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Ukraine scandal Megathread

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by NewRoxFan, Sep 18, 2019.

  1. mdrowe00

    mdrowe00 Member

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    ...not by a long shot.;)
     
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  2. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    The amount of denial that we are seeing from those who continue to defend Trump is troubling. We have Trump's own ambassadors, and one's who are by no means "deep state" but political donors, admit to their being a quid pro quo and to delivering the quid pro quo to the Ukrainians. I have no doubt that the trail of damning testimony will continue. Yet not only do they continue on in denial are engaged in something that much better fits the term "witch hunt" going after people that happen to fit the description of the whistleblower in violation of the letter and spirit of the law.

    As I've said before this is going to get uglier as Trump and his supporters lash out at pretty much everyone who isn't willing to go all in in his defense.
     
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  3. DaDakota

    DaDakota If you want to know, just ask!

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    So Trump bribed the Ukraine.

    Figures.

    DD
     
  4. tallanvor

    tallanvor Contributing Member

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    You are wrong. Schiff and the DNC was adament about the whistleblower testifying.

    ADAM SCHIFF: Director, do I have your assurance that once you work out the security clearances for the whistleblower’s counsel, that that whistleblower will be able to relate the full facts within his knowledge that concern wrongdoing by the president or anyone else, that he or she will not be inhibited in what they can tell our committee, that there will not be some minder from the White House or elsewhere sitting next to them telling them what they can answer or not answer? Do I have your assurance that the whistleblower will be able to testify fully and freely and enjoy the protections of



     
  5. No Worries

    No Worries Contributing Member

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    It now appears that there is a threshold below which Barr will not go to please the Criminal in Chief. This may only be a temporary lapse of reason.


    Trump wanted Barr to hold news conference saying the president broke no laws in call with Ukrainian leader

    President Trump wanted Attorney General William P. Barr to hold a news conference declaring that the commander in chief had broken no laws during a phone call in which he pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to investigate a political rival, though Barr ultimately declined to do so, people familiar with the matter said.

    The request from Trump traveled from the president to other White House officials and eventually to the Justice Department. The president has mentioned Barr’s demurral to associates in recent weeks, saying he wished Barr would have held the news conference, Trump advisers say.

    In recent weeks, the Justice Department has sought some distance from the White House, particularly on matters relating to the burgeoning controversy over Trump’s dealings on Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry they sparked.

    People close to the administration say Barr and Trump remain on good terms. A senior administration official said Trump praised the attorney general publicly and privately Wednesday, and deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley said in a statement: “The President has nothing but respect for AG Barr and greatly appreciates the work he’s done on behalf of the country — and no amount of shady sources with clear intent to divide, smear, and slander will change that.”

    But those close to the administration also concede that the department has made several recent maneuvers putting it at odds with the White House at a particularly precarious time for the president. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the politically fraught situation.

    The request for the news conference came sometime around Sept. 25, when the administration released a rough transcript of the president’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The document showed that Trump urged Zelensky to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter — while dangling a possible White House visit for the foreign leader.

    By then, a whistleblower complaint about the call had moved congressional Democrats to launch the impeachment inquiry, and the administration was on the defensive. As the rough transcript was released, a Justice Department spokeswoman said officials had evaluated it and the whistleblower complaint to see whether campaign finance laws had been broken, determined that none had been and decided “no further action was warranted.”

    It was not immediately clear why Barr would not go beyond that statement with a televised assertion that the president broke no laws, nor was it clear how forcefully the president’s desire was communicated. A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. A senior administration official said, “The DOJ did in fact release a statement about the call, and the claim that it resulted in tension because it wasn’t a news conference is completely false.”

    From the moment the administration released the rough transcript, Barr made clear that whatever the president was up to, he was not a party to it.

    Though the rough transcript shows Trump offering Zelensky the services of his attorney general to aid investigations of Biden and his son, a Barr spokeswoman said that Barr and Trump had never discussed that.

    “The President has not spoken with the Attorney General about having Ukraine investigate anything relating to former vice president Biden or his son,” spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said in a statement released at the same time as the rough transcript. “The President has not asked the Attorney General to contact Ukraine — on this or any other matter. The Attorney General has not communicated with Ukraine — on this or any other subject.”

    It would not be the last time the Justice Department would have to distance itself from the White House on a matter relevant to the impeachment inquiry. After acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said at a televised briefing last month that Ukraine’s cooperation in the investigations Trump wanted was tied to hundreds of millions of dollars of aid that the United States had withheld from Kyiv, a Justice Department official quickly made clear to reporters that the department did not endorse that position.

    “If the White House was withholding aid in regards to the cooperation of any investigation at the Department of Justice, that is news to us,” the official said.

    The department — and Barr in particular — has similarly sought separation from Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer who was leading the effort to investigate the Bidens.

    In addition to asserting that Barr and Trump had never discussed investigating the Bidens, Kupec said in her statement that the attorney general had not “discussed this matter, or anything relating to Ukraine, with Rudy Giuliani.” Barr’s allies had previously confided to reporters that the attorney general was unhappy with Giuliani, particularly over his going outside of normal channels to pursue investigations of interest to the president.


    Last month, after the department arrested two Giuliani associates who had worked on investigating the Bidens’ activities in Ukraine, the New York Times reported that Giuliani had participated in a meeting about a separate case with Brian A. Benczkowski, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, and lawyers in the department’s fraud section.

    The day after that report, the department issued an unusual statement saying those in the meeting were unaware of the case that led to charges against Giuliani’s associates for alleged campaign finance violations. Giuliani also is being investigated as a part of the case, though he has said he has not been told of that.

    “When Mr. Benczkowski and fraud section lawyers met with Mr. Giuliani, they were not aware of any investigation of Mr. Giuliani’s associates in the Southern District of New York and would not have met with him had they known,” Peter Carr, a department spokesman, told the Times.

