WASHINGTON (AP) — The secret whistleblower complaint at the center of Congress’ impeachment inquiry alleges that President Donald Trump abused the power of his office to “solicit interference from a foreign country” in next year’s U.S. election. The White House then tried to “lock down” the information to cover it up, the complaint says.
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The 9-page document was released Thursday ahead of testimony to House investigators from Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, who acknowledged that the complaint alleged serious wrongdoing by the president but insisted that it was not his role to judge whether the allegations were credible or not.
Maguire said he was unfamiliar with any other whistleblower complaint in American history that “touched on such complicated and sensitive issues.”
“I believe that this matter is unprecedented,” he said.
The document, with its precise detail and clear narrative, will likely accelerate the impeachment process and put more pressure on Trump to rebut its core contentions and on his fellow Republicans to defend him. The complaint provides a road map for corroborating witnesses and evidence, which will complicate the president’s effort to characterize the findings as those of a lone partisan out to undermine him.
Trump insisted anew that it is all political. After the complaint was released, he immediately tweeted, “The Democrats are trying to destroy the Republican Party and all that it stands for. Stick together, play their game and fight hard Republicans. Our country is at stake.” The tweet was in all capital letters.
The whistleblower complaint centers in part on a July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in which Trump prodded Zelenskiy to investigate Democratic political rival Joe Biden. The White House released a rough transcript of that call on Wednesday.
“In the days following the phone call, I learned from multiple U.S. officials that senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all the records of the phone call, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced as is customary by the White House situation room,” the complaint says.
The anonymous whistleblower says that despite his or her not being present for the call, multiple White House officials shared consistent details about it.
Those officials told the whistleblower that “this was ‘not the first time’ under this administration that a presidential transcript was placed into this codeword-level system solely for the purpose of protecting politically sensitive — rather than national security sensitive — information,” the complaint said.
The whistleblower said that White House officials had tried to suppress the exact transcript of the call that was produced – as is customary – by the White House Situation Room, according to the complaint.
The officials told the whistleblower they were “directed” by White House lawyers to remove the electronic transcript from the computer system in which such transcripts are typically stored for coordination, finalization and distribution to Cabinet-level officials.
“This set of actions underscored to me that White House officials understood the gravity of what had transpired in the call,” the report said.
The whistleblower said that White House officials had raised concerns that the rough transcript was moved to a separate computer system that is “reserved for codeword-level intelligence information.”
The complaint also focuses on Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. It says that multiple U.S. officials reported that Giuliani traveled to Madrid one week after the call to meet with one of Zelenskiy’s advisers, and that the meeting was characterized as a follow-up to the telephone conversation between the two leaders
House Democrats who are now mulling Trump’s impeachment pressed Maguire to explain why he withheld the intelligence community whistleblower’s complaint from Congress for weeks. He insisted he followed the law.
Later in the day, Maguire was to go behind closed doors to speak to the Senate intelligence panel.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday endorsed an impeachment investigation in light of the Ukraine revelations.
In a statement Thursday, the White House said “nothing has changed with the release of this complaint, which is nothing more than a collection of third-hand accounts of events and cobbled-together press clippings_all of which shows nothing improper.”
Late Wednesday, most Republicans who got an advance look at the complaint were quiet or defended the president as they left secure rooms. But at least one Republican said he was concerned by what he had read.
“Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons and say there’s no ‘there there’ when there’s obviously a lot that’s very troubling there,” said Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a GOP member of the Senate intelligence panel who has been an occasional critic of Trump. He added that “Democrats ought not be using words like ‘impeach’ before they knew anything about the actual substance.”
Trump, whose administration had earlier balked at turning over the complaint, said Wednesday afternoon that “I fully support transparency on the so-called whistleblower information” and that he had communicated that position to House Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California.
The House and Senate intelligence committees have also invited the whistleblower to testify, but it is uncertain whether the person will appear and whether his or her identity could be adequately protected without Maguire’s blessing.
The unidentified whistleblower submitted a complaint to Michael Atkinson, the U.S. government’s intelligence inspector general, in August. Maguire then blocked release of the complaint to Congress, citing issues of presidential privilege and saying the complaint did not deal with an “urgent concern.” Atkinson disagreed, but said his hands were tied.
