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The Whistle-Blower Knows How to Write
- mc32 7y agoOne interesting bit is that the whistleblower law was changed very recently[1] to allow hearsay (not fist person account) in a complaint. Some people (obviously biased) are claiming the complainant had assistance composing the complaint. Guess we’ll find out what it’s all about soon enough. [1]according to Repub lawmakers.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoGiven that the ICIG and DNI both found the whistleblower credible, I don’t really know how to interpret attempts to dismiss it for being a secondhand account as anything other than entirely partisan.
- mc32 7y agoTrue, but then if this had been the law previously, how would that have affected previous admins?
- awinder 7y agoProbably not very much considering that the lawlessness delta is to blame for this, not reporting requirements.
- jhawk28 7y agoSince the transcript of the call was released, the attempt to make it something is entirely partisan. Both "sides" are being partisan and trying to make it look like they are just doing whatever is good for the country while the other is in it for themselves.
- lazide 7y agoNo transcript was released. A memorandum of the 'recollections of the staff involved' written by the whitehouse describing the call (and widely referred to as the transcript) was released. The actual word for word transcript is still stored in the top secret security system it was moved to when it was obvious there was a problem. No one outside the whitehouse has seen that yet. If you read the actual released document, it has a huge disclaimer on the first page which states this. You can see it yourself here https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine-transcript-call/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/25/politics/donald-trump-ukraine...
- mortehu 7y ago> The actual word for word transcript is still stored in the top secret security system it was moved to when it was obvious there was a problem Is it really? Are you sure you're not confused by articles referring to the same document by different names?
- ethanbond 7y agoYes. If you look at the PDF of the "transcript" that was released, there is a note on the document itself that it is in fact not a verbatim transcription, but instead an incomplete reconstruction. It also happens to have ellipsis surrounding Crowdstrike/Biden/server topics.
- maxlybbert 7y agoYou are correct that the “transcript” is not a verbatim transcript. However, according to Reuters, it’s likely all that exists at this point ( https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-transcript/trumps-transcript-of-ukraine-call-unlikely-to-be-verbatim-idUSKBN1W935S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-t... ): “[S]tandard practice when a president is talking to a foreign leader is not to make a recording but to have at least two and sometimes more note-takers from the National Security Council (NSC) on the call, a former senior NSC official told Reuters. ... “Their notes serve as the principal record of such calls, the former official said. He was not aware of any electronic recordings made by the U.S. government on calls between Trump and other world leaders. “Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Obama presidency, said not only would any so-called transcript be based on notes, but it would also likely be incomplete because the note-takers usually do not include issues that could be controversial if they became public. ... “A former White House senior official concurred there was unlikely to be a recording. “‘There’s no physical recording but there are a lot of people listening and taking contemporaneous notes of these calls,’ the official said. ‘When you read it, it looks almost like a transcript.’”
- wwweston 7y agoThis point of view contributes just as much to the corruption of politics as people who may actually be acting it out, because it implicitly asserts that there are no values in play beyond power. There may be no way of knowing for sure if anyone involved genuinely holds principles above power. But there are absolutely issues of principle in play, and in a well-functioning representative society, everyone has the privilege of lining up behind principles to give them currency. Personally, I'm behind the idea that our head of state should be determining benefits offered to foreign nations by recognizable general national interest, not by personal interest, or partisan interest, certainly including tying foreign participation in investigation theater to aid. Hell, I'm behind the idea that our head of state should have a coherent concept of what the national interest is. But then again, that'd require voters who have some idea of this. And citizens who have a vision of society that's more than a struggle for status and privilege for those who achieve it.
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- povertyworld 7y agoSo, shouldn't you be in favor of the investigation into Biden? Since that is exactly what he did. "This plane's leaving in about 6 hours. If the prosecutor [investigating his son's firm] isn't fired, you're not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, got fired!" 52 minutes in: https://youtu.be/Q0_AqpdwqK4?t=3140 https://youtu.be/Q0_AqpdwqK4?t=3140
- jakelazaroff 7y agoThe prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was not investigating Burisma, the firm that employed Hunter Biden [1]: > Mr. Shokin was not aggressively pursuing investigations into Mr. Zlochevsky or Burisma. But the oligarch’s allies say Mr. Shokin was using the threat of prosecution to try to solicit bribes from Mr. Zlochevsky and his team, and that left the oligarch’s team leery of dealing with the prosecutor. In addition, the US was not the only government seeking his removal: > His dismissal had been sought not just by Mr. Biden, but also by others in the Obama administration, as well other Western governments and international lenders. Mr. Shokin had been repeatedly accused of turning a blind eye to corruption in his office and among the Ukrainian political elite, and criticized for failing to bring corruption cases. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/us/politics/biden-ukraine-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/us/politics/biden-ukraine...
