a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by uhsguy
uhsguy  ·  1673 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Nancy Pelosi Plans Formal Impeachment Inquiry of Trump

The base loves it and CNN will get some more viewers but beyond that it’s all a circus that will distract from larger issues. Good for Biden bad for warren and sanders as this will distract from actual campaign issues. Though not sure Biden will come out super clean here either





medwave  ·  1672 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I was going to say the same exact thing, excellent assessment. Nothing is going to come out of this, it's just a bunch of rhetorical mumbo jumbo CHARADE, per usual. Does anyone in DC go to jail or should I say, does anyone on the left go to jail?

am_Unition  ·  1673 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Here's where we're at, the first paragraph is all you need:

    President Trump’s attempt to pressure the leader of Ukraine followed a months-long fight inside the administration that sidelined national security officials and empowered political loyalists — including the president’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani — to exploit the U.S. relationship with Kiev, current and former U.S. officials said.

I'll bet you that WaPo has probably been in contact with the whistle blower since just around the time that it became clear Trump's acting DNI wouldn't be submitting the complaint to congress. So around or after September 5th, I'd guess. The WaPo article is not an opinion piece, and I really doubt it will be retracted or corrected. I could always be wrong.

It's hard to imagine an issue larger than the singularly most powerful person on the planet either implicitly or explicitly extorting Ukraine by withholding military aide while asking over and over for the Ukrainian government to investigate his biggest political rival in an upcoming presidential election. This, while his personal lawyer (Giuliani) attempts to meet with the Ukrainian president's personal lawyer. Giuliani now claims to have been asked by the state department to work with Ukraine on behalf of the United States. Do you think any of this sounds like how democracy works?

Please, investigate Biden all you want. It's super shady that some Ukrainian natural gas company (Burisma) put the VP's son on the board to score name recognition points, totally agree, but the existing evidence doesn't show that Joe made decisions with Hunter in mind. Applying pressure to fire the corrupt prosecutor (Viktor Shokin, you can read about it here) was something almost every EU member recommended, and furthermore, the prosecutor actually tried to terminate the investigation into Burisma. Rudy has been promising incredibly damning dirt on the Bidens' actions in Ukraine for like 5 months now, and all he's done is rearrange an existing timeline of events and then he points out that it looks pretty bad for someone with substance abuse problems to make a few million dollars for perhaps doing nothing. Yeah, it does, but it's not exactly a crime. Maybe Rudy tells us what really happened sometime tomorrow.

What kills me the most is that all of this immediately follows the end of the Mueller report, which investigated Trump for something far less serious: NOT using the powers of the presidency, but still trying to possibly coordinate with a foreign government in the hopes of influencing a federal election.

Can you please explain how any of Trump's behavior is justified?

I also want to remind everyone of a detail released in the original Washington Post article from last Wednesday night: The whistle blower's report cited multiple conversations/communications between Trump & Zelensky that the whistle blower considered problematic. The report also mentioned a "promise" made by Trump. I̶ ̶a̶g̶r̶e̶e̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶k̶s̶'̶ ̶a̶n̶a̶l̶y̶s̶i̶s̶ ̶(̶e̶l̶s̶e̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶n̶e̶t̶)̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶r̶a̶n̶s̶c̶r̶i̶p̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶h̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶n̶o̶c̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶a̶l̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶p̶i̶e̶c̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶d̶e̶n̶c̶e̶. IMPORTANT EDIT: Nope. The transcript alone should be enough. But if only the transcript is released, and not the entirety of the whistle blower report, that's not going to satiate me, and hopefully not Pelosi either.

goobster  ·  1672 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    If only the transcript is released ...

I expect we won't even see that. AG Barr will write a letter about what he interpreted in the transcript, and how he sees nothing wrong with it at all.

am_Unition  ·  1672 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It came out while you were typing your comment. No explicit quid pro quo. But to interpret this memo as exonerating Trump requires the furthest stretch of the imagination. The DOJ has apparently claimed (in more or less exact disagreement with me, see the paragraph beginning with "Edit:") that help from a foreign government is NOT a thing of value. To argue that opposition research intel isn't valuable is what you might do if you were a feckless piece of shit hellbent on expanding the executive's power unilaterally because you like the guy currently defiling the position.

goobster  ·  1671 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The whistleblower complaint also documented several calls, and an explicit "promise" that was made by Trump to a foreign leader.

We've only seen one document so far...

And in related news, imagine what it must be like to live in AG Barr's home? His wife. Family. What must it be like, knowing this guy has Trump's dick so far down his throat he can't even speak...?

am_Unition  ·  1671 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Actually, I completely retract my prior opinion, my apologies. I'm very much looking forward to Barr's hearing, and his explanation of how it made him feel (or whatever) to quash a report that showed Trump promising Zelensky Barr's help in what is unarguably an illegal political endeavor. I'm worried he'll wriggle out as per usual.

You know Trump's dumbass talked to Barr, at the very least. If the Dems can prove that he knew Trump's full intent, that's gonna be saweet, but I don't have my hopes up. Barr's probably too smart to get directly involved in this, and probably strung Trump along, but never performed an official action. Which would include deputizing anyone from the DOJ to help.

I agree with anyone saying that it's all gonna happen really fast in the next few weeks. And it needs to.

am_Unition  ·  1671 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Edit: The following is no longer my opinion.

So far, it sounds to me like Barr is only involved insomuch as Trump namedropping him alongside Rudy in an attempt to give Rudy legitimacy and authority. Neither of which should ever be ascribed to Rudy, of course. And from me, personally, Barr is only granted the latter.

It sounds like the whistleblower complaint revolves almost entirely around the July 25th phone call, but also mentions a systematic abuse of the classification system to mask politically sensitive information.

I think a lot of people are gonna get some prison time, unless they're pardoned by Pence (or McConnell, at this point). But probably not Barr :(.

goobster  ·  1670 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Yeah, it's that systematic abuse of the classified system that says, "Hey, we White House staffers all knew this shit was so bad that we couldn't let it get out publicly... but that it is going to save our asses one day, to be able to turn over these documents to an investigator, instead of just deleting them and pretending they never existed."

How quickly do you think the CIA sent over their IT guy to do a backup on that system? And then took that backup offsite to a very secure location unknown to anyone in the White House....

am_Unition  ·  1670 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    And then took that backup offsite to a very secure location unknown to anyone in the White House....

Maybe not so secure? But yeah, maybe just about all of the beans are gonna spill, eventually. Some beans may be redacted, but I think we're in for an absolutely wild ride.

I'm very much looking forward to understanding the general attitudes of any rank-and-file White House workers that were even tangentially involved in handling these records. Or at least trying to understand. Deleting the transcripts is probably just as illegal as storing them in the wrong spot, and at least someone had to figure that they were possibly cataloging an eventual impeachment case on one of the most secure servers in the building.