The whistleblower is providing hearsay, third hand. He’s also a dem operative. Real reliable. Dems are cooked! Their latest witch hunt won’t be any more productive than their earlier ones.,l
Hey AH, still just a fanciful “conspiracy theory?”
This “whistleblower” has NO firsthand knowledge !
Instead, they gathered lashan hara from others, and with this hear-say, made-up conclusions and suppositions, then went to opposition lawyers to write it up and present as the complaint.
Nebech, before Rosh Hashana, such sinas chinum spewed on all.
A guten Shabbos and L’Shana Tova.
The whistleblowers info is all based on second or third hand accounts from unknown sources oh and as we see from the transcript he had no idea what was said in the phone call but the deranged democrats have been wanting to impeach President Trump since his election and they won’t stop for the next 5+ years of President Trumps term in office.
Frum torah jews support the portiz who supports us. trump has been our friend. Sure he plays shtick. But firstly they all do. Biden just manages to outsmart an ethics board. Trump does it more coarsely. And why should it concern us if he deos shtick? Our job is tio support whats best for klal yisroel’s frum torah community. Don’t forget achshavreasoh was in many ways like trump too.
(Gateway Pundit) – President Obama, his Vice President Biden and his son, Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Mueller, the Podestas, the IMF and others all pillaged the Ukraine and then delayed loans to the country before forcing Ukrainians to pay grossly inflated natural gas prices. Now these vultures claim they are innocent.
More than a year ago we reported that Robert Mueller was charging Paul Manafort for actions that Mueller committed himself.
The Gateway Pundit reported in August last year that Paul Manafort sits in solitary confinement for crimes he allegedly committed stemming from his work as a lobbyist in Ukraine years ago before Donald Trump ran for president. For a little back story, Yulia Tymoshenko runs for reelection in Ukraine, she loses, and just like Hillary, Tymoshenko fails to lose gracefully and promises to #Resist. Her victorious opponent, Viktor Yanukovytch, throws her in jail for what many claim to be bogus charges.
We continued:
Anyway, due to all the negative publicity stemming from the Tymoshenko debacle, Yanukovytch tried to repair his image before the public, so he hired the lobbyist, Paul Manafort, who then hires John Podesta’s lobbying outfit. Their job was to make Yanukovytch seem like a really likable guy to the Ukrainian public, so Podesta gets both Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry’s State Department to do photo ops with Yanukovytch because, you know, the DNC coffers needed to be filled during election time, so they had to sell Yanukovytch as a real class act to the adoring public. Obama even went so far as to declare the Ukrainian election to be free and fair.
But guess who else did photo ops with Yanukovytch? Bob Mueller, the same Mueller that’s now prosecuting these very people. Rod Rosenstein’s memo said Mueller was specifically authorized to investigate allegations that Manafort “[c]ommitted a crime or crimes arising out of payments he received from the Ukrainian government before and during the tenure of President Viktor Yanukovych.”
Of course Mueller never recused himself from the Trump-Russia sham investigation due to his activities in the Ukraine. Meanwhile, Manafort rots in prison for his actions in the Ukraine working with Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Manager John Podesta. Mueller even gave Podesta’s brother Tony immunity during his corrupt ‘witch hunt’.
But this was just a small part of the corruption and pillaging of the Ukraine by the Democrat Party leaders.
Via the Markets Work, the far left New York Times reported how the Clintons pillaged the Ukraine:
Victor Pinchuk, a steel magnate whose father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, was president of Ukraine from 1994 to 2005, has directed between $10 million and $25 million to the [Clinton] foundation. He has lent his private plane to the Clintons and traveled to Los Angeles in 2011 to attend Mr. Clinton’s star-studded 65th birthday celebration.
We also reported that Oligarch Victor Pinchuk may have helped divert IMF funds to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. The Markets Work noted:
In addition to being a Clinton Foundation donor, Pinchuk is also on the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Counsel.
The Atlantic Counsel has been historically active in Ukraine through their Ukraine in Europe Initiative. More recently, on January 19, 2017, the Atlantic Counsel announced a partnership with Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Group.
Hunter Biden, former VP Joe Biden’s son, sits on Burisma’s board.
