Now that we have seen the whistleblower complaint filed by a CIA officer against President Trump, there should be little doubt that it is a fraud and represents an abuse of the whistleblower process. I know genuine whistleblowers (e.g., Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loomis, Thomas Drake, John Kiriakou, etc.) and have been one myself. I am familiar with the kind of information one must possess (or should possess) in order to initiate a complaint. This complaint does not even meet the stupid standard. It is a trumped up complaint.
This CIA officer who filed the complaint has no direct evidence or knowledge. He heard things from other people. He was not party to the phone conversation and did not have access to the transcript. Instead, he cited public media as “corroboration” for his allegations, including reports by John Solomon.
The whistleblower is supposedly an analyst. Pray to God he is not. If this is an example of this clown's analytical chops then we now know why the CIA has been on the downward slide. Rather than focus on evidence and facts, this guy relied on rumor.
It would appear that the Democrats who plotted with this CIA officer were counting on Donald Trump to claim executive privilege on his conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky and, based on the same privilege, withhold the whistleblower complaint.
Whoops!! Trump did not play ball. He preempted the Democrat Kabuki theater by releasing the relevant documents and transcripts. President Trump pre-empted the ability of the Democrats to accuse him of illegal acts by citing his refusal to turnover documents.
How can anyone claiming whistleblower status be allowed to file a complaint on something about which they have no direct knowledge? The entire premise of the intelligence community is the access to reliable sources, i.e., people who have direct knowledge of what they are reporting on. The Dems are in a state of flacid erectus.
To appreciate the lies of the so-called Whistleblower, let us compare his claims with what actually transpired:
The Whistleblower Claims:
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. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals.
What President Trump Actually Said:
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. 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. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible. . . .
The other thing, 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.
COMMENT--At no time did President Trump say anything about the 2020 election or the need to do something to Biden to preempt his ability to run for the Democrat nomination. Trump's request was specifically about what happened in light of Joe Biden's public claim--I REPEAT, PUBLIC CLAIM--that he used the threat of withholding aid from Ukraine unless they fired the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the company that hired Joe's cocaine head son, Hunter.
The Whistleblower Claims:
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. Namely, he sought to pressure the Ukrainian leader to take actions to help the President's 2020 reelection bid:
• initiate or continue an investigation2 into the activities of former Vice President Joseph Biden and his son, Hunter Biden;
• assist in purportedly uncovering that allegations of Russian interference in the 20 I 6 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,3 which initially reported that Russian hackers had penetrated the DNC's networks in 2016; 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.
What Zelensky Actually Said about Hunter and Joe Biden:
President Zelenskyy: I wanted to tell you about the prosecutor. First of all I understand and I'm knowledgeable about the situation. . . He or she will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned in this issue. The issue of the investigation of the case is actually the issue of making sure to restore the honesty so we will take care of that and will work on the investigation of the case. On top of that, I would kindly ask you if you have any additional information that you can provide to us, it would be very helpful for the investigation to make sure that we administer justice in our country with regard to the Ambassador to the United States from Ukraine as far I as I recall her name was Ivanovich. It was great that you were the first one who told me that she was a bad ambassador because I agree with you 100%. Her attitude towards me was far from the best as she admired the previous President and she was on his side. She would not accept me as a new President well enough. . . .
I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation. As to the economy, there is much potential for our two countries and one of the issues that is very important for Ukraine is energy independence. I believe we can be very successful and cooperating on energy independence with United States. We are already working on cooperation.
President Zelensky is asking President Trump for more help and strongly agreeing with Trump that the U.S. Ambassador was acting as a foe of Ukraine. To reiterate--the issue of corruption by Joe Biden and his spawn was already in public and was an issue for Ukraine, not just Trump. Again, not one word about the 2020 election or the Democrat scramble to find a candidate. No threat by Trump to withhold aid. No quid pro quo of any type. Joe Biden is on the record in public demanding Ukraine do what Biden wants or else the U.S. would withhold $1 Billion dollars in aid.
The Whistleblower lied. Not a single mention was made of "locating and turning over DNC servers." This is a complete fabrication by the so-called Whistleblower.
President Zelensky noted that his people had already spoken with Rudy Giuliani and voiced not one single concern about that. And Zelensky said that his Government would fully cooperate with a U.S. law enforcement investigation.
