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.
In a 15 minute interview with George Stephanopoulos,
The above is being totally ignored by the media, whose standard line regarding this matter is, for example One wonders how they can get away with ignoring that Sorkin statement.Rudy makes an impassioned effort to give visibility to some of the affidavits he has been given, notably one from Shokin, dated 2019-09-04, in which Shokin swears (emphasis added)
I note that TTG claims, in his remarks above, that Sorkin was corrupt.
Does he have proof of that? If so, what? Media reports?????
Note that if Sorkin is lying in the affidavit, he is liable for prosecution for that.
And God damn the Democrats
(is that too strong for this blog? If so delete it, or change "God damn" to "curse" which should be acceptable, I hope.)
for doing everything they can to keep these matters from being investigated.
What total rotters they are, trying to prevent any investigation which might harm their interests.
Talk about obstruction of justice!
And note how the media refers to such publicly useful, prophylactic, investigations as "digging for dirt".
Posted by: Keith Harbaugh | 30 September 2019 at 03:37 PM
Joe Biden's son was kicked out of the Navy Reserve for testing positive for Cocaine.
Posted by: J | 30 September 2019 at 10:12 PM
Prior to the public release of the Whistleblower report, but shortly after receiving the complaint, Adam Schiff sent a staffer to Ukraine.
From RedState: ....."That trip was paid for by the Atlantic Council.
One of the senior fellows of the Council is CrowdStrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch. You may recall Crowdstrike is the company that supposedly concluded the Russians were behind the hack of the DNC in 2016 during the campaign. The FBI never had access to the server. Trump asked about Crowdstrike on the call with the Ukrainian president.
According to the transcript, Trump told Zelensky, “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.”
Two prominent names are among the folks who fund the Atlantic Council. One is George Soros’ Open Society Foundation. And the other? Burisma, the company which appointed Hunter Biden to its board and who the subject of the investigation that was allegedly stopped when Biden pressured Ukraine, according to the prosecutor who was fired. .......... (RedState)
Posted by: Factotum | 01 October 2019 at 12:09 AM
Biden and Son is testing positive for collusion with Ukraine and Crowdstrike right now.
Posted by: Factotum | 01 October 2019 at 12:11 AM
Factotum,
If it is a trip on official government business it should not be paid for by an NGO. The important question is not who is on the Atlantic Council but where are the servers.
Posted by: Fred | 01 October 2019 at 07:38 AM
Factotum and all,
There is an interesting piece in the Unz Review by Israel Shamir.
He suggests that the reference to the server refers not to one used by the DNC, but rather to one which Alperovitch and his Ukrainian co-conspirators used in their 'false flag' hack. And he also identifies the oligarch to whom Trump is referring is Victor Pinchuk.
(See http://www.unz.com/ishamir/the-biden-affair-in-the-ukraine/)
While claims made by Shamir should certainly not be taken as gospel, he is often well worth listening to.
His general picture of how large elements in the Ukrainian elite put a lot of eggs in the Clinton basket seems to me persuasive. What could naturally be expected is that some of the opponents of these people will be feeding information to people on Trump's side of the fence.
II is far too early to be categorical, but the possibility should not be discounted that behind Trump's apparently eccentric remarks may be much more information about what Alperovitch et al -- including Matt Tait -- were up to than it is judged prudent to reveal at this time.
Irrespective of whether or not Trump was referring to a Ukrainian server, an absolutely critical question remains what became of the server or servers which are supposed to have been hacked -- and also, to the final versions of Alperovitch's reports.
If these still exist, there must be a way in which competent people can perform the kind of objective analysis that Alperovitch was patently not qualified to do.
If on the other hand this crucial evidence has been destroyed, then an understanding of the circumstances in which it was done might contribute materially to unraveling the coup plot.
Posted by: David Habakkuk | 01 October 2019 at 12:00 PM
As to the AC funding a trip by congressional staffer, I agree that seems against the ethical rules.