- tomohawk 7y agoThat's a really low bar, and does not even rise to the level of preponderance of evidence. It might be something that a grand jury might look at, but that's about it. We have an anonymous whistle blower making hearsay claims, coincident with the allowing of hearsay claims as whistle blower claims. We have the Speaker of the House instigating impeachment proceedings without following established process of calling a roll call vote. Instead, calling it based on her own authority. This unjustifiable departure from precedent and good governance is really revealing her motivations. We have Senators Leahy, Menendez, and Durbin leaning on the prosecutor in Ukraine. Are they going to be impeached? https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5-4-18%20Menendez%20joint%20letter%20to%20General%20Prosecutor%20of%20Ukraine%20on%20Mueller%20investigation.pdf https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/5-4-18%20Menend... We have President Obama doing the exact same thing, leaning on Ukraine. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/double-standards-on-ukraine/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/double-standards-on-u... And then there is the behavior of the Bidens, enriching themselves by selling foreign influence. Obviously, the Speaker can exercise her power and could impeach a president for waking up on the wrong side of the bed as long as she could get enough votes, but that doesn't mean that this is anywhere close to being a wise idea.
- jakelazaroff 7y ago> That's a really low bar, and does not even rise to the level of preponderance of evidence. Really low bar for what? You’re saying “preponderance of evidence” to allude to a burden of proof required for a courtroom verdict. But a whistleblower complaint is basically an allegation; can you name a single legal process where one is required to meet a burden of proof in order to allege wrongdoing? > We have Senators Leahy, Menendez, and Durbin leaning on the prosecutor in Ukraine. They were asking the prosecutor to cooperate with an already ongoing FBI investigation. Whereas Trump is asking the Ukranain President to work with the State Department and his personal attorney to investigate a political rival. > We have President Obama doing the exact same thing, leaning on Ukraine. This has been misrepresented: the prosecutor the Obama administration (including Biden) pressured Ukraine to oust wasn’t actually investigating his Burisma, the company with which Hunter Biden was involved. In addition, other Western countries wanted that prosecutor removed. [1] > And then there is the behavior of the Bidens, enriching themselves by selling foreign influence. Sure, let’s hold Biden accountable for this. But you really want to step into this ring? Trump has repeatedly and flagrantly used the presidency to enrich himself since day 1. Edit, responded to other unrelated points. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/us/politics/biden-ukraine-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/us/politics/biden-ukraine...
- grandridge 7y agoAnd doj said no problem. Thinking this is something is entirely stupid and partisan. You are being played as usual but you lap it up, like usual
- jakelazaroff 7y ago> And doj said no problem. You mean the DoJ who are implicated in the same complaint?
- mieseratte 7y agoOnly with Trump could someone find asking an ally to uphold rule of law to be sketchy. He asked to setup a call with the AG, this is somehow nefarious?
- jakelazaroff 7y agoI didn’t say anything is nefarious. Just that an Attorney General who is himself implicated by name in a complaint is perhaps not the most neutral arbiter of said complaint’s credibility.
- maxlybbert 7y agoI’m surprised that I haven’t seen much reported about the Office of Legal Counsel’s memo ( https://www.justice.gov/olc/page/file/1205151/download https://www.justice.gov/olc/page/file/1205151/download ). They claimed that the complaint didn’t qualify under the specific whistleblower law in question because the conduct wasn’t related to an ongoing intelligence operation. So, yes, both the inspector general and the director of national intelligence said they believed the complaint was believable. But OLC claimed that both ICIG and DNI overlooked another important requirement: that the conduct be relevant as far as the whistleblower law is concerned. In the end, the complaint and call record were released to the public, so it’s a moot point, but the issue bubbled up because the justice department initially refused to hand it over to the relevant congressional committees because they said the complaint didn’t qualify for the whistleblower law.
- jakelazaroff 7y agoWhat’s interesting to me is that so many rebuttals are focused on either procedure (did the whistleblower follow the correct channels, were the rules changed for them) or misdirection (the whistleblower is partisan, the Bidens are the real story here). I suspect that a lot of Trump’s defenders know that his conduct is impeachable, but simply aren’t willing to make the concession to the Democrats.
- maxlybbert 7y agoThe lack of reporting about OLC’s opinion only annoys me because even now I see a small trickle of news stories that say that this complaint became news when the justice department refused to send it to Congress the way it was legally required to. Every time I read that, I think “that requirement is disputed.”