Worth noting that John Solomon of the Hill is out tonight with documents that expose Joe Biden as a liar in this matter.
The heart of the Whistleblower complaint is a lie. The analyst reported hearsay but, as you can read for yourself, was not what was said on that call.
This is an outrageous abuse by the intelligence community. The CIA cannot and should not be trusted. This analyst is an incompetent who does not know how to distinguish between fact and suspicion.
Do you consider the Obamas part of the Clinton apparat?
Disagree w/ Walrus @ Sept. 27 that a opening is being created for Hillary -- she's far too tainted, and old.
But Michelle -- now there's a pitcher in the bullpen.
Posted by: artemesia | 28 September 2019 at 12:37 PM
More from RedState: Re: Aug 2019 Whistleblower form revisions
d****** • 2 hours ago
There are 2 key pieces to the rules changes: (1) The whistleblower no longer needs 1st hand knowledge, and (2) the IC IG (Atkinson) can bypass the DNI (Maguire) and submit the complaint directly to the Congressional Intel Committees, if he (Atkinson) disagrees with DNI (Maguire) opinion, which is exactly what Atkinson did on 9/9/19 by composing a letter to Schiff and Burr. Now, I know Schiff had this complaint long before that, as he had a letter addressed to him on 8/12 and was leaking via twitter details by 8/28.
If you want to know who changed the rules, I'd start with Atkinson the IC IG, who used the new rules to approve and pass on the WB complaint, but wouldn't put it beyond Gordon or Coates changing them before they left on 8/15. Coates has stated publicly he knew nothing about the WB complaint, before he left. Gordon (the Obama holdover) has remained notably silent, however.
Posted by: Factotum | 28 September 2019 at 12:41 PM
The Federalist picks up the Aug 2019 Revised Whistleblower Form Gate too:
https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/27/intel-community-secretly-gutted-requirement-of-first-hand-whistleblower-knowledge/
Posted by: Factotum | 28 September 2019 at 12:51 PM
All,
An interesting article in ‘Sputnik’ by Ekaterina Blinova provides some conjectures about the background to Trump’s curiosity about the server, drawing on work done by Petri Krohn.
(See https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201909271076898843-cyber-expert-explains-the-theory-of-crowdstrikes-connection-to-ukraine-dnc-hacking-controversy/ ,)
He has played a pivotal role on the ‘A Closer Look On Syria’ website, which has for some years been a centre of frequently extraordinarily useful collaborative work not just on that country but on Ukraine.
(See http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page )
So Krohn’s suggestions, while they clearly need critical examination, should I think be accepted by anyone seriously interested in the truth as deserving serious discussion.
His argument is that there probably were real hacks, but that ‘Fancy Bear’ and ‘Cosy Bear’, rather than from Russia, are likely to have been from Ukraine.
Their activities would probably have been the product of collusion between elements in that country’s security services and ‘CrowdStrike’, ‘false flags’ produced as part of the wider effort to cover up the fact that the materials from the DNC obtained by ‘WikiLeaks’ were the result of a leak.
(What is however not mentioned by ‘Sputnik’ is the now overwhelming body of evidence that the leaker was Seth Rich. That said, while the panic produced by his murder is likely to have been part of the background to the way the conspiracy to subvert the Constitution went into ‘overdrive’ from mid-July 2016 on, it cannot explain either the initial claims by ‘Crowdstrike’ or the origins of the dossier attributed to Christopher Steele.)
Here, however, it may help to return to one piece of demonstrable fact which tends to get forgotten.
Its relevance has become even more salient, in the light of the suggestion – to my mind plausible – that the ‘Lawfare’ group may have been centrally involved in the production of the material attributed to the supposed ‘whistleblower’, as also in other elements of the conspiracy.
It is important to recall that the claims by Alperovitch were rapidly backed up by the supposed ‘smoking gun’ evidence from the metadata of the ‘Guccifer 2.0’ materials provided by the former GCHQ person Matt Tait.
To make sense of his contribution, it is useful to look at his page on the ‘Lawfare’ site.
‘Matt Tait is a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously he was CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a consultancy in the UK, worked at Google Project Zero, was a principal security consultant for iSEC Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information security specialist for GCHQ.’
(See https://www.lawfareblog.com/contributors/mtait .)
