014. Contrary to the speculation, the whistleblower used the 2018 form, not the new online form. The IG then investigated and found that his allegations were credible and that Congress should be notified."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/09/30/trumps-false-claim-rules-whistleblowers-were-recently-changed/

Debunk on The Federalist diatribe about a whistleblower-form conspiracy.

Outlaw Pete

mcmoustache wrote: »

Remember all that stuff about second hand information? It turns out that they were full of sh!t for some reason.

In the statement the ICIG admit that they revised the form in relation to this whistleblower's complaint and also that they did so because of the rules around first / second hand information. That in and of itself vindicates those who felt the revisions happened as a result of this whistleblower's complaint.

Personally, I'd suggest that those who are buying into the notion that the ICIG were going to update the forms all along but the press interest just prompted them to do it a little faster, and there's nothing to see here.... are gullible.

Couple of things worth noting also:

1) They say the whistleblower used the old form and that they ticked 'two boxes' when they did so, but it's the new form that has two boxes not the old one:

2) It claims also that the recent press attention promoted them to revise the forms but the form was revised in August, why would they have had press attention then?

Open to being fact checked of course, but please don't make nonsense claims that those who spoke about these form revisions were full of it or that they don't care about the truth as that is hogwash. Congressman Devin Nunes (and some others) penned a letter to the ICIG in regard to this issue and that is what led to the statement being released and they are now being asked to provide documentation to back up their claims or come to congress and be questioned on Friday. Pathetic nonsense saying such people don't care about the truth. They care a hell of alot more about it than the democrats that's for bloody sure.

Outlaw Pete

Overheal wrote: »

Seems US legal analysts disagree with your armchair opinion:

I was referring to your 'Hunting down' bs and I don't express armchair opinions, I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany.

mcmoustache

Outlaw Pete wrote: »

In the statement the ICIG admit that they revised the form in relation to this whistleblower's complaint and also that they did so because of the rules around first / second hand information. That in and of itself vindicates those who felt the revisions happened as a result of this whistleblower's complaint.

Personally, I'd suggest that those who are buying into the notion that the ICIG were going to update the forms all along but the press interest just prompted them to do it a little faster, and there's nothing to see here.... are gullible.

Couple of things worth noting also:

1) They say the whistleblower used the old form and that they ticked 'two boxes' when they did so, but it's the new form that has two boxes not the old one:



2) It claims also that the recent press attention promoted them to revise the forms but the form was revised in August, why would they have had press attention then?


Open to being fact checked of course, but please don't make nonsense claims that those who spoke about these form revisions were full of it or that they don't care about the truth as that is hogwash. Congressman Devin Nunes (and some others) penned a letter to the ICIG in regard to this issue and that is what led to the statement being released and they are now being asked to provide documentation to back up their claims or come to congress and be questioned on Friday. Pathetic nonsense saying such people don't care about the truth. They care a hell of alot more about it than the democrats that's for bloody sure.

You're just pushing some conspiracy theory being promoted by the federalist which changes nothing about the President admitting to looking for an electoral favour from a foreign government.


It's obvious what you're doing.

Outlaw Pete

Overheal wrote: »

Again, trump pressured them to investigate in response to wanting to buy javelins.

He didn't pressure them, he asked them to cooperate with an investigation, and the transcript backs that up. You're exaggerating the tone of the call to fit a bs narrative. You can't be "pressuring" someone and yet at the very same time be so friendly with them, which they both clearly were to one another.

Besides, Trump made no bones about the fact that there was going to be investigations into the origins of the Russian-Collusion hoax and that he would be contacting these countries in due course:


https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1178793360800108544

Overheal wrote: »

NYT: Australian PM was also pressed by Trump, to help AG Barr dig up dirt on the start of the Mueller probe

What are you on about? "Dig up dirt" - you're just being constantly dishonest, in the same manner that Schiff was and that speaks volumes that you have to be.

Here's Australia's response:

The Australian government has always been ready to assist and cooperate with efforts that help shed further light on the matters under investigation,

And some contact from them earlier in the year after they had heard him make the comments in the above clip:

Australia's cooperation is crucial in fact, hence the ambassador mentioning Alexander Downer, given the role and he and Australian officials had in the beginnings of what became known as 'Crossfire Hurricane'.

drunkmonkey

Outlaw Pete

mcmoustache wrote: »

]....the President admitting to looking for an electoral favour from a foreign government

Show me where Trump admitted to looking for an "electoral favour" from a foreign government?

