The last week has been quite busy with the release both of the Zelensky Call memo and the Whistle-Blower Complaint documenting that Trump tried to extort and bribe the President of Ukraine to help do his bidding to help with the 2020 Election by attacking Joe Biden and also undermine the case against Paul Manafort.
The first irony of this that the conspiracy theory that Trump tried to get Zelensky to implement comes directly from right-wing Russian State Television.
“The server, they say Ukraine has it,” Trump told Zelensky, in reference to the DNC server. “There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it.”
Russian media monitor Julia Davis writes in the Daily Beast that this is the exact same conspiracy theory that Russian TV hosts have been pushing on their programs for months.
For example, Davis notes that “Dmitry Kiselyov, the host of Russia’s most popular Sunday news program… urged Trump to keep digging in Ukraine for ‘the sweetest’ kompromat of all: ‘Proving that Ukraine — not Russia — interfered in the U.S. elections.'”
And that’s not all — Davis also found that “pro-government experts on the nightly television show The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev have been openly rooting for the supposed scandal in Ukraine to ‘kill Biden’ politically, and allow Trump ‘to disprove’ Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, and destroy the heart of the Democratic Party in the process.”
It is interesting to think that all of this is a set of Kremlin fueled conspiracy theories designed to redirect the spotlight off Russia and onto Ukraine and ultimately Seth Rich.
Salon argues that this entire set of conspiracy theories were cooked up in order to get Russia off the hook for the DNC hack.
The reference was to a conspiracy theory pushed by far-right pundits who have alleged that the Democratic National Committee fabricated the evidence of Russia’s 2016 hack into the DNC network.
“The hoax has its roots in a GRU persona, ‘Guccifer 2.0,’ created to cast doubt on Russia’s culpability in the DNC hack,” The Daily Beast reported.
Crowdstrike is the security firm the DNC hired to investigate the hack in 2016 and was the first to identify the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, as its likely perpetrator. Though Trump apparently thinks Crowdstrike is based in Ukraine, it is actually based in California.
“Crowdstrike has nothing to do with Ukraine, except in conspiracyland, which pretends that Crowdstrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is Ukrainian, and that he framed Russia for election interference both on the DNC’s orders and to punish Putin for invading his homeland,” The Daily Beast explained. Alperovitch is actually an American citizen whose family fled Russia during the Soviet era.
Trump has alleged that the DNC refused to allow the FBI to investigate. But as The Daily Beast explained in an article titled “Trump’s ‘Missing DNC Server’ is Neither Missing Nor a Server,” the DNC simply turned down an FBI request to try to access the network while the Russians were still in it, likely to stage a counter-operation. The DNC later allowed Crowdstrike to share full copies of the hacked servers with the FBI.
It should be noted that Intelligence agencies from Holland were inside the GRU network while they were doing the hack and were able to gain control of their video surveillance while they were attacking the DNC server — this information was apparently supplied to Robert Mueller and it's why there are specific GRU personnel referenced BY NAME in the indictment that was issued by Mueller's office for the DNC and DCCC hacks. This theory is bullshit, but it's a straw that Trump continues to grasp because he wants to flog his "Deep State" they're "Out to get me" theories.
All of this appears to be part of an effort by Trump to rationalize and justify a pardon for Paul Manafort.
The effort by President Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden began as something else — a search for a rationale to pardon former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, the New York Review of Books reported Wednesday.
The report was based off of records provided by someone who’d participated in Trump and Manafort’s joint defense agreement, according to NYRB. The records include notes of conversations that included Giuliani, who’s led the charge for dirt in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Per the report, Trump and Manafort’s legal teams had at least nine conversations related to the effort, aimed at providing a pretext for a pardon. The conversations ranged from the early days of Trump’s presidency to as recently as May.
Rudy's involvement in all this apparently started off in June when he met with Ukrainian political consultant named Andrii Telizhenko in Washington after his abortive trip to Kyiv had been called off. Telizhenko had worked last year for Ukrainian oligarch Pavel Fuks — a onetime potential Trump Tower Moscow partner who once brought Giuliani to Ukraine, and he had other interesting connections.
Telizhenko also spent the first six months of 2017 working with former Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Artemenko, who found himself stripped of his citizenship after delivering a supposedly Russian-backed “peace plan” to the desk of then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn by way of Michael Cohen.