As to the ‘Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law’, the entry for Robert Chesney on the site is helpful:
‘Bobby Chesney is the Charles I. Francis Professor in Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Texas School of Law. He also serves as the Director of UT-Austin's interdisciplinary research center the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. His scholarship encompasses a wide range of issues relating to national security and the law, including detention, targeting, prosecution, covert action, and the state secrets privilege; most of it is posted here. Along with Ben Wittes and Jack Goldsmith, he is one of the co-founders of the blog.’
(See https://www.lawfareblog.com/contributors/rchesney )
If one scrolls down through Tait’s contributions to ‘Lawfare’, one will find his 28 July 2016 post ‘On the Need for Official Attribution of Russia’s DNC Hack’ which describes how, supposedly, he identified the ‘smoking gun’ evidence of GRU responsibility in the ‘metadata’ of the ‘Guccifer 2’ materials.
For a complete version, with all the linked material, one needs to go to https://archive.is/hddTa , but that on his site has two key paragraphs about the results of Tait’s supposed ‘investigation’:
‘One of the facts it turned up was that the hackers were opening the documents in a virtual environment configured in Russian, and that the username of one of the virtual computers in this environment was Фе́ликс Эдму́ндович – a reference to Felix Dzerzhinsky, a huge statue of whom stood in pride of place in the Lubyanka Square opposite KGB headquarters, now FSB headquarters, until 1991.
‘It’s an operational security failure by a group whose malware was riddled with other basic operational security failures. While amusing at first, the hackers’ attempts to address it in future leaks was so overt and ham-fisted that it just served to highlight the initial error.’
Some of us might be disposed to say that one needs to be very ‘ham-fisted’ indeed to put the name of the Polonised Lithuanian nobleman who founded the Cheka into a ‘false flag’ operation designed to implicate the GRU.
It would seem that someone totally ignorant of the history of the devastation which Dzerzhinsky’s successors inflicted on the Red Army’s General Staff, and in particular its military intelligence, and the way that this came close to resulting in the destruction of Russia, is likely to have been responsible.
In a comment some time back I noted that the cybersecurity consultancy ‘Capital Alpa Security’, of which, as the ‘Lawfare’ entry explains, Tait was CEO, and which we were given to understand had provided him with an independent livelihood, was ‘dissolved via compulsory strike-off’ on 24 July 2018.
In its short lifespan – the company was incorporated on 15 February 2016 – it had never submitted anything other than a single set of ‘Accounts for a dormant company.’
(See https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10004230/filing-history .)
Since I posted that comment, fresh information which may – or may not – be relevant, has become available.
And here, the British ‘angle’ seems to me to be become ever more complex, and more critical.
The case which Svetlana Lokhova has brought against Stefan Halper and various MSM outlets on your side, with the assistance of the lawyer Steven S. Biss, who has also been acting for Ed Butowsky and Devin Nunes, seems to to provide what may be relevant context.
So, we now know that, following Lieutenant-General Flynn’s participation in a Moscow dinner to celebrate the tenth anniversary of RT in December 2015, Lokhova received what she found a surprising invitation from her Cambridge (UK) mentor and collaborator Professor Christopher Andrew, the following month, to a dinner with Stefan Halper.
It may be pure coincidence that this – surprisingly undocumented – company, ‘Capital Alpha Security’ was incorporated one month later.
But I think it would be appropriate if some of the questions that occur to me could be raised by properly briefed counsel, in courts of law.
Also, I must enter a ‘mea culpa’. When I discovered that Tait’s company had never entered trading accounts, I concluded that this meant that the company could not have traded in the sense defined in the relevant legisation, and his income could not have passed through it.
Since then I have learnt, partly through looking at companies in the Hakluyt/Holdingham group, which seems central to ‘Russiagate’, that today it is easy for companies simply to ignore reporting requirements.
So, we do not know anything about what Tait’s sources of finance were at the time of his direct involvement in the conspiracy. What does appear clearly to be the case, however, is that his co-conspirators found him a comfortable job. (Crime pays!)
On his ‘Lawfare’ page, there is a link to Tait’s ‘Twitter’ account – named Pwn All The Things – on which he first produced the ‘revelations’ relating to Dzerzinsky, and other matters.
His ‘tweets’ on recent developments sound increasingly hysterical. From an extended series on the transcript of the interview with Zelensky.
