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Given 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

Given 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 ago
True, but then if this had been the law previously, how would that have affected previous admins?
- awinder 7y ago
  Probably not very much considering that the lawlessness delta is to blame for this, not reporting requirements.
jhawk28 7y ago
Since 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 ago
  No 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 ago
      Yes. 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 ago
    You 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 ago
  This 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.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - povertyworld 7y ago
    So, 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 ago
      The 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 ago
That'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 ago
And 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 ago
    Only 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 ago
      I 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 ago
I’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 ago
  What’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 ago
    The 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 ago
      Maybe 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.

mc32 7y ago

True, but then if this had been the law previously, how would that have affected previous admins?

awinder 7y ago
Probably not very much considering that the lawlessness delta is to blame for this, not reporting requirements.

jhawk28 7y ago

Since 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 ago
No 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 ago
    Yes. 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 ago
  You 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 ago
This 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.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- povertyworld 7y ago
  So, 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 ago
    The 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 ago

That'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 ago

And 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 ago
  Only 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 ago
    I 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 ago

I’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 ago
What’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 ago
  The 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 ago
    Maybe 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.