Monday, September 23, 2019

Unblock whistleblower's complaint on President Donald Trump's call to Ukraine over Biden

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/09/22/trump-call-ukraine-biden-unblock-whistleblower-complaint-editorials-debates/2410464001/

The intelligence community's inspector general, Trump appointee Michael Atkinson,  was so troubled by the report that he deemed it of "urgent concern." 
The law requires that an urgent-concern whistleblower complaint "shall" be turned over to Congress. But the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, blocked this. His legal response, supplied by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, is that the alleged target of the complaint — presumably Trump himself — is not a member of the intelligence community, so the urgent-concern requirements for the whistleblower law are not applicable.
That justification is painfully reminiscent of the legal gymnastics Mueller employed when he concluded that he was barred from saying whether Trump broke the law by obstructing justice in the Russian influence investigation, but that he also couldn't "exonerate" him.
A system of checks and balances guaranteed by the Constitution should inform the American people when their president violates the law or commits an impeachable offense. That system is being stretched to the breaking point.
Now it's up to members of Congress — not just Democrats but also Republicans who claim to believe in the rule of law — to get to the bottom of this latest tawdry tale by holding hearings, obtaining transcripts, and finding a way to gain access to the whistleblower complaint or that person's testimony. 

9 comments :

  1. It looks bad for Vice President Joe Biden.

    CNN reports are that he did some bad things.
    https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/09/23/politics/ukraine-donald-trump-joe-biden-impeachment/index.html

    Of courese, the report glosses over how bad it really is. Neverthesless, it is bad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. where? it actually says the opposite!

    "There is no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden or his son Hunter. The then-Ukrainian prosecutor general Yury Lutsenko said in May that Burisma Holdings, a major energy company, did not violate Ukrainian law by having Hunter Biden on its board and paying him.

    Trump's claims that Biden pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he investigated a business for which his son served as a board member have previously been found to be false. The prosecutor was seen as corrupt by multiple governments and international institutions, not just the former vice president."

    ReplyDelete
  3. The article bolddly asserts that there is no "evidence of wrongdoing." But what the article describes is an alleged conspiracy of a corporation in the Ukraine working to use the employ of a relative of a high ranking U.S. official in order to exert influence on the Ukrainian judicial process. I doubt that is legal in the Ukraine.

    "...have previously found to be false." Really? By whom? The fact that the prosecutor was perceived to be corrupt by many is irrelevant. That's a red herring. Murdering a murderer is still murder. Vice President Biden being involved with using governmental power to undo a thorn in the side of a corporation that gave his son a cushy job doesn't pass the smell test.

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  4. Another day, another investigation, another waste of money because Trump survives.
    How about the Democrats use their money and energy to come up with a comprehensive, realistic platform for 2020 instead?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Democrats eat their own. Already there is a newly minted popular Congresswoman bashing the Speaker over the Speaker's inaction. Anything a Dem does or says that is not from the pre-approved talking points list will be undermined.

    Thus, the Democratic candidates can't formulate anything but the most outlandish policies that they all can sign onto.

    Making an actual platform is out of the question.

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  6. yes that is trump's view-

    ignore the elephant in the room

    ReplyDelete
  7. I think what Mr. Trump is doing is draping said elephant with his own message, sort of the way he prominently displays his name on edifices he puts up.

    The President treats a good scandal like an advertising opportunity. This is the way he has stayed in the limelight for most of his life, and certainly since the beginning of his run for the Presidency.

    We can perhaps call it embracing the barrage of publicity. It's the surfer riding the wave, the skater in a roller derby being whipped forward by a blocker, the boxer doing the rope-a-dope.

    As I've said so many times in many ways, the Democrats and media are seemingly zombified minions of the President. They mindlessly do his bidding unaware that far from being his enemy they are in fact his slaves.

    ReplyDelete
  8. yes trump plays with fire with great confidence that nothing will happen to him and he does get a lot of attention

    but eventually he will be destroyed by the fire

    ReplyDelete
  9. Biden's son was also involved in laundering money from Ukraine via Cyprus. That prosecutor didn't want to investigate.

    ReplyDelete

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