‘Immediately after Zelenskyy makes his ask, Trump asks for his favor, which is a deranged rant about Crowdstrike, Mueller, and Ukraine maybe having “the server”.’
The scent of fear is, I think, palpable, just as it is in what the ‘whistleblower’ has written, and the craven acceptance of this by leading figures in the ‘Intelligence Community.’
But Tait’s comments also implicitly raise what seems to me the $60,000 question which I cannot see anyone asking.
What did become of the server, or servers?
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 28 September 2019 at 01:08 PM
One of the things that is at the heart of this impeachment drive, is to put Hillary Clinton in power.
Examining Hillary's past:
Remember the brew ha with Nixon impeachment, Hillary Rodam (before Bill) was a fledgling legal eagle with the Watergate Committee. She was eventually fired for her conduct. Jerry Ziefman General Counsel to the Watergate Committee her boss that fired her, said Hillary was unethical, and conspired to violate the Constitution. Ziefman said Hillary was an unethical dishonest lawyer who conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the Committee, and the rules of Confidentiality.
Hillary worshiped Saul Alinsky who was an unabashed Luciferian in Alinsky's own words. Hillary Rodam extolled the radical idoligy of Marxist Communist Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's manifesto advocated the overthrow by revolutionary force of the United States.
Posted by: J | 28 September 2019 at 01:26 PM
Here are some slightly earlier (from March 2019) John Solomon links that should have been included:
2019-03-26 "US Embassy pressed Ukraine to drop probe of George Soros group during 2016 election" 'Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” '
2019-03-20 "As Russia collusion fades, Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges" (this references a Hill.TV interview linked to below)
2019-03-20 "Top Ukrainian justice official [Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko] says [U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch] gave him a do not prosecute list" (video with text)
Also, here are links to a number of sundance columns dealing with the "whistle-blower" complaint and those sundance believes are behind it, namely the LawFare group and Adam Schiff (sundance sometimes refers to the complaint as the "Schiff dossier"):
***** 2019-09-28 "Former CIA Analyst Fred Fleitz: Whistleblower Had Help From Schiff Staff…" Using textual analysis, Fleitz says: "This one looks like it was written by a law professor, or a law firm", and also relates it to Adam Schiff
2019-09-27 "ICIG Whistleblower Form Recently Modified to Permit Complaint “Heard From Others”…" (note this supports the observations of Barbara Ann above)
2019-09-27 "Phase #2 – With Newly Authorized: “Heard From Others”, Lawfare Group Circles Back To Trump-Kislyak Meeting…"
2019-03-27 "Whistle-blower Complaint is The Schiff Dossier – Devin Nunes Discusses the Creation of The “Schiff Dossier”…"
2019-03-27 "DOJ Clarifies Their Position on Declassification – “Delegated Authority”…" (this is actually on a related topic that has been of interest)
And here is some Kievian music: https://youtu.be/b8gs4TozJbQ
Posted by: Keith Harbaugh | 28 September 2019 at 03:59 PM
For the record, this comment on Sundance's piece on the affair sums up the timeline well. The form edit seems to have been a panicked response to Trump's release of the transcript. No author in the metadata is a giveaway.
Crystal clear now this is an orchestrated attempt to continue the soft coup where Russiagate left off. Taking a step back I am in awe of Trump's ability to resist the six ways from Sunday onslaught.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/09/27/icig-whistleblower-form-recently-modified-to-permit-complaint-heard-from-others/comment-page-3/#comment-7399389
Posted by: Barbara Ann | 28 September 2019 at 04:30 PM
David,
Thanks!
Petri Krohn provides a plausible explanation for Trump’s request to Zelensky to look into Crowdstrike and the servers and more importantly why Crowdstrike would have been brought in to frame the Russians to potentially obfuscate the Seth Rich leak, if that’s what happened. It would seem to me that the DNC would not have the sophistication to conceive this so it would appear that intelligence folks must have been involved to know that this type of scheme was feasible.
I’ve always been puzzled what about Trump’s candidacy kicked the hornets nest? On reflecting on the many posts you’ve written and the links you have thankfully provided, one scenario that comes to mind is that initially it began as a garden variety corruption of the intelligence and law enforcement apparatus to obtain oppo research on Trump, which then lead to multifaceted activities to cover that up including efforts to derail his campaign. These are not very bright people, however, their hubris and sense of power and entitlement were overwhelming. The fact that it was a trans-atlantic effort goes to show the depth of corruption that spans the globe.
