Thinking about Donald Trump’s misdeeds is like drinking from the proverbial fire hose. There are so many illegal and immoral actions they blend into a giant gusher of criminality.
Trump University, Trump Foundation, refusal to show tax returns, nepotism, profiting from the Presidency, false claima that tariffs make China pay millions into the U.S. Treasury, cheating on multiple wives, torturing children at the border, his rampant bigotry, twelve thousand lies, Mexico to pay for the wall, misogyny, bigotry, admiration of murderous dictators, the list goes on and on.
His followers repeatedly ignore the obvious, and in doing so, they become enablers for future misdeeds. Trump has been made to believe he can do anything, say anything, commit any outrages, and not be punished.
But this time, he has stepped over a line that even the most hypnotized of his followers cannot ignore. The ten words that finally should doom his presidency are:
Trump solicited a foreign government to interfere in American elections.
The foundation of America as a great nation is our free elections. Everything else, of which we are proud, emanates from there.
You are witness to history. Our President — our President! — tries to subvert our free elections by engaging in a covert operation with a foreign government to destroy the primary thing that defines America.
Traitors have been hung for less.
Here is the background: Trump held back almost $400 million in Congressionally approved, military aid for Ukraine at least a week before the notorious phone call to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine.
It’s a short phone call. Just a few minutes.
The sole purpose was to remind Zelenskyy that America was withholding those millions from Ukraine, and in return for our giving him the money, he should do Trump a favor: Dig up dirt on Trump’s key political opponent, before the elections, so as to change the outcome.
You can read the full transcript here, but the following are the key passages.
First, Trump, in his rambling, babbling style, reminds Zelenskyy that “we” have been very good to Ukraine:
I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you.
All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she doesn’t do anything.
A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.
Then, Trump suddenly realizes this reveals he’s asking for a quid pro quo, a payment for a political favor, so he says:
I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine.
Trump thinks he is being so very subtle in reminding Zelenskyy that the U.S. is holding back hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance that Congress appropriated, and he (Trump) has the power to release the money.
So, it’s not reciprocal “necessarily,” but . . . oh well, it is reciprocal.
Then Trump asks for his favor:
I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike . . .
“Crowdstrike ” refers to a conspiracy theory Rudy Guiliani has invented, regarding stolen E-mails.
Then comes the heart of the “favor:”
“Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you.
“I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.
“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.”
Here, Trump has asked a foreign leader to interfere in America’s elections by getting dirt on his opponent and his opponent’s son.
It’s an illegal request, but Trump believes he will get away with it. Zelenskyy agrees to do the “favor.” Anything for that $400 million.
Since we have won the absolute majority in our Parliament, the next prosecutor general will be 100% my person, my candidate, who will be approved by the parliament and will start as a new prosecutor in September.
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.
Zelenskyy asked Trump for additional information to “help with the investigation” of Trump’s political opponent and his son.
Zelenskyy assures Trump he will do the favor:
I also want to ensure you that we will be very serious about the case and will work on the investigation.
Trump says he will tell his two primary political operatives to call:
I will tell Rudy and Attorney General Barr to call.
Not only has Trump committed treason, but you’ll recall that this is not the first time.
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said, referring to the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s deleted messages. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
“Rewarded mightily by our press,” means, “I will be grateful.”
Perhaps, some Americans have become so numbed by Trump’s repeated transgressions that nothing he says or does can shock anymore.
And, perhaps he was right when he said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters.”
And perhaps committing crimes (Trump University, Trump Foundation) and repeatedly lying (Trump 12,000 lies) did not matter to his hypnotized followers.
But this latest outrage has gone far beyond anything Americans can ignore.
“Trump has already admitted the essentials – he called a foreign leader and asked him to use the legal engines of a foreign government to produce dirt on Trump’s American political rival,” said Frank Bowman, a law professor at the University of Missouri who has written a book about impeachment.
