Outlaw Pete wrote: » You're confusing two things about the complaint: 1) The accuracy of events 2) The accuracy of what is alleged It would appear that with regards to Point 1, the complaint was quite accurate but with regards to Point 2, it was not. As for the wapo article you linked to, it in fact discredits the very premise that it sets out to debunk, when it says: There are of course many 'Howevers' (which I'll get to) but they admit themselves that much of the whistleblowers complaint is heresay and backed up largely by news articles and so that alone makes a joke of their contention that The White House's claims are inaccurate, they are not. Now, let's cut to the chase, the whisteblower claims that his sources informed him that Trump had "pressured" Zelensky to investigate what Biden had been bragging about publicly .... and the Washington Post's evidence that was the following: So, essentially, the Washington Post are saying the line "so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great" amounts to Donald Trump "pressuring" Zelensky. Utter tripe. He did nothing of the sort. In the opening of the whisteblower's complaint they state: This is also inaccurate as nothing Trump said or did during that call could reasonably be inferred that he was soliciting interference from a foreign country in the 2020 election ... again, utter rubbish. Biden bragged publically about blackmailing the Ukraine and Trump requested Zelensky's cooperation with the US Attorney general into the issue. If in 2010 Dick Cheney had said publically that he used a $1lbn US approved loan as leverage to get a prosecutor fired, would Obama be facing impeachment had he subsequently asked the Ukraine to cooperate with an investigation into the matter? Of course not. The media would be saying he was a hero trying to stamp out long standing corruption in Washington. It stinks to high heavens that the impeachment process is being used as a political tool like this. The Durham-Horowitz reports can't drop fast enough and see these sanctimonious snakes exposed for just what they are.
Eric Cartman wrote: » 1) an opinion piece with an inflammatory headline, hardly factual 2) have you clicked on the author to see what else he's written, been righting 3-5 anti trump stories a week, every week for the last 2 years. The guy has a hardon for giving out about trump, sad and scary.
Outlaw Pete wrote: » If by brillant you meant ridiculous, then yes, it was absolutely 'brilliant'.
Overheal wrote: » What can’t be discredited: the accuracy of the whistleblower complaint.
"...much of what the complaint includes is indeed secondhand or based on news reporting..."
"In the course of my official duties, 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.."
Overheal wrote: » Decent teardown of trump talking points. Even the talking points against Biden don’t hold up to light scrutiny. Roughhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/09/30/guide-gops-increasingly-pathetic-defenses-trump/
notobtuse wrote: » Do we now start impeachment hearings for any president, going forward, on every leaker’s (who has no first hand/direct knowledge) fabrications?
The answer is simple. Although much of what the complaint includes is indeed secondhand or based on news reporting, those are hardly disqualifying. The news reports are mostly citations of Trump’s mentions of the situation with Ukraine or references to Trump-friendly articles at the Hill. And those secondhand assertions in the complaint (read them here) that can currently be verified have been verified — by White House comments or in the rough transcript (read it here) of the July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Here is what the whistleblower complaint says about that call, compared with what the transcript itself says. Again: You can verify this yourself at the above links. COMPLAINT: "Multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call informed me that, after an initial exchange of pleasantries, the President used the remainder of the call to advance his personal interests.” TRANSCRIPT: Trump speaks in nine discrete segments. He congratulates Zelensky on winning the presidency. He says Ukraine is happy Zelensky won. He mentions how much aid the United States provides to Ukraine. He asks a favor: Investigate (baseless) rumors about Ukrainian involvement in an assessment of Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee in 2016. He encourages working with his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani and pushes for an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden and his son. He says he’ll have Giuliani and Attorney General William P. Barr call about the investigation. He invites Zelensky to the White House. He says he’ll see Zelensky at the White House or at an event in Poland (that he ended up not attending). He again offers his congratulations. Except for the invitation to the White House — though even that is questionable — the whistleblower’s allegation is accurate. COMPLAINT: “According to the White House officials who had direct knowledge of the call, the President pressured Mr. Zelenskyy to … initiate or continue an investigation into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. …" (A different transliteration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s surname is used throughout the document.) TRANSCRIPT: Trump says, "[T]here’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. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.” COMPLAINT: “ … assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine, with a specific request that the Ukrainian leader locate and turn over servers used by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and examined by the U.S. cyber security firm Crowdstrike, which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC’s networks in 2016 …" TRANSCRIPT: Trump says, “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. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.” (Ellipses in the original.) COMPLAINT: “ … and meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. Giuliani and Attorney General Barr, to whom the President referred multiple times in tandem.” TRANSCRIPT: Trump praises Giuliani at one point, saying that “[h]e was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening, and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.” At another point he says he “will have Mr. Giuliani give you a call and I am also going to [have] Attorney General Barr call and we will get to the bottom of it.” At another point he says he “will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call.” COMPLAINT: “The President also praised Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, Mr. Yuriy Lutsenko, and suggested that Mr. Zelenskyy might want to keep him in his position.” TRANSCRIPT: Trump talks about a prosecutor, but it’s not clear whether he’s referring to Viktor Shokin — whom Biden fought to get fired — or Shokin’s replacement, Lutsenko. Lutsenko, it’s worth noting, had helped propagate anti-Biden stories through the Hill. “I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good,” Trump told Zelensky, “and he was shut down and that’s really unfair. A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.” “I heard the prosecutor was treated very badly,” he said at another point, “and he was a very fair prosecutor so good luck with everything.” By the time of this call, Giuliani and Lutsenko had met personally on multiple occasions, according to the whistleblower. COMPLAINT: “Aside from the above-mentioned ‘cases’ purportedly dealing with the Biden family and the 2016 U.S. election, I was told by White House officials that no other ‘cases’ were discussed.” TRANSCRIPT: The only other issue raised in the call was the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, whom Trump removed. That subject was raised by Zelensky. Those are all of the mentions of the call itself in the whistleblower complaint — all clearly and directly verified by the transcript that Trump’s White House itself released. What has garnered more attention over the past 24 hours is another assertion made in the complaint. “White House officials told me that they were ‘directed’ by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization, and distribution to Cabinet-level officials,” the whistleblower writes. “Instead, the transcript was loaded into a separate electronic system that is otherwise used to store and handle classified information of an especially sensitive nature. One White House official described this act as an abuse of this electronic system because the call did not contain anything remotely sensitive from a national security perspective.” On Friday morning, the White House provided a statement to CNN: That move did happen, at the request of National Security Council lawyers. It’s sounding more and more as if the whistleblower is just as credible as the intelligence community’s inspector general, and a subsequent review by the Office of Legal Counsel determined him or her to be.