As we reported previously:
Also serving on the International Advisory Board of the Atlantic Council is James Clapper, who served as Obama’s Director of National Intelligence. Funnily enough, Bongino discovered that the Chief Technology Officer of “the only company that investigated the hacking of the DNC’s servers and quickly determined it was the Russians, is a nonresident senior fellow in cybersecurity” at the Atlantic Council. His name is Dmitri Alperovitch (owner of CrowdStrike).”
So the Clintons, Obama, the Bidens, Mueller, the Podestas and the Atlantic Council all were involved in the Ukraine. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The IMF also had shady dealings with the Ukraine related to these same Democrats.
According to Wikipedia –
On 28 July 2010, the IMF approved a 29-month $15.15 billion loan to Ukraine. Among others this led to a 50 percent increase on household natural gas utility prices in July 2010 for Ukrainian consumers (a key demand of the IMF in exchange of the loan).
By December 2013, the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Mykola Azarov, stated “the extremely harsh conditions” of a renewed IMF loan (presented by the IMF on 20 November 2013), which included big budget cuts and a 40% increase in natural gas bills, had been the last argument in favor of the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend preparations for signing the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement on 21 November 2013. The decision to put off signing this EU-Ukraine Association Agreement lead [sic] to massive protests in Ukraine.
Then on December 10, 2013, President Yanukovych stated “We will certainly resume the IMF negotiations. If there are conditions that suit us, we will take that path”. However, Yanukovych also (once again) stated that the conditions put forward by the IMF were unacceptable “I had a conversation with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden, who told me that the issue of the IMF loan has almost been solved, but I told him that if the conditions remained… we did not need such loans”.
In February 2014 Yanukovych and Azarov were forcibly removed from power (as a result of the pro-EU-Ukraine Association Agreement coup) and replaced by the Yatsenyuk Government.
In March 2014 the IMF required the Ukraine to reform natural gas price subsidies in order to provide it with an aid package worth about $15 billion. One of the expected effects was a 50% price hike on natural gas sold to domestic Ukrainian consumers.
The Markets Work reported that Hunter Biden was placed on Burisma’s board after Obama’s State Department employee Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt held a phone conversation regarding installation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk in place of then-President Yanukovych. This call occurred on or before February 4, 2014.
On February 22, 2014, Yanukovych was removed as President of Ukraine and on February 27, 2014, Yatsenyuk was installed as Prime Minister of Ukraine. (Yatsenyuk would resign in April 2016 amidst corruption accusations.)
On April 18 2014, Hunter Biden was appointed to the Board of Directors for Burisma – one of the largest natural gas companies in Ukraine. Then on April 22, 2014, Obama’s Vice President Biden traveled to the Ukraine and offered support and $50 million in aid for Yatsenyuk’s shaky new government.
As a result of all this activity, the Bidens got a place on the Board of one of the largest natural gas companies in the Ukraine, the Clintons received millions from a Ukrainian Oligarch, the IMF got billions in loans with the Ukraine, and the people of the Ukraine were burdened with excessive natural gas prices.
And there it is.
(Breitbart) – Democrats wrote to the Ukrainian government in May 2018 urging it to continue investigations into President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign — collusion later found not to exist.
The demand, which came from U.S. Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Dick Durbin (D-IL, pictured above), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), resurfaced Wednesday in an opinion piece written by conservative Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post.
Ironically, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared Tuesday that the mere possibility that President Trump had asked Ukraine to continue an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden — even without a quid pro quo — was enough to trigger an impeachment inquiry. (Biden boasted in 2018 that he had forced Ukraine to remove its prosecutor by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid; he did not tell his audience at the Council on Foreign Relations that the prosecutor was looking into a firm on whose board his son, Hunter Biden, was serving.)
These guys were right all along. Nobody’s seeing the world as it is, we’re just seeing a caricature.
IRS hard drives crashed: meh
EPA hard drives crashed: meh
FEC hard drives crashed: meh
DWS hard drives smashed: meh
HRC phones smashed: meh
30,000 emails deleted: meh
Trump releases transcript & complaint: COVER-UP IMPEACH!
We want moshiach now!
We want moshiach now!
We want moshiach now!
We don’t wanna wait!
Wake up my fellow yidden. Moshiach is almost here.
We need to work hard to bring him closer. Calling each other nasty names will NOT accomplish that. We are brothers first and foremost. Politics belongs farther down the list.