If this were Obama, after having taken over in office from Trump, and Trump was seen bragging in public about using $1bln in US funds to strong arm a foreign country into firing a prosecutor, and there was evidence the firing benefited Don Jnr, there is no way you would be whinging about Obama daring to ask the Ukraine to cooperate with an investigation, let alone saying he should be impeached.

This is all because you don't like Trump or his politics, not because you genuinely feel what he said warrants impeachment. Who do you think you're kidding.

mickdw

Whats the real story here. I cannot get a feel for what is actually going on as news channels are very much on one side or the other.
Has biden really questions to answer?

mcmoustache

"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. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it."

Billy Mays

It always amuses me when people who hero worship a man who has told over 12,000 lies since he became president bang on about others being dishonest

lleti

Trump is so clever. Really is.

Just think of all the resources his opposition have been using for the last 4 years trying to get dirt on him and yet nothing really that bad has come up. His comments on women are no worse than creepy joes actions around kids or trudeaus blackface. The Mueller thing was supposed to spill the beans about Trump - fluff.

The Dems think they are onto something with Ukraine but it's all fluff as usual. Nothing will happen except everyone will realise they were just chancing their arm and will put the spotlight on their own Joe.

"congratulations, you played yourself."

Outlaw Pete

mcmoustache wrote: »

"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. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike... I guess you have one of your wealthy people... The server, they say Ukraine has it."

Yes, and?

I have already posted above a video of Trump publicly saying (back in May) that he was going to investigate what happened with the Russia hoax and so that is what he is going ... you seem to be clueless on the role that the Ukraine played in the Russia hoax and why it was important for Trump to ask the new leader would he cooperate with the US Attorney General.

This is not surprising to me though, as I have seen your posts over the last two years and you were right behind Trump being impeached for conspiring with Russians to influence the US election first, and then you switched, like all liberals, to wanting him impeached for obstruction of justice ... it really doesn't matter to you what he's impeached for, does it, as long as it happens, which is disgusting.

Trump has been hounded since he took office by liberals and mainstream media with the incessant propaganda portraying him as racist bigot who is guilty of treason and rape and God knows what else. But he's still standing and that's what annoys you folks the most.

Within the next two to three weeks though, we are going to see the real snakes exposed, as once John Durham's report drops, there's going to be a lot of scurrying. CNN barely reported Comey's leaks when he was head of the FBI, but that is just the tip of the iceberg as to what went on.

There was an attempted coup and that is the real story yet to be told. DNC funded dossier full of knowingly false information was used to get a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign, and also on him as a president after he was elected. When the DNC couldn't trigger an FBI investigation quick enough, they had it leaked to the media that the FBI were investigating Trump so that news of it would sway the election ... only it didn't work, and Trump one anyway. What a sickener, they couldn't even win with their thumb on the scale.

The truth about Ukraine and requests for them to interfere in elections ....

Let's get real: Democrats were first to enlist Ukraine in US elections

Earlier this month, during a bipartisan meeting in Kiev, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) delivered a pointed message to Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

While choosing his words carefully, Murphy made clear — by his own account — that Ukraine currently enjoyed bipartisan support for its U.S. aid but that could be jeopardized if the new president acquiesced to requests by President Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to investigate past corruption allegations involving Americans, including former Vice President Joe Biden’s family.

Murphy boasted after the meeting that he told the new Ukrainian leader that U.S. aid was his country’s “most important asset” and it would be viewed as election meddling and “disastrous for long-term U.S.-Ukraine relations” to bend to the wishes of Trump and Giuliani.

"I told Zelensky that he should not insert himself or his government into American politics. I cautioned him that complying with the demands of the President's campaign representatives to investigate a political rival of the President would gravely damage the U.S.-Ukraine relationship. There are few things that Republicans and Democrats agree on in Washington these days, and support for Ukraine is one of them," Murphy told me today, confirming what he told Ukraine's leader.

The implied message did not require an interpreter for Zelensky to understand: Investigate the Ukraine dealings of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and you jeopardize Democrats' support for future U.S. aid to Kiev.

The Murphy anecdote is a powerful reminder that, since at least 2016, Democrats repeatedly have exerted pressure on Ukraine, a key U.S. ally for buffering Russia, to meddle in U.S. politics and elections.