[...]
Telizhenko first surfaced in the public sphere in January 2017. The former diplomat told Politico that Ukrainian officials tried to work with Democratic National Committee staffers to provide information about potential ties between the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort, and Russia.
Telizhenko’s claims have been denied by former members of the Ukrainian government, as the Washington Post reported.
Within a year of the Politico story, he set up a political consulting firm called Golden Lion Strategies, Inc., attempting to parlay supposed connections with Western and Ukrainian officials.
Clearly Telizhenko has links to the Kremlin friendly members of the Ukranian government and may have been he conduit for many of these Russia friendly conspiracy theories to reach Guiliani.
The second irony is that when the White House sent out it's first set of talking points on how to respond to the Whistle-Blower Scandal — it sent them to the Democrats by accident.
The talking points are revealing in several ways.
It claims that there was "no quid pro quo" between Trump and Zelensky when in fact we now know based on the Whistle-Blower complaint that Trump had previously put the $400 Million payout to Ukraine on hold about a week before the call, and that he had actually refused to do the call until he knew that Zelensky was willing to "play ball." Then during the call he says "we do a lot for Ukraine, and we don't get much reciprocity." And when Zelensky brings up buying more Javelin missiles Trump cuts him off and says "we need you to do us a favor, though"at which point he launches into the conspiracy theory that Crowdstrike faked the indications that Russia hacked the DNC server, and that somehow Ukraine "had the server." Yeah, they don't "have the server", they never had it.
The talking points claim that this was "entirely proper" for Trump to ask Zelensky to investigate Ukraine's potential involvement in the 2016 election. This is entirely NOT proper. This is bringing Ukraine directly into our domestic politics, and it's not the first time this has happened. The Ukraine had previously refused to cooperate with the Mueller Investigation looking into connections with Paul Manafort in order to specifically "make senior Trump officials happy."
This was not the first time we'd been able get Ukraine to "play ball," they'd done it before. Since Zelensky is a new freshly elected President, Trump was just holding back the funds in order to "feel him out"on the request.
The talking points argue that Trump did not bring up Giuliani first, Zelensky did — but then that was because discussing Biden had been a precusor for this call according to an aide of Zelensky's.
According to an ABC News report, an adviser to Zelensky said that it was very clear.
“It was clear that Trump will only have communications if they will discuss the Biden case. This issue was raised many times. I know that Ukrainian officials understood,” said Serhiy Leshchenko.
The fact that Zelensky brings it up first is meaningless. It's at this point the Trump goes off about Biden.
“I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation in Ukraine … 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. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … it sounds horrible to me.”
Biden did not "stop the prosecution." There was no prosecution to stop. Over a year previously the then prosecutor, Shokin, had started and stopped an investigation of the owner of Burisma Group, a natural gas company in Ukraine. Sometime after the investigation began, and apparently before it ended Hunter Biden had joined the board of Burisma, but at no point was he personally under investigation. A year after the investigation was ended, Biden on behalf of the IMF and the EU joined with the Obama Administration to request that Shokin be replaced because he had a history of dropping and ignoring corruption investigations, like the one he had dropped into the head of Burisma. If anything, Biden's action caused for a replacement prosecutor who -- if there was any case to be made — would have re-opened the Burisma case, which would have put Hunter Biden at risk. That didn't happen, and that prosecutor has specifically said there was "no case"involving the younger Biden. However, Shokin and his cohorts have been pushing the argument that he was only removed to protect Hunter and Giuliani has fallen for that hook, line and sinker.
Again, this is NOT proper — to ask a foreign government to help provide oppo research info on Trump's political opponent. It's a clear campaign finance violation. And yet when this issue was referred by the IC Inspector General to the DOJ for being a possible criminal violation the DOJ blew it off and there's the issue that Bill Barr should have been recused from that decision, because he was personally referenced by Trump several times in the phone call. This is a campaign finance violation as well as being extortion and bribery. Trump is already Individual-1 for his involvement in the Stormy Daniels payoff, and yet Barr has had that case closed. He's got ten credible allegations of obstruction against him from the Mueller report that the DOJ chose to ignore. Barr is a problem.
Rudy has been since saying that he's the "real whistle-blower"and that Mike Pompeo and the State Dept. asked him to get in contact with aides associated with Zelensky.