- jakelazaroff 7y agoMaybe so — but the Attorney General himself is implicated by name in the complaint, so it’s eminently reasonable that people are taking his office’s opinions with a grain of salt. We are truly in uncharted waters here.
- alphabettsy 7y agoIt’s pretty common for people who have fear of legal repercussion to seek advice before going to authorities.
- etchalon 7y agoThe idea the law was changed recently has been debunked, by a few analysts online. It looks like an online form may have changed, but not the law itself.
- tptacek 7y agoAccording to Kevin Poulsen, this is a hoax. https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1177734528833445888 https://twitter.com/kpoulsen/status/1177734528833445888
- ineedasername 7y agoSo long as they didn't share the information with anyone not cleared for it, would it matter if they had help with the composition?
- rubbingalcohol 7y agoGiven that the whistleblower complaint was written by a law firm I would hope they know how to write.
- smitty1e 7y agoThis invites the question of how many cleared law firms are operating within the intelligence community. One might have been tempted to expect something closer in tone to an analytic product than a legal pleading.
- privateSFacct 7y agoActually - the number of attorney's in govt is enormous. It's often annoying because they sometimes lack domain knowledge, but the dept in charge of X will have lots of attorney's who can write lack this but don't know (much) about "X".
- ENOTTY 7y agoThere’s absolutely zero evidence for that claim.
- Gabriel_Martin 7y agoYou're welcome to post and proof of that
- Svip 7y agoI also noticed that he writes dates in the `%d %M` format (e.g. 25 July), which suggests that he is probably an intelligence officer. (I think they said he was an CIA operative?)
- mcphage 7y agoDoes that make me a spook?
- ineedasername 7y agoI don't know, are you a spook? Knowing that would help me answer your question.
- mcphage 7y agoI'm a person who likes writing in "29 September" format, which apparently suggests that I'm an intelligence officer (when actually I'm neither of those).
- ineedasername 7y agoIt's not the date format that makes you a spook, it's the denial that you're a spook, because that's just what a spook would say ;)
- mcphage 7y agoAh! I can't believe I fell for that!
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- i_am_proteus 7y agoDD Month YY / DD Month YYYY are pretty common across the federal government
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- spacedog11 7y agoThe professor, author of this article, misses the point that the whistleblower is an "intelligence officer". Intelligence officers very regularly write extensive yet concise reports to their leads or higher up management, so it's not surprising that s/he wrote the memo well.
- aylons 7y agoI believe you are interpreting some surprise that is not there. He takes the complaint as an example of good writing and that's it. He does not try to infer anything about the writer from it.
- anonymousiam 7y agoBegins with a conclusion of wrongdoing, but doesn't address alternative possibilities such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which Hunter Biden has likely violated.
- paganel 7y agoIf I’m not mistaken The New Yorker magazine had published a “good-feel” story about Hunter Biden and the relationship with his father in August or so, definitely before all this scandal was made public. It looked like white-washing, and coupled with this present whistle-blower thing it certainly looks like a planted story. The powers that be should have tried something different in order to topple Trump, because, as you say, Hunter Biden is definitely a crook and all this will only make Trump come out stronger. If it matters I’m not a US citizen and I’ve never set foot in the States.
- ineedasername 7y agoThis is an argument that is being spoken quite a bit, but misses the point: Hunter Biden may be a crook. It certainly doesn't look like he got his board position on merit. That doesn't mean that President Trump didn't abuse his presidential power for personal political gain. The possibility of either of their corruptions are not mutually exclusive. Though I tend to agree that this is unlikely to hurt President Trump very much, may mobilize his base, and further makes the democrats, in their 2020 campaign, to be dominantly anti-trump as their platform, with their political issues taking a back seat.
- paganel 7y agoOf course Trump abused his position but if the public opinion sees his abuse of power as being “legitimate” then I suspect that US jurisprudence will get to be rewritten in his favor. In today’s day and age public opinion has a much more bigger influence compared to the early ‘70s, for example, when a guy like Nixon could be toppled by the technocracy of that time even though at some point during that scandal he had a 70% approval rate. I suspect that in today’s day and age Nixon would have remained in power with so much public support behind him.
- ineedasername 7y agotldr: An educated person in an important position that probably involves a lot of writing actually knows how to write well. I think this whole issue is very important, but there really are some extreme acrobatics going on to fill every possible moments with coverage. Next up: rumors say the whistle blower went to college; eats food; breathes air.
- paulpauper 7y agoThat is it? Was expecting more.
- aylons 7y agoThis is a very nice, short and well written column by a professor that solely analyses the writing of the complaint. For a crowd that proud themselves for being objective and analytical, HN has missed the point by a lot here.