And that activity long preceded Giuliani’s discussions with Ukrainian officials and Trump’s phone call to Zelensky in July, seeking to have Ukraine formally investigate whether then-Vice President Joe Biden used a threat of canceling foreign aid to shut down an investigation into $3 million routed to the U.S. firm run by Biden’s son.

As I have reported, the pressure began at least as early as January 2016, when the Obama White House unexpectedly invited Ukraine’s top prosecutors to Washington to discuss fighting corruption in the country.

The meeting, promised as training, turned out to be more of a pretext for the Obama administration to pressure Ukraine’s prosecutors to drop an investigation into the Burisma Holdings gas company that employed Hunter Biden and to look for new evidence in a then-dormant criminal case against eventual Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, a GOP lobbyist.

U.S. officials “kept talking about how important it was that all of our anti-corruption efforts be united,” said Andrii Telizhenko, the former political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington who organized and attended the meetings.

Nazar Kholodnytsky, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me that, soon after he returned from the Washington meeting, he saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. That's when two top Ukrainian officials released secret evidence to the American media, smearing Manafort.

The release of the evidence forced Manafort to step down as Trump’s top campaign adviser. A Ukrainian court concluded last December that the release of the evidence amounted to an unlawful intervention in the U.S. election by Kiev’s government, although that ruling has since been overturned on a technicality.

Shortly after the Ukrainian prosecutors returned from their Washington meeting, a new round of Democratic pressure was exerted on Ukraine — this time via its embassy in Washington.

Valeriy Chaly, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States at the time, confirmed to me in a statement issued by his office that, in March 2016, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) pressed his embassy to try to find any Russian dirt on Trump and Manafort that might reside in Ukraine’s intelligence files.

The DNC contractor also asked Chaly's team to try to persuade Ukraine’s president at the time, Petro Poroshenko, to make a statement disparaging Manafort when the Ukrainian leader visited the United States during the 2016 election.

Chaly said his embassy rebuffed both requests because it recognized they were improper efforts to get a foreign government to try to influence the election against Trump and for Hillary Clinton.

The political pressure continued. Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in crucial U.S. aid to Kiev if Poroshenko did not fire the country’s chief prosecutor. Ukraine would have been bankrupted without the aid, so Poroshenko obliged on March 29, 2016, and fired Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.

At the time, Biden was aware that Shokin’s office was investigating Burisma, the firm employing Hunter Biden, after a December 2015 New York Times article.

What wasn’t known at the time, Shokin told me recently, was that Ukrainian prosecutors were preparing a request to interview Hunter Biden about his activities and the monies he was receiving from Ukraine. If such an interview became public during the middle of the 2016 election, it could have had enormous negative implications for Democrats.

Democrats continued to tap Ukraine for Trump dirt throughout the 2016 election, my reporting shows.

Nellie Ohr, the wife of senior U.S. Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, worked in 2016 as a contractor for Fusion GPS, the same Hillary Clinton–funded opposition research firm that hired Christopher Steele, the British spy who wrote the now-debunked dossier linking Trump to Russia collusion.

Nellie Ohr testified to Congress that some of the dirt she found on Trump during her 2016 election opposition research came from a Ukrainian parliament member. She also said that she eventually took the information to the FBI through her husband — another way Ukraine got inserted into the 2016 election.

Politics. Pressure. Opposition research. All were part of the Democrats’ playbook on Ukraine long before Trump ever called Zelensky this summer. And as Sen. Murphy’s foray earlier this month shows, it hasn’t stopped.

The evidence is so expansive as to strain the credulity of the Democrats’ current outrage at Trump’s behavior with Ukraine.

Which raises a question: Could it be the Ukraine tale currently being weaved by Democrats and their allies in the media is nothing more than a smoke screen designed to distract us from the forthcoming Justice Department inspector general report into abuses during the Democratic-inspired Russia collusion probe? It’s a question worth asking.

mcmoustache

I'm Irish. Your liberal versus conservative worldview isn't really applicable outside of the US.

drunkmonkey

I think the left are about to lose their liberal status to the right. There anything but liberal.

mcmoustache

jesus. You'd swear this was a forum for yanks with the way that some go on.

JohnMc1

Billy Mays wrote: »

It always amuses me when people who hero worship a man who has told over 12,000 lies since he became president bang on about others being dishonest

Its amazing how Obama had the support he had.