You check this one out. It’s almost too absurd to be taken seriously.
That’s interesting, as I thought the committees only had access to the complaint later in the day on Wednesday. This morning I heard that Ben Sasse found it very troubling, and Jackie Speier (D) calls it nothing less than explosive. Hopefully, we shall see soon enough.
Interesting that the Ukraine call came the day after Mueller’s testimony. I can just imagine DJT saying “Ha! They didn’t pin Russia on me, I can go ahead and get help from this new Ukrainian president. Who cares if I get caught, I’ll just call it a witch hunt.”
Romney and Sasse have been vocal critics of Trump in the past.
You need to have 20 (or 21 if Manchin votes to acquit as he could and maybe would) of the 53 Senate Republicans to decide to vote to convict. In a trial with rules decided upon by the majority.
How many more of those 53 do you think will go against both leadership that demands wagon circling and the large numbers of Trumpists within their own states?
A translation of “quid pro quo” is “favor”… and Trump did ask for that.
If I’m a Republican, I’m looking at this as a golden opportunity. None of them have any love for Donald, despite what they say. I’ve heard it said before any of this broke that if they held the trial in the Senate and voted by secret ballot, 30 of them would vote to convict. Now they have a chance to quit dealing with this idiot, and this Ukraine scandal gives them the perfect cover. They may not like Pence either, but he’s not batshit crazy.
Emphasis mine.
Even when they are capitulating they still have to throw in some bothsiderism shade.
There are a lot of liberals who would say that accusing Pelosi of rushing anything is laughable. And as far as I know not a single Democrat in the House has expressed any conclusions - they’re pretty glad that we finally have an investigation for impeachment, but that’s not a conclusion.
Summing up the two most major accusations, by my reading:
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Trump pressured Ukrainian officials to investigate a political rival (the Biden family), and look for DNC servers that Trump believes Ukraine may have access to (for some unknown reason), specifically mentioning the Ukraine officials should work with Giuliani and AG Barr.
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WH officials recognized the potential damage of the notes/transcript of this call, and attempted to hide it by moving it to different (more classified/restrictive) computer servers, contrary to the accepted purpose of those servers (i.e. national security related info, not possibly-politically-damaging info).
1 was clear from the “transcript” provided by the WH; 2 appears new to me.
I see what you did there. 
I’m not sure that Pence is going to escape unscathed, and neither are you.
I think this is the end of Barr as well, and maybe Mulvaney and Mnuchin. It’s too much to hope that Pompeo will be swept up, but he’ll be substantially defanged.
These people are terrifying. There is simply no law they won’t break in furtherance of their agenda.
Yes, 2 certainly is. Thanks for sharing that.
So, today we learn that white house officials knew exactly how bad that call was, because they immediately sought to hide it (the report is out). Weird thing to do for a totally innocent call, right? And, interestingly, apparently this isn’t the first time that documents were hidden.
Footnote 3 in the whistleblower complaint: “I do not know why the president associates these servers with Ukraine.”
Everyone - These, and subsequent replies are hijacks so please drop them in this thread. The same goes for discussions about the ACA, and general tax discussion.
[/moderating]
I linked to a handful of Twitter accounts that spell things out for how Democratic leadership have been planning. I suggest people read them. However here is an encapsulation from one which answers what Pelosi, et al, have been working towards:
Please note this Twitter thread was from two days ago and things are moving fast, but since Pelosi has specifically pointed out how six distinct committees have investigations and that anyone getting access to taxes and other Trump business documents seem to be the only thing that worries Trump (and though he can delay, the least likely he can actually stop even with lapdog Barr and a Republican senate doing his bidding), this line of thinking seems likely. It also explains why Pelosi pulled the trigger when she did and why she didn’t start a new committee to handle everything.
I lack the confidence of Uncle Blazer that it will work out and even he concedes in the thread that “I know what you’re thinking: “But that means Trump will keep setting the world on fire!” That’s correct. He will. We can try to resist him or even stop him in other ways, but we CAN’T remove him from office any quicker. We just can’t. I’m sorry, but it’s true.” But if the goal of the House is to send something to Moscow Mitch that is so devastating on several fronts that only the ~25% of Americans who will never turn on Trump still stand by him, the dynamics will change. And so will the math.
First I believe that a sitting president asking a foreign power to investigate a political rival for him, to work with that sitting president’s personal attorney/political hack in that process, is very impeachable whether or not there was any implied threat or reward made for the cooperation of that foreign power.
But the point of quid pro quo is the favor granted in return for something.
Trump’s defender are stating that there was no explicit threat by the leader of the most powerful country in the world that American protection from something bad happening to this nice little country he has here that you wouldn’t want anything to happen to, was dependent on this personal favor being done for the Don, no clear statement of outright extortion, just clearly implied extortion. So it is fine.
More on the whistleblower complaint:
"There was immediate follow-up from U.S. officials after Trump’s call with Zelensky. After the July 26 call, several U.S. officials (U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt Volcker and U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordan Sondland) met with Zelensky and other Ukrainian political officials where, according to the complaint, they reportedly gave advice about how to “navigate” Trump’s requests.
Giuliani also conducted extensive follow-up. On August 2, Giuliani met with one of Zelensky’s advisers in Madrid, in what the whistleblower said was characterized as “direct follow-up” to Trump’s call about the “cases” they talked about. The whistleblower also said that they were told by U.S. officials that Giuliani privately reached out to a number of other Zelensky advisors.
Ukrainian leadership believed that a call with Trump was contingent on being willing to “play ball” on Giuliani’s requests for investigations. Giuliani had been encouraging Ukrainian officials for months to pursue investigations into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election and the Bidens. According to the whistleblower, state department officials spoke to Giuliani to “contain the damage” to national security, but Ukrainian leadership was “led to believe” that a call with Trump depended on willingness to “play ball” on the issues that Giuliani was pushing."
From here: What Went Down In Maguire’s Whistleblower Testimony | FiveThirtyEight
It’s really more extortion than quid pro quo. To me, quid pro quo implies a trade that both people want because it benefits both of them, whereas this is just “hey, I’m going to withhold this military funding that you’re expecting and that you need to defend the very existence of your country unless you play ball”
I mean, sure, there’s a quid pro quo in there (trading investigations for military aid) but the extortion is the more important part of that transaction.
Here’s a direct link to the complaint.
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/20190812_-_whistleblower_complaint_unclass.pdf
I’m still reading it but I thought I’d take a break to post the link.
Cite? :dubious:
Classic extortion racket. Trump & Co. are about as subtle as a bag of hammers. And as smart.