    People close to Barr assert that while Barr is a strong believer in the power of the presidency, he has always recognized there might be times when he has to preserve the Justice Department’s independence.

    “My take is that Barr hasn’t changed one bit, that he has had a healthy distance from the beginning,” one person close to the administration said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to candidly describe Barr’s relationship with Trump. “He knows the parameters of the relationship between a president and an AG.”

    ...

    On Ukraine, though, the White House and Justice Department have been somewhat out of sync.

    Some time after The Washington Post began reporting on the nature of the whistleblower’s complaint about Trump’s phone call, the Justice Department pushed to release the rough transcript. Leaders there believed — perhaps misguidedly — that doing so could quell the budding controversy, because in his conversation with Zelensky, Trump did not explicitly push for a quid pro quo tying U.S. aid for Ukraine to the politically beneficial investigations he sought. The White House was initially resistant.

    The Justice Department had not always been on the side of full transparency, blocking transmission of the whistleblower complaint to Congress after its Office of Legal Counsel determined it was not appropriate to do so— even though the intelligence community inspector general felt the law required it to be handed over. Unbeknown to the public, the department weighed whether to investigate a potential campaign finance crime, though ultimately concluded there was not sufficient basis to do so after an inquiry limited essentially to reviewing the rough transcript of the Trump-Zelensky call.

    Though Barr did not hold a news conference clearing Trump of any wrongdoing, the Justice Department did issue its statement saying it would not investigate the matter — at least for campaign finance violations. While that was a partial win for Trump, it has allowed Congress to expedite its impeachment inquiry without fear of impeding law enforcement — and make public unflattering testimony about the president and his allies’ dealings in Ukraine.
     
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  6. larsv8

    larsv8 Contributing Member

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    Not seeing anything there about Schiff trying to hide whistleblowers testimony since it was revealed Schiff helped him through proper channels.

    That all agrees with what I said.
     
  7. ROXTXIA

    ROXTXIA Contributing Member

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    Well, they're grasping at straws. And their reading comprehension is selective and/or weak.
     
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  8. FranchiseBlade

    FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
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    Why are you wasting your time on the whistleblower? The WB is no longer relevant as we have testimony from multiple sources confirming everything about which the WB alerted officials regarding Ukraine.

    Now that we have that, the WB isn't really relevant except to be honored for being brave enough to do their duty. They deserve a lot of gratitude and respect for reporting the crimes of their superiors even though they faced risks. Sadly some folks are doing everything they can to make sure those risks are realized.

    We need to greater codify WB protections.
     
  9. Andre0087

    Andre0087 Member

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    Glad we got that cleared up.

     
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  10. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    I still don't understand how that helps. Suppose he's a hack. Suppose he made up the whole damn thing (and it was just dumb luck that he was materially right). Suppose his report was the fruit of a conspiracy with Adam Schiff to get an impeachment. We still have testimony from people on the call, from people working the Ukraine relationship, we have transcripts. We have many other sources to prove the corruption. You can put the whistleblower in prison and it wouldn't matter to the impeachment of Trump. Do you think the country is going to say, "well we caught Trump red-handed abusing the powers of his office, but we'll have to ignore that information because the evidence was ill-gotten" -- like a perp who didn't get read his Miranda rights? You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube with some procedural argument.

    The process was intentionally installed by the framers of the Constitution. When you champion democracy here, you attack the Constitution.
     
  11. No Worries

    No Worries Contributing Member

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    Trump throwing Barr under the bus, despite the metric ton of water that Barr has carried for him.
     
  12. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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    LOL... trump, who does so little he has virtually all day to tweet, must really have been stung by the Barr story (that was also reported by other news sources, btw), here's another whiny post suggesting its was really true...

     
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  13. Andre0087

    Andre0087 Member

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    That's the only excuse the Senate can use NOT to convict him and I'm sure we'll hear that line pretty often in the upcoming trial.
     
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  14. mdrowe00

    mdrowe00 Member

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    ...that's gonna have to be a mighty big bus.:)
     
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  15. NewRoxFan

    NewRoxFan Contributing Member

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  16. dmoneybangbang

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    They are confused because it was done through the proper channels...
     
  17. JuanValdez

    JuanValdez Contributing Member

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    I think there will be a few other weaselly excuses we'll hear too: That the offense isn't grave enough to warrant removing an elected president. That, with the election so close, the People should decide.

    I already resent Trump for many things. But I can add to the list that I resent that he's going to put the country through the wringer to maintain his own power. Nixon had the decency to resign when it was obvious he was beat.
     
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  18. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    an alternative view

    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/11/quid-pro-what.php
     
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  19. heypartner

    heypartner Contributing Member

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    Views like that are saying let a foreign government decide things, rather than our voters or our own representatives.

    Very shortsighted/naive to want that vs voter and representative control.

    That's a very bad precedence to set now and for future administrations, because foreign govt can then create Fake News ... it would give anything they say more force. Further, what if Congress started asking foreign govts to decide our fate with investigations ... not just a sitting president asking. Foreign states could sell to the highest Quid. Hell, they could blackmail a president if the political culture of the US asking for foreign investigations becomes an accepted norm.

    It just boggles my mind that our culture of Fake News is leading us to think foreign investigations of us is a reasonable thing to request. The blackmailing potential of that is actually a large part of why we have laws against seeking personal gain from foreign states ... starting with our spy network.

    besides, Zelenskyy is quoted as saying he "doesn't want to be a pawn in our elections."
     
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  20. Os Trigonum

    Os Trigonum Contributing Member
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    good points all, but there are significant differences of opinion out there that zealous impeachers may ignore at their own peril.
     

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