I follow the QANON stuff, it amuses me. Oddly enough, it seems almost the same as always, disjointed postings of random crimes involving children (with made up connections to celebrities and liberal politicians, lots of stuff about the Getty Museum ( it’s the new Comet Pizza on steroids).
There does seem to be a new emphasis on discrediting Mueller and Rod Rosentein, so I’m guessing the tactic is that today they’re just trying to undo the crooked Mueller investigation and set the record straight to clear Russia’s good name.
Maybe this is a whoosh but isn’t this a bit like saying, “The prosecutor can’t investigate because he is in cahoots with the informant”? Of course, he is in “cahoots”. That’s how it works. Or are there other, more sinister, cahoots in play? I freely admit to not being up to speed with all the details nor reading all the posts in this thread.
It makes you wonder how much longer this stuff would have stayed unknown and/or under the radar if the IC Inspector General and the IC whistleblower hadn’t persisted in making Congress aware this was happening? Of course, given Trump and Guiliani’s inability to stay quiet, it probably wouldn’t have stayed under the radar for much longer. But dang, those two guys are heroes for persisting. This has got to be scary for anyone else in government even thinking of coming forward to blow the whistle on various crimes by Trump and his administration. Though if the dam starts breaking more, I think more people will have the courage to come forward
I keep wondering how Trump manages to co-opt people to do his dirty work but given he’s currently president and really vindictive, I guess he has all the power over regular government employees. I don’t understand about his pre-president ability to corrupt people though
If I may, Vinyl Turnip’s post was a response to mine about the latest Republican strategy. If you are unfamiliar with Mr. Turnip, I recommend that you search his posts, and read all of them. Get ready for a trip!
But…but…but… Gordon Sondland texted: “The President has been crystal clear no quid pro quo’s (sic) of any kind.” See? Dear Leader is totally innocent! If that doesn’t work- but… but… but… her emails!
And the Senate vote is where the rubber is going to have to hit the road.
At that time, Republicans in senate are going to have to make a choice;
Do they continue to support an obvious unstable, mentally slow, narcisisst, clearly criminal president, who has put himself out as an Authoritarian dictator who can do anything, ANYthing he wants. Do they give him supreme, uncontested power?
Or do they rein him in? Do they say “No. He has gone too far, and is not the supreme dictator. A president has to follow the law.”
If they go the first route (which I also suspect they will), then it’s all over. Trump and his inner circle (family and whoever sucked up to him most recently) will win. Trump will have been given the blessing of unrestricted, supreme executive power. He will have been told he can do ANYthing. Absolutely ANYthing.
I expect the next thing to follow will be purges of disloyal Republicans. Fox News will get rid of anyone who says anything negative against Trump. Disloyalty to Trump will not be tolerated. Once the internal purge is complete, the Trump Party will move on to arresting and jailing the opposition for “crimes”. Media who are critical of Trump will simply be shut down. For good. The DOJ will be happy to sign the papers. All legal. The All-Powerful Leader may do whatever he likes.
And many (including many here, I suspect) will go along, nod, make excuses, and watch the country turn into a single party dictatorship. Next leader? Ivanka Trump.
Of course we don’t seem to know the exact details in this case, but in general - the National Security Council has somewhere in the low hundreds of staff who work for the Executive Office of the President. The vast majority of them are detailed from other agencies to work for various amounts of time. They would have access to classified systems to send email, work on documents, read intel reports, etc.
The additional server to handle exceptionally sensitive classified matters is in and of itself nothing alarming. Only some NSC staffers would have need to know certain things - like maybe intel reports on the inner circle of leaders of countries of top interest.
Moving data from one system to a more restricted system when not dictated by the classification of the document is really, really strange. For example, if system A is built to handle Secret documents, and B is built for Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information, a Secret document could be stored on either one — but taking it off system A to “hide” it on B would seem at first blush to be a red flag. As I’ve mentioned, people are not allowed to overclassify information just because it is embarrassing, they are supposed to classify information in relation to the damage it would cause to our national security if revealed.
There have been press reports that this practice of hiding the call records is something that high-level staff in the White House would direct. This sounds like Chief of Staff, National Security Adviser, and so on. But there doesn’t seem to be a specific finger pointed at a particular person who made these orders.
Now the white house strategy is to slow this process down.
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s bitter fight against an impeachment inquiry has not slowed down the Democrats’ push to investigate whether he sought personal political gain by urging Ukraine to probe Democratic opponent Joe Biden.
But in a new tactic, the White House plans to argue that U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi must have the full House vote to formally approve an impeachment inquiry, a source familiar with the effort said.
Without a vote, White House lawyers believe Trump can ignore lawmakers’ requests, the source said, meaning the federal courts would presumably have to render a decision and potentially slow the march toward impeachment. "
I could be wrong, (I am not too familiar with the process) but I think House Dems would like to get some testimony going from those in the White House. Under oath and for the record. Then let even those currently opposed speak, and live with their vote.
Court decisions expected next month will likely force Deutsche Bank and others (I’m too lazy to go back and check the upthread links) to release documents further incriminating Trump. The slowed-down impeachment inquiry may then expand into a larger, more comprehensive, harder-to-counter set of charges.
So call his bluff. Vote for a formal impeachment inquiry. Then even if he lied about being willing to produce the documents, the courts will give priority on ordering them to be hand them over.
How anyone can watch this seething, gibbering disarray of pure narcissism and corruption spew his nonsense and conclude, “Yep! That’s my president and I’m proud to stand with him!” is completely beyond me.
He is the very embodiment of corruption, yet people actually believe he was concerned with corruption in Ukraine?
He lies, lies, lies, lies, gets demonstrably caught again and again – yet people still trust him?
My god.
I know this: Joe Biden has my undying support in this upcoming election until the minute he either wins or is out of the race. It’s clear who Trump most fears.
The strategy appears to be, knock out Biden early and Warren will be easy to deal with in the general election. We’ll all be so sick of hearing the word, “socialist!” we’ll stick forks in our ears.
And it will work. Just as some on the forum already seem to have bought into the Biden bullshit, just enough will buy into the socialist bullshit. China, Russia and Saudi Arabia’s election interference will take care of the rest.
Nice democracy while it lasted.
After a night’s sleep and sober morning reflection (not that I wasn’t sober last night), I think you are right. Very sad this morning.
It appears that the whole world (except for Trump) is totally unaware of the time-worn Washington axiom: “If you are not doing anything wrong, DON’T PUT IT IN WRITING!!!”
Of course a major Trump donor-turned-ambassador said, “No quid pro quo! Now let’s stop texting about this and call me!” That’s what ANY responsible public servant would do. You just can’t have it in writing that you’re not doing anything wrong – think about how that would look splashed on the front page of the Washington Post.
Very sad this morning.