What I find interesting is why the Deep State have not found an accommodation with Trump. After all he’s hired them to staff the key national security positions and at least so far he’s not exposed their “racketeering”. Clearly they’re ratcheting up their efforts now with their latest go at creating the casus belli for impeachment. In light of this I am puzzled at Trump’s tactics or lack thereof in thwarting the determined efforts of his opponents to oust him. I wonder why he has not taken advantage of the immense powers of his office to unmask the coup plotters? He must know by now that they’re all in and will attempt their darndest to take him out.
Posted by: Jack | 28 September 2019 at 04:57 PM
"His argument is that there probably were real hacks, but that ‘Fancy Bear’ and ‘Cosy Bear’, rather than from Russia, are likely to have been from Ukraine. "
I recall reading that CrowdStrike said there were such hacks but never provided any documentation other than its word. Further they were the ones examining the DNC server and were in possession of it, they could have placed the signatures in the server after the fact.
Posted by: frances | 28 September 2019 at 06:31 PM
If one puts "Seth Rich-Crowdstrike-Ukraine" into a search engine, one is immediately confronted by multiple articles, all claiming ...insane right wing conspiracy theories..
Posted by: Factotum | 28 September 2019 at 06:46 PM
TTG - apologies for butting in but this is still something that has not been put past doubt -
" I’m still convinced one of the ultimate goals of that fiasco was to make Sevastopol into a NATO naval base."
The precise aims of the tragic Ukrainian venture are still unclear. They can be deduced but not evidenced. That is as far as I know also the case with Sevastopol.
The only written evidence I've seen in that case is the US Navy project to upgrade a school, which I doubt is one of the reasons for your view.
https://govtribe.com/opportunity/federal-contract-opportunity/renovation-of-sevastopol-school-5-ukraine-n3319113r1240-1
There was no evidence in the tender documents of adaptation of the school for military purposes and similar renovations contracts had been put out to tender elsewhere. It's also scarcely likely that had the school been intended for military purposes the US Navy would have advertised the fact in 2013.
Nevertheless it's clear that had the venture in the Ukraine worked the Russians would sooner or later have been deprived of the use of their Sevastopol base. It may be safely assumed therefore that that was one object of the venture. Do you believe that as well as that there was a plan to replace it with a US Navy base? It would surely have been a most vulnerable one.
Posted by: English Outsider | 28 September 2019 at 07:29 PM
CK - does the term holding business activities in "blind trust" have any meaning to you?
Posted by: Factotum | 28 September 2019 at 08:31 PM
Jack, consider this. SEIU bought us Barack Obama. SEIU along with other huge government employee unions like the teachers unions tried to buy us Hilary Clinton.
Follow the money. Trump had an inkling the swamp in fact were the large government employee unions, whose members working in the vast government administrative agencies were a power unto only themselves. Obama understood this. Clinton understood this.
The morning after shock in Nov 2016, these large government unions would not have another friend in the White House is still sending shock waves through our country. From local "Indivisible" groups to each Democrat candidate now pandering for that all important big union endorsement.
A salient point supporting US Constituional governance in our over 250 year history has been the peaceful transition of power once the Electoral College has met. That is no longer a characteristic of American exceptionalism - we have transcended into banana republic status after the 2016 election - whose ox got gored the most - the unelected fourth branch of government - the large government administrative agencies and their union bosses.
Recent SCOTUS case undoing mandatory union membership for government employees was an existential cri de guerre for these huge, well funded unions who no longer can rely on automatic streams of income from mandatory closed shop union dues.
Call this the Unified Theory of Democrat Politics - the one explanation where all the loose ends fit together - everything Democrats do is in support of the big government unions mutual assistance compact.
Posted by: Factotum | 28 September 2019 at 08:43 PM
So...The "leaker" is put in place Inside the White House.. to be A Snoop Dog.Eyes. and Ears..Spy..Who came out of Brennens CIA..and that's Why General Flynn had to be Taken down Fast..As National Security Advisor..and New People Moved into Continue More Aggressive Operation against President Trump...As a Result...The NSC apparently could not Function Properly..A Clear Strategic Move..Enabled by Bob Muller.. The Records Speak for Themselves..None of Them Support a Right Wing Conspiracy Just a Coup attempt by The Neo Cons...to Overthrow the Government...