JohnMc1 wrote: » With all these investigations they might something on every candidate at this rate. Trump will crucify Warren. He'll hammer her on her pretending to be Native American to get a cushy tenured teaching job at Harvard.
mcmoustache wrote: » Wasn't it Mitch who told Don to release the transcript? I wonder what he was playing at if so? It was an interesting decision whoever was behind it. In what was basically a self-inflicted wound, Trump has managed to finally move a majority of the public to support impeachment. Unless he's still playing that 12d chess or whatever, I don't see how this is a good thing for him. It had him tweeting like a lunatic last night about spies and traitors. I know that his audience for that were the people who prefer sloganeering over thinking but all he's managed to do is threaten witnesses and annoy senators - they don't like having to defend him because it makes them look like tits on TV. The weird thing is, if he was a smart man with some self discipline, he could easily have avoided all this. Pelosi didn't want impeachment and frustrated her colleagues because of it but he left her no choice here. EDIT: Mitch has just said just that if the house impeaches, the senate would have no choice but to take it up. He said the same back in March but has now just said it again to the world and to Trump who watches a lot of TV. Whatever one thinks about Mitch, he's a very shrewd politician and very effective. Again, what might he be playing at here?
notobtuse wrote: » If the democrats in the House make a mockery of the seriousness of impeachment and do in fact impeach Trump, the Senate shouldn’t dignify the witch-hunt (that has been going on against Trump since before he was sworn into office) with a trial. The Senate possesses the sole power to try all impeachments, but is under no constitutional obligation to do so. The Senate could entertain a motion to dismiss the charges at the outset of a trial on the grounds that the allegations did not meet the constitutional standard of impeachable offenses. McConnell has enough constitutional flexibility to reject impeachment charges that the majority of the senators find baseless.
notobtuse wrote: » Kudos to Brit Hume…'Current media terminology: Looking into Trump = investigating. Looking into Biden = dirt digging.'
drunkmonkey wrote: » I'll bet it's the daughter if she keeps forgetting to wear a bra. Surprised there not trying to impeach her for turning up to the UN without one.
notobtuse wrote: » Apparently Obama did many things that would have been considered to be impeachable, but he smart enough to put political cronies in top positions of the FBI, DOJ and CIA that turned a blind eye to all the wrongdoings. I guess it pays to be one of the classic Chicago politicians... they know how not to get things done.
thechewyone wrote: » A lot of us do, and it's good to see the groundwork being put in place for the last few years for it. It may be his daughter or one of the two young lads, but I could see the Trumps reign lasting for even 14 glorious terms.
Billy Mays wrote: » He wore a tan fcuking suit mate
Overheal wrote: » You pretend like doing this to Obama was never on the table for RepublicansThe only difference is Obama didn’t do anything impeachable. Trump has.
JohnMc1 wrote: » They were going to do this to any Republican who won the Presidency. You can bet they would have done it in 08 if McCain had won or in 12 if Romney had won. They were doing it to W in 01 with their constant recount demands and the only thing that made them stop was 9-11.
notobtuse wrote: » Nobody wants Trump to go beyond 2 terms.
notobtuse wrote: » Nobody wants Trump to go beyond 2 terms. Our hearts couldn’t withstand the pressure of fighting democratic lies, mainstream media bias and dishonesty, and never ending witch-hunts beyond 8 years. SNL had a funny take on the democratic field. Over the top, but something that rings loud and clear regarding the candidates. The Sanders line on straws was golden.
thechewyone wrote: » Democrats aren't being successful about anything, the Republicans are getting it done right and just flat out taking the vote away from their commie hippie agitators. Read up on REDMAP, it's absolutely awesome and the best way to ensure Democrats don't get to ruin the country by holding office ever again. Redistrict their votes into one area, make a few thousand people disappear off the registers on voting day (we're set for a big bunch of them being missing next year!!!! ), and voila... Republicans gonna be running both houses again, and working on getting Trump made President for Life. And they'll do it whether they like it or not, because nobody wants a civil war on their doorstep, and we both know whose back the military would have. They will cry and they will cry and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it. So sit back, get the popcorn out, and enjoy the show.
Overheal wrote: » That twitter rant is earning him eroding confidence in the GOP:https://www.mediaite.com/politics/beyond-repugnant-gop-congressman-calls-out-trump-for-tweeting-fox-news-guests-quote/ 55% of Americans now support impeachment proceedings. This is a massive swing of over 20 points in the last week.