Fred, let me mention a lesson I learned when I was a junior officer working for the DCSR&D (Deputy Chief of Staff for Research and Development) of the USASA. Sometimes we would have to visit the "Department of Resource Management" to get approval for some change we wanted to make WRT the various contracts for which we had responsibility. That dept. was, I think, analogous to a "Comptroller" in a corporation. It tried to assure that the budgetary priorities of the DCSR&D, as approved by the CG, were obeyed. Anyhow, to impress all us junior officers, there was a large plaque up on the wall, labeled The Golden Rule. Under that was The Golden Rule, for that office: "He who has the gold makes the rules." Get it, Fred? I want to emphasize how important money flows are in determining policy, and the policies advocated by the "think-tanks" such as the Atlantic Council.Posted by: Keith Harbaugh | 01 October 2019 at 01:05 PM
Keith Harbaugh
You are concerned about climat warming. Write something and post it under the last open thread.
Posted by: turcopolier | 01 October 2019 at 02:43 PM
Keith,
I'm in agreement with the need to follow the flow of money. The revolving door of people into think tanks or academia, coincides with the flow of people into and out of various administrations, like we've seen in the past. In this case the ideological flow has been disrupted by Trump's election. All the left and a significant portion of the right are in a panic due to far more than the money the Atlantic Council pays some careerist and not even who puts what amount of money into the Atlantic Council. Billions of dollars in military aid money, investment money due to regulatory changes (or their erasure), and direct and indict aid from not only the US but the IMF, the World Bank and the UN are at stake with Trump remaining in office and getting re-elected.
The servers, well they would provide actual evidence of who did precisely what to whom and who actually within our government and outside of it were involved. See David's comments.
BTW there is far more than just money involved. The social disruption of these characters is global in scale. Just look at the mass migrations of peoples across the planet. They are being caused by far more than avarice by those who are already rich.
Posted by: Fred | 01 October 2019 at 03:37 PM
Tantalizing. Thanks for the link to Shamir's Unz piece. The transcript makes a lot more sense if Trump is talking about a server Crowdstrike may have used in Ukraine to hack the DNC - to leave those 'Russian' fingerprints.
Posted by: Barbara Ann | 01 October 2019 at 06:26 PM
I thought there was internal downloading on the DNC computers; not outside hacks - Russian or Ukrainian or whatever.
Posted by: Factotum | 01 October 2019 at 06:56 PM
This article makes a case that five freshman Dems with a background in national security played a significant role. I don't know, but seems unlikely they are Marxists.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/28/politics/badass-women-impeachment-democrats-oped/index.html
(CNN)When a group of moderate House freshmen Democrats moved from hard no to hell yes on starting an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, they changed the dynamic for House Democrats, and indeed -- the course of history.
The reason they made their announcement and explained their reasoning as a group, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, is because they had already formed a bond over their national security background -- especially the five women: Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, both ex-CIA officers; Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania who was in the Air Force; Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia were Naval officers.
They met on the 2018 campaign trail as first time candidates who kept bumping into each other at events with mutual donors and supporters.
Posted by: Eureka Springs | 02 October 2019 at 12:07 AM
Eureka,
Last night one of the Detroit stations had video of the "Town Hall" Slotkin put on earlier at a gun range. Brilliant provocation by the "common sense" gun control congresswoman. She or her staff booked the event by naming themselves as a "pro-life" group - nothing duplicitous about that, we all expect members of congress to blatantly lie to us -she then proceeded to provoke people present by telling everyone the NRA has to go. Result: film at 10, and 11 and 24hrs a day online. Then of course there was the inevitable "I feel concerned for my safety" comment from the brave veteran.
Can you shout "Reg Flag!Red Flag!" Dear MI police, please come and take the guns away from all these people at the gun club. Why look at this video of events, look at that man with the gun. I felt fear. I'm sure a member of congress is a credible person to make a red flag law complaint.
Boy are those Republicans in studid. Common sense disarmament, courtesy of brave women with a background in national security playing a role. Needless to say she didn't do this in downtown Detroit or address gang on civilian violence or common sense criminal control. That would violate the narrative.
Posted by: Fred | 02 October 2019 at 01:25 PM