WaPo columnist Josh Rogan argues that the Zelensky memo shows that Giuliani's narrative about the State Dept sending him to Ukraine is false.
"Giuliani met with Yermak not because of the State Department, but because Giuliani and Yermak were “simply following up on Trump’s request…. Yermak was following up on Trump’s suggestion, not responding to actions of the State Department.” Rogin notes that a State Department spokesperson, in an August 22 statement, said, “At Presidential Advisor Andriy Yermak’s request, (Ambassador Paul) Volker put Yermak in direct contact with Mr. Giuliani.”
It seems that Yermak made the request of Volker to facilitate the talk with Giuliani after Trump made the request of Zelensky in the phone call, so Rudy blather about the Volker at State asking him to talk to Yermak is true — but irrelevant. Trump had already set all this up with Zelensky during the phone call. Also what is Giuliani in his scenario? Is he a private attorney for Trump or is he a freelance State Dept. representative? If he's not a member of the government then it's illegal for him to be involved in performing foreign policy under the Logan Act.
The talking points claims that because Biden "bragged"about removing Shokin as prosecutor this justifies something or the other. They also claim that Trump only brought up how much the US is contributing to Ukraine and how much other people aren't, well, just because he wants Europe to contribute more. But Europe has given $16 Billion in funds to Ukraine in recent years, so that entire line of argument is a lie. Also Bullshit.
I don't care how you slice it, this phone call was bad. Really bad. And apparently the WH knew it was bad because they tried to hide it on the NSC server from external view and what's amazing from the WhistleBlower complaint is that this "wasn't the only time this has happened." There have been other cases where — for political reasons — information has been sequestered onto this server to block it from the eyes of other members of the Administration or outsiders is the sign of a far more extensive and expansive cover-up than we've seen so far.
Here are the remaining details for this week in the never-ending Trump-Russia-Corruption Timeline:
September 21st —
September 22nd —
September 23rd —
September 24th —
- WaPo reports that Trump ordered a delay in aide to Ukraine one week before the call with Zelensky. [And Zelensky would have known that before the call.]
- House Dems mull a special committee to investigate Ukraine.
- Trump posts a video of Mitt Romney losing in 2012 after he criticizes his efforts from Ukraine.
- Doocy thinks the Ukraine scandal is "off the rails" in one respect: “If the President said I will give you the money but you have got to investigate Joe Biden, that is really off the rails wrong,” [Yeah, ya think?]
- Giuliania claims that the State Dept asked him to meet with Zelensky's aide.
- Trump defends delaying giving $400 Million to Ukraine, claiming that it was to get other European countries to give also. [But they've given $16 Billion, much more than we have.]
- Pence says the media is just assuming the worst about Trump's call to Ukraine.
- Dems to WH Counsel : Stop the stonewalling or face "Escalating Measures."
- Senate Dems push for an Impeachment Probe.
- Biden call for Trump's Impeachment if he doesn't comply with info request. and that they have "no choice" but to Impeach.
- Josh Marshall writes that Pence was apparently complicit and supportive of Trump attempt to bribe Ukraine in exchange for political election help.
- Trump gives a UN Speech which champions "nationalism" over "globalism", he also walks by Greta Thunberg who gives him the stink-eye while at the UN. Then he twitter trolls her Climate Change speech at the UN.
- Trump releases "ünredacted" Zelensky call summary and starts fundraising off "Impeachment"
- McConnell wasn't given an explanation of Trump delay in providing aide to Ukraine.
- Pelosi is expected to launch a formal impeachment inquiry today.
- Senate Intel pushes to interview the Whistle-blower, then it passes a unanimous consent resolution demanding Whistle-Blower complaint.
- Through their lawyer, the Whistle-Blower requests a chance to speak to the House Intel Committee.
- Pelosi announces a formal Impeachment Investigation of Trump. [And the number of Dems supporting an Impeachment Inquiry almost immediately shoots up to 200.] She had also slapped down a call from Trump to "work on this Whistle-blower thing."
- Trump tweets "Presidential Harassment" in response to Pelosi's announcement and whines "she had to ruin my perfect day.", Houses GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy also slams Pelosi's announcement.
- BIll Barr's DOJ threatens legal motions to stop New York state from Investigating Trump.