Posted by: Jim Ticehurst | 28 September 2019 at 08:50 PM
“...SEIU bought us Barack Obama.”
Factotum,
I disagree. The John Podesta emails disclosed by Wikileaks show that Obama was a “creation” of Wall St and Chicago big money like the Pritzkers. Note that Podesta was the head of Obama’s transition team in his first administration. The emails reveal the communications between Podesta and top Wall St executives with lists of suggested appointees to the various positions in the Obama administration. The final nominee list match verbatim those suggested by Wall St. Geithner, Holder, etc were all positioned to insure the massive bailout of Wall St speculative losses and no prosecution for the fraud. As Holder noted he didn’t want to risk a financial meltdown.
The Pritzkers bankrolled Obama’s run for the Illinois legislature and then his run for the US Senate. Ever since Bill Clinton the Democrats pay lip service to the unions during the campaign and collect their campaign contributions and ground support but they’ve always played to big financial interests. You can see it in the wealth generation after the presidency for Bill, Hillary and Obama. What is the first thing the Obamas did after they left the White House? Get on Richard Branson’s jet to fly to his private Caribbean island.
Posted by: Jack | 28 September 2019 at 09:43 PM
Thank you for all of this very interesting insight. I've only become aware of Lawfare during the past year, maybe even less than that. Yet it's a group that deserves MUCH MORE exposure and scrutiny, since its role in the "Resistance" efforts to thwart Trump before and after his election are significant.
Taking up Col. Lang's suggestion that the "Clinton apparat" is mainly behind the "Resistance" (it's hard to forget the pathetic image of Hillary sporting tacked-on purple lapels and Bill wearing a purple necktie when she finally deigned to concede her 2016 loss publicly, purple apparently meant to be emblematic of their new campaign), I wonder if the Lawfare group has many links to the Clinton machine?
Posted by: akaPatience | 28 September 2019 at 09:48 PM
Larry wrote:
The Whistleblower lied. Not a single mention was made of "locating and turning over DNC servers." This is a complete fabrication by the so-called Whistleblower.
Many Democrats have been apoplectic about the POTUS daring to even broach the subject of the DNC server/servers. But what if Trump HAD asked Ukraine if they possessed them and if so, ask that they be turned over? Why would such requests be criminal?
Posted by: akaPatience | 28 September 2019 at 09:55 PM
Factotum,
The Pritzer/Chicago machine had a lot more to do with Barack's election than SEIU leadership. The mandatory dues issues started being undone by Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Theses union members are calling the tune or running the "deep state".
Posted by: Fred | 28 September 2019 at 10:25 PM
English Outsider, I don't think the Sevastopol school renovation was part of a desire to remove the Russian fleet from the port or eventually replace than with NATO vessels. It was just one of many little civil projects we sponsored as part of our overall Ukraine project. But I assume the goal of Russia out and NATO in at Sevastopol was a major goal of our Ukrainian venture. I think the Russians sensed this as well and this was a driving force in their decision to seize the Crimea when they did.
Posted by: The Twisted Genius | 28 September 2019 at 10:57 PM
As I recall, the Pritzkers first introduced Obama to George Soros when he was still a nobody but was willing to take on Clinton in 2008, Soros's early endorsement of Obama is who opened up his money bags and bought out the Democrat super-delegates who sniffed his cold hard cash. Donna Brazille being one of the early Clinton sell-outs for Obama/Soros cash.
Pritzkers were there at the beginning yes, but it was the unions like SEIU et al who provided the member cash war chests, the vast organizing network, the ground troops along with the ACORN crowd.
SEIU President Andy what's his name had more early WH visits than any other person in Obama's early days. Though Obama never could deliver card check which SEIU desperately wanted, but Obama certainly stacked the NLRB all in the unions favor. And when talking "unions today" it almost exclusively means the big government employee unions. .
The big government unions became the powers behind the throne of this boy president. They bought Obama every which way against Sunday.
Others politely warned against the "unelected fourth branch of government" that was slowly but surely taking over our political and governance processes - when in fact that referred to only one thing - the big government unions and their bosses, who held power over the large, unelected federal administrative agencies.