Paul Rosenzweig, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who worked on the special counsel investigation into Bill Clinton, said, “The founders spoke about things like promising pardons to your friends to protect your own criminality. They spoke about things like people being beholden to foreign governments. They spoke about profiting from the presidency.”
Trump flaunts his criminality in our faces and dares us to do something about it. This time the ten words finally may bring Trump’s followers to their senses and bring Trump to justice.
Trump solicited a foreign government to interfere in American elections.
A President trying to undermine our free elections, the foundation of American democracy. It doesn’t get worse than that.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Monetary Sovereignty
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
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The White House then tried to “lock down” the information to cover it up, the complaint says.
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The whistleblower said “senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone calls, especially the official word-for-word transcript of the call that was produced” and that this was done at the direction of White House lawyers.
Instead of it being stored in the system where call transcripts are usually held, it was instead put in a different codeword-level system for “classified information of an especially sensitive nature.”
Additionally, they claimed White House officials said this was “not the first time” transcripts were put in this system to protect “politically sensitive—rather than national security sensitive—information.
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The secret to Trump’s scandals is there’s no secret
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Trump’s outrageous abuses of power didn’t stop with the Ukraine call
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The GOP is too selfish to ever turn on Trump
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Republicans are going to smear the Ukraine whistleblower. Don’t buy it.
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24 hours in the Rudy zone
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From the 9/26/19 Chicago Tribune:
Whistleblower alleged abuse of power
Says White House tried to ‘lock down’ details of call with Ukrainian president
By Eric Tucker and Mary Clare Jalonick Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The 9-page document released Thursday provides many new details about the summertime phone call in which Trump encouraged the president of Ukraine to help investigate political rival Joe Biden.
It alleges a concerted White House effort to suppress the transcript of the call and describes a shadow campaign of diplomacy by the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani that unnerved some senior Trump administration officials.
The previously secret document, with its 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 or not. It also provides a road map for Democrats to seek corroborating witnesses and evidence, which will complicate the president’s efforts to characterize the findings as those of a lone partisan out to undermine him.
Trump threatened the person who gave information to the whistleblower as he spoke at a private event in New York with staff from the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
“I want to know who’s the person, who’s the person who gave the whistleblower the information? Because that’s close to a spy,” Trump said. “You know what we used to do in the old days when we were smart? Right? The spies and treason, we used to handle it a little differently than we do now.”
[The President of the United States issues threats against a patriot who factually reported a phone call that Trump admits took place. This is Trump blaming the innocent witness while defending the criminal. ]
More publicly, Trump insisted the entire controversy is political, tweeting, “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.
[It is not the Democrats who are trying to destroy the Republican Party. It is Trump. The Democrats didn’t make that phone call.]
In the aftermath of the call, according to the whistleblower, White House lawyers were concerned “they had witnessed the president abuse his office for personal gain,” the complaint says.
The complaint is certain to revive questions about the activities of Giuliani, who it says alarmed government officials by circumventing “national security decision making processes.” Giuliani, a Trump loyalist who represented the president in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, repeatedly communicated with advisers of Ukraine’s president in the days after the phone call.
Joseph Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, acknowledged that the complaint alleged serious wrongdoing by the president but said 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.” He praised the whistleblower as having acted honorably, said he recognized the complaint as immediately sensitive and important and insisted the White House did not direct him to withhold it from Congress.
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.
“If this was all so innocent,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York, “why did so many officials in the White House, in the Justice Department and elsewhere make such large efforts to prevent it from being made public?”
The complaint says 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.
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Indeed, if he has nothing to hide, why is he trying so hard (albeit in vain) to hide it?
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Because his followers and the GOP are enablers, whose dismissal of all his wrongdoings gives Trump leave to continue lying, cheating, and breaking the law.
One can’t blame Trump. He is a psychopath. Blame his enablers.
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The noose is tightened; the executioner’s hand is on the lever.
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And now he threw Pence under the bus, so even if he decides to do a Nixon and resign, he just blew any chance of Pence pre-emptively pardoning him. Hey, that’s karma!
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