Trump produces more disinformation to offset his failure to block the release of information. Today he refers to the “perfect phone call” made during his first of two impeachments. That one was by no means perfect, nor is his threatening phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State pleading to “find” 11, 780 additional votes for him.
In a taped call with Mr Raffensperger, recordings of which were first obtained by The Washington Post, Mr Trump said: “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
Mr Trump suggested that the secretary of state and and his chief counsel Ryan Germany could be criminally prosecuted if they did not follow through with his claims.
“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” the former president said during the call. “You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offence. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”
www.independent.co.uk/...
After nearly a year of promising to investigate former President Donald Trump for meddling in Georgia’s election, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is finally ready to convene a grand jury to force witnesses to testify.
On Thursday, the local prosecutor wrote a letter to her district’s chief judge asking for permission to impanel a “special purpose grand jury” solely dedicated to investigating how Trump tried to pressure the state’s top elections official to change the 2020 results and make Trump the winner.
In her letter, Willis said her office found “possible criminal disruptions… to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections in this state.”
www.thedailybeast.com/...
President Donald Trump’s request that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, has triggered an impeachment inquiry. Since then, the president has made a series of inaccurate claims about his phone call with Zelensky, which he calls “perfect.”
Here are some of the claims the president has made over the past two days about the phone call and the whistleblower’s complaint, which included an accurate account of the phone call:
- The president wrongly claimed that Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified that Trump’s phone call with Zelensky was “very normal.” Maguire did not characterize the phone call in his testimony before the House intelligence committee.
- Trump falsely claimed that a White House-released memo on his July 25 phone call with Zelensky was “an exact word-for-word transcript of the conversation … taken by very talented stenographers.” The memo includes a “caution” note saying it “is not a verbatim transcript.”
- Trump said that “the whistleblower never saw the conversation” and “wrote something that was total fiction.” The whistleblower said he received “a readout of the call,” and Maguire said the complaint is consistent with a White House memo of the call. (Trump also wrongly denied that Maguire found the two consistent.)
- Trump claimed that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell “put out a statement that said that was the most innocent phone call he’s read.” McConnell said it wasn’t an impeachable offense, but did not describe the call as “innocent.”
- Trump also claimed that Sen. Rick Scott of Florida described the call as “a perfect conversation.” Scott didn’t use those words, but like McConnell he said he didn’t see the call as an impeachable offense.
Maguire: Complaint ‘in Alignment’ with Memo
On Aug. 12, an anonymous intelligence community official filed a whistleblower complaint accusing the president of “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” The complaint included a description of a July 25 phone call that Trump made to Zelensky, who was elected the president of Ukraine on April 21.
On 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,” and assist a U.S. review of allegations that the “Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election originated in Ukraine,” according to the whistleblower’s complaint. Trump asked Zelensky to “meet or speak with two people the President named explicitly as his personal envoys on these matters, Mr. [Rudy] Giuliani and Attorney General [William] Barr,” the complaint said.
That description was confirmed by a memo of the call, which the White House released on Sept. 25.
“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,” the memo says Trump told Zelensky. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”
The memo of the call also showed Trump asked Zelensky to “find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine” and the 2016 presidential campaign, and urged him to speak with Barr and Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney.
At a Sept. 26 House intelligence committee hearing, Rep. Joaquin Castro asked Maguire, the acting DNI, if the whistleblower’s complaint is “remarkably consistent” with the memo of the phone call that was released by the White House.
“I would say that the whistleblower’s complaint is in alignment with what was released yesterday by the president,” Maguire said.
Nevertheless, the president misstated Maguire’s answer when asked about it during an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office.
www.factcheck.org/...