So Who Did Trump Sell Us Out To? The Intelligence Agency Whistle-blower Scandal.

[Fahrenheit]

Wow, this is pretty fucking damning and this is undoubtedly the most tame of the several calls. Dude's fucked.

"I would like you to do us a favor though..."

[Belize]

Wow, this is pretty fucking damning and this is undoubtedly the most tame of the several calls. Dude's fucked.

"I would like you to do us a favor though..."

It's especially HILARIOUS that the DoJ said Barr was not asked to be involved, and Trump said he'll ask Barr to get with Ukraine.

Fucking. Lol.

[omerome]

And the guy in the White House once again gets owned by a dictionary:

Merriam-Webster defined the words "transcript" and "memorandum" on Twitter following the White House's release of President Trump's call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The White House on Wednesday released a document entitled "memorandum of telephone conversation" that noted it was not a verbatim transcript.

Merriam-Webster took to Twitter to clear the difference between the two words up, noting a transcript is "a typed copy of dictated or recorded material" and a memorandum is "an informal report or message."

'Transcript': a typed copy of dictated or recorded material

'Memorandum': an informal report or message

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) September 25, 2019

https://thehill.com/homenews/adminis...er-white-house

[Warning]

This is really bad, Ukrainian guy seems to want to talk about economic cooperation, defense cooperation and sanctions on Russia, and all this orange idiot cares about is his personal feud against Biden. Especially bad talking about Ukraine not reciprocating the help given and then bringing up his little "favor". It reeks to high heaven. Clear abuse of power.

Bad time for Skroe to be banned, although I doubt he cares much right now given how bad this story is turning out for Trump. I guess all in all there's little to be said that doesn't amount to a big fat "I told you so". Even that honestly would not really be satisfying. Because the main challenge still lies ahead of us. Trump has to be removed from power and his followers tend to be fairly slow learners. I'll be interested to see whether Dacien et al. are still on the Trump train after seeing this blatant abuse of power printed on White House paper, or if maybe Rudy Giuliani calling a few people idiots and morons on TV is still more convincing.

[Easo]

I love how his excuse for witholding money is waiting for other European states to provide more. Ummm, the money was already promised and approved by Congress? On what basis, or rather, what has changed in the Ukraine's situation that Trump decided that he has a legal basis to do that? Oh, right, nothing. So...

But let's be all honest here - he won't get impeached. He could kill someone and Republicans would still vote against impeachment.

[Ashnazg]

White House issues further clarification that the transcript IS