Ukraine & Impeachment
Trumps Acting DNI Joseph Maguire is refusing to turn over a whistle blower complaint to Congress even though the Inspector General has said the information should be turned over. Schiff is demanding the DNI come before the House on Thursday to answer for this omission.
On Wednesday night the Washington Post reported new details: that the whistle blower was saying that Trump made a promise to a foreign leader. The complaint was filed August 12, 2019: “White House records indicate that Trump had had conversations or interactions with at least five foreign leaders in the preceding five weeks.” It is so far unknown which of those leaders is mentioned in the complaint.
Here is the Lawfare legal analysis of the whistleblower statutes: “In the current circumstances, so far the Trump administration is honoring neither the letter of the law nor the spirit of good faith cooperation that the relevant case law contemplates. Maguire seems not to have notified the committee, in any form, that a credible issue had arisen. He blew through the statutory deadline with seemingly no attempt to communicate with the committee. It seems the only reason the committee found out about the issue was because of a letter sent to the committee chair by the intelligence community. “
Inspector General Atkinson spent three hours before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday. He refused to disclose the nature of the complaint saying he was not authorized to do so, but he also disagreed with a DNI lawyer’s decision that the information should not be released to Congress. The Washington Post also reports that the country involved in the complaint is Ukraine.
Thursday night Giuliani gave a CNN interview where he admitted to pressuring Ukraine to investigate Biden’s son.
Friday The Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post report more details. On a July 25 call with the president of Ukraine, Trump urged him to work with Giuliani on the Biden case eight times: “Days after the two presidents spoke, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, met with an aide to the Ukrainian president in Madrid and spelled out two specific cases he believed Ukraine should pursue. One was a probe of a Ukrainian gas tycoon who had Biden’s son Hunter on his board. Another was an allegation that Democrats colluded with Ukraine to release information on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort during the 2016 election.”
Wittes: “If it is true that the president used the threat of withholding congressionally authorized funds to—in the Post’s words—“extort” a foreign leader into investigating a domestic political opponent and his family, that would constitute an impeachable offense, indeed an offense that positively demands impeachment from any Congress that wishes to be taken seriously.”
He goes on to explain three reasons why it would be impeachable: “first, because it would involve the extortion of a foreign leader for personal and political gain; second, because it would involve the solicitation of a foreign government’s involvement in a U.S. election; and third, because it would involve the solicitation of a foreign government’s investigation of a political opponent in a fashion that grossly violates the civil liberties of a U.S. person, namely Biden’s son.”
David French: “There is not a Republican alive who would find it acceptable for a Democratic president to press a foreign country to work with his personal lawyer to investigate a domestic political rival.”
In Other News
Oil fields in Saudi Arabia were attacked by drones. Trump tweets and statements suggested that he was prepared to commit military forces to retaliate against Iran: “There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!” And: “The fact is the Saudis are going to have a lot of involvement in this if we decide to do something. They’ll be very much involved. And that includes payment. And they understand that fully.”
Trump was in California this week on a fund raiser but also to pitch some of his border wall. An Australian journalist was taken aback: “I was still taken back by just how disjointed and meandering the unedited president could sound. Here he was trying to land the message that he had delivered at least something towards one of his biggest campaign promises and sounding like a construction manager with some long-winded and badly improvised sales lines. I’d understood the dilemma of normalising Trump’s ideas and policies – the racism, misogyny and demonisation of the free press. But watching just one press conference from Otay Mesa helped me understand how the process of reporting about this president can mask and normalise his full and alarming incoherence.”
We also learned that the military has spent almost $200,000 at Trump Turnberry since August 2017.
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Trump’s Approval Rating: 42.2%