AKA - the deep state.
Posted by: Factotum | 29 September 2019 at 12:16 AM
Obama can't multi-task? Obama would take money from anyone, because he knew he was Teflon - rode in on the unions and made friends with the money. Who I suspect have little use for his company now which explains running off to his private retreat away from all those who no longer return his phone calls among the monied and celebrity set.
Who was ironically behind OWS - the teachers unions. Who created this new vocabulary to take down the big financial interests - the unions. Which language are the Democrats now using - the OWS language of class warfare, the 1%, the income disparity, the banksters, Goldman Sachs etc, etc, etc ... more on that later, but that whole movement was merely union smokescreen to divert attention away from the fact the only people doing better than John Q public after the 2008 meltdown were the public employee unions.
Which unions were growing, when some unions were falling rapidly into pension default - the big public employee unions. The big public unions needed a scape goat because studies were proving only the public sector was making out like bandits after the 2008 crash, while others were in a steep decline.
Their was a growing disparity between what government employees were earning and what similarly educated or skilled workers were making in the private sector.
So the unions quickly had to demonize someone else just to take the spot light off themselves - hence this very weird out of no where OWS movement that never made any sense but sure got the focus off the now greedy government unions who were working in stealth with Obama inside the WH.
I think it was a clash of giants all fighting for the same thing - out West we are not under the sway of Wall Street or NYC money games as much as the east coast - out West it is pure government unions who have total power and control and who delivered Clinton's 3 million vote popular vote margin in California.
Silcon Valley is the one exception of the West Coast monied interests, who have a very, very curious relationship with the unions - don't dare unionize our workers while we lavish cash on everyone of your uber-liberal causes ...eleswhere. But not here.
One who ignores the big public unions political ground game and their highly disciplined GOTV stunts is at their own peril, if one wants a Trump victory in 2020. All these protest rallies are nothing more than union astro-turf ginning up their organizational efforts.
We just locally had another "climate change march" last Friday, but all the speakers kept talking about voting in 2020, registering to vote, anti-Trump and hardly a sane word about the "climate", other than some junk science cliches.
it was all about Democrat ground game political organizing, under the fig leaf of climate change.
Posted by: Factotum | 29 September 2019 at 12:33 AM
Eric, I agree. It is obvious now to anyone interested that this rolling coup attempt will go on until they succeed in taking down Trump, or until the plotters are defeated. The veneer of Constitutional propriety with the impeachment process this time is already peeled back. These people have zero respect for the Constitution. Lawfare is an apt name, we are seeing the weaponization of the law by the Deep State to subvert the democratic process. Jon Voight is right, it is war.
If they do succeed, especially if HRC has also announced her candidacy, I see the likelihood of another civil war as very high. A second Republic would eventually rise from the ashes. Trump is most unusual as a candidate for martyrdom, but it now looks like he has like a simple binary choice; that or victory.
Posted by: Barbara Ann | 29 September 2019 at 01:56 AM
Thanks, TTG. Decidedly an off-topic enquiry of mine in this complex and fascinating thread, I'm afraid. But what happened in 13/14/15 is a subject that for me remains central.
You mentioned earlier the Nuland tape - perhaps the moment when it truly became impossible for anyone to pretend that the Neocon narrative on the Ukraine was valid. But it didn't seem to make a lot of odds in the long run. It's a sobering thought that that narrative still holds for most.
Posted by: English Outsider | 29 September 2019 at 05:56 AM
Yes.
Why is it relevant to this discussion?
Posted by: CK | 29 September 2019 at 08:02 AM
The Crowdstrike- Adama Schiff - Ukraine - Whistleblower deep state coup continues to unravel:
https://clashdaily.com/2019/09/hey-patriots-is-it-just-a-little-suspicious-that-shifty-sent-a-staffer-to-ukraine-in-august/
Parse every recent media piece about Ukraine-gate and count how many either refuse to even mention the favor Trump asked was to investigate Crowdstrike, or debunk any Trump mention Crowdstrike as a " right wing conspiracy" theory.
Which confirms as proposed, this in fact is about Crowdstrike. And the walls now closing in on the Crowdsrike deep state DNC hoax.
Posted by: Factotum | 30 September 2019 at 01:58 PM