- Pamela Brown reports that if they're going to release the Zelensky call details, they should also release the Putin call details.
- Jake Tapper: Trump doctored a Hurricane Map, "who knows if the phone call transcript will be accurate?"
September 25th —
- Trump prepares redacted version of Whistle-blower complaint for Congress. [The law requires they receive an unredacted version in the Intel committees.]
- WH Aides worry that Trump will be too distracted to get anything else done this year.
- Schiff: This is Trump's most serious misconduct so far" and he's left Congress "no choice."
- Giuliani says that the Zelensky call memo was "read to him." the details of which are pretty "explosive." [How did he get that access exactly?]
- Trump meets with Zelensky, and gives a press conference where he denies any "pressure“, then blames Obama and Biden for everything. He also claims that Pelosi is "no longer Speaker." [Which is just plain nuts..]
- Bill Barr's DOJ declined to act on a criminal referral for Trump trying to get election help from Zelensky. Also his OLC argues that the DNI doesn't have to give the Whistle-blower complaint to Congress. [Even though that's the law.]
- Pelosi hasn't read the WH Zelensky memo, yet.
- Giuliani explodes at fellow Fox panelist when he brought up the involvement of the State Dept in the Ukraine scandal. "Shut up, Moron. Shut up!"
- Schiff request docs related to the stifling of the Whistle-blower complaint.
- WH emails their talking points on the Zelensky Memo to the Dems by mistake. [Whoops.]
- Trump — following the talking points — claims that his call was "perfectly nice."
- Napolitano states that "there is probable cause" on the Whistle-blower case.
- AG Barr denies any involvement in the call to get election info from Ukraine. [Even though the Zelensky call memo brings him up several times, and he had been asked by Kamala Harris if he had been "asked by the WH to investigate anyone."]
- The Zelensky Call memo — which is not a "word for word transcription" — also points out that when the question of military aide came up, Trump cut him off and said "we need you to do us a favor" then he asked for help proving that Ukraine hacked the DNC server, not Russia and also help proving that "Biden stopped a prosecution" in Ukraine [when that's not what happened. This would be two counts of campaign finance violations from a foreign nation.] Zelensky was also clearly buttering up Trump by bragging about staying in Trump Tower.
- Lindsay Graham says he has "no issues" with the Zelensky call and that Impeaching a President over a "phone call is insane." [Yeah, not like Impeaching one over a blow job.]
- Matt Gaetz reveals that the WH invited him and several others to look at the Zelensky call memo before it was released, then he clams up.
- Trump campaign announces — per the Talking Points — that this is entirely another baseless "partisan attack on Trump" even though back in April of 2018 Don McGahn warned Trump not to try an use law enforcement for his political gain.
- Nadler states that Barr must "recuse" since Trump dragged him into the Zelensky mess.
- Romney on Zelensky Call: "This remains troubling."
- Experts argue that the Zelensky Memo shows clearly Impeachable Acts.
- Judiciary Ranking Member Doug Collins admits to Fox that the GOP will try to smother the Impeachment inquiry.
- Trump grasps at Fox News dismissal of the Zelensky memo. [Yeah, that's not surprising at all.]
- Schiff calls the Zelensky memo a "classic mob shakedown" then blasts Barr for interfering with the Whistle-blower complaint.
- Pelosi: The Zelensky Memo confirms the need for an Impeachment Inquiry. [207 Dems support this now.]
- Acting DNI Maguire threatens to quit if the he can't speak freely before Congress tomorrow.
- WaPo writes that Giuliani's involvement in the Ukraine scandal makes Impeachment more likely.
- Other Republicans, besides Graham, are stunned by the Zelensky transcript. One Republican Senator says the 30 other Republicans would vote to remove Trump ïf the vote was Secret."
- Trump was reportedly "in disbelief" that releasing the Zelensky memo didn't stop the call for Impeachment. [Yeah, it wasn't nearly exculpatory pal.]
- Salon argues that Impeachment may die in the Senate, but it just might be worth it.
- Morning Joe argues that "Republicans Loathe Trump"and his support just might evaporate if a real Impeachment votes comes about.
- WH leaked to Fox News that the "Whistle-blower has a partisan bias."
- Since Pence and Barr are also implicated in the Ukraine scandal, a full impeachment of all of them could make Pelosi the President.
- The Whistle-Blower complaint is supposed to be delivered to Congress "this afternoon."
- DNI denies that he threatened to resign.
- Trump gives a Press Conference and after whining that he doesn't get credit for all the "great things" he's done, complains about the "Witch Hunt" how it's all a hoax, that it was "Dems who threatened Ukraine" and his call was "very nice." Then he throws Pence under the bus too "Look at his calls." Jeffrey Toobin says this was a "torrent of lies."
- Pelosi reportedly wants Impeachment Inquiry to focus on Ukraine only.
- Schiff says the Whistle-blower complaint exposes "serious wrongdoing."
- The number of Dems supporting Impeachment hits 218, enough to pass a resolution in the House.
- A Pentagon letter sent to Congress in May certified that Ukraine had dealt with corruption concerns debunk Trump's excuse that this was why the $250 Million was withheld.
- Rick Santorum tries to excuse the "favor" portion of the memo by claiming that it was Zelensky who brought up Giuliani, after which point Trump started talking about Biden. Particularly since talking about Biden was a "precursor" to the call according to a Zelensky advisor.
- Eric Swalwell says "Thank God"" the Whistle-blower came forward and argues that his complaint names other witnesses to Trump's problematic conduct.
- Rachel Maddow points out that in 2017 Ukraine refused to help with the Mueller investigation of Paul Manafort in exchange for Javelin Missiles. [So this isn’t a one-off phone call, it's part of a pattern.]
September 26th —
- Reports indicate that Trump started pumping Zelensky for Biden dirt within hours of his being elected.
- The Whistle-Blower agrees to meet with Congress.
- The effort to find information about Crowdstrike from Ukraine seems to have been part of an effort to justify a pardon for Paul Manafort.
- The redacted Whistle-Blower Statement is released which indicate that multiple US officials stated that Trump dismissed the Ukrainian ambassador and blocked the Ukrainian funding until he received an indication that Zelenky would "play ball", and that after the phone call the records were stored on a private NSC server which was normally reserved for code-word classified information because it was "politically sensitive."
- Acting DNI Maguire testifies before House Intelligence.
- Maquire argues that the OLC opinion that the information was protected by executive privilege prevented him from sharing the Whistle-Blower complaint to Congress. He doesn't really explain why he bothered to ask the OLC for their opinion when the law clearly states that he "shall" turn over such complaints within 7 days.
- He apparently didn't think the complaint was an election security issue.
- He refuses to say whether he discussed the complaint with Trump.
- Pelosi: This is a coverup.
- Trump repeats his "Witch Hunt" refrain and calls Dems "Pirates." Then he calls the Whistle-Blower a "Spy"and implies he should be executed.
- NYTimes reports that the Whistle-Blower was a CIA Officer who had been detailed to the WH.
- Giuliani claims he kept texts from the State Dept. to "protect himself" and he throws Pompeo under the bus.
- Former DNI James Clapper is "impressed" with the quality of the complaint.
- Senator Burr says the Senate Intel with "get to the bottom" of the Whistle-Blower allegations as they also have a closed-door hearing with Acting DNI Maguire.
- Fox News flails to come up with a coherent response.
- WaPo columnist Josh Rogan argues that Zelensky memo shows that Giuliani's narrative about the State Dept sending him to Ukraine is false. "Giuliani met with Yermak not because of the State Department, but because Giuliani and Yermak were “simply following up on Trump’s request…. Yermak was following up on Trump’s suggestion, not responding to actions of the State Department.” Rogin notes that a State Department spokesperson, in an August 22 statement, said, “At Presidential Advisor Andriy Yermak’s request, (Ambassador Paul) Volker put Yermak in direct contact with Mr. Giuliani.” [It seems that Yermak made the request of Volker to facilitate the talk with Giuliani after Trump made the request of Zelensky.]
- Paul Ryan is now embarrassed by Trump and is pushing Fox News to drop him.
- Lanny Davis says that Michael Cohen wants to testify to the House about the Whistle-Blower issue.
- Republicans think there's nothing wrong with the Zelensky call, but the behavior of those in the WH shows that they knew it was bad.
- Two Russian businessmen, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who helped Giuliani contact Ukraine put $300k in a pro-Trump superPac.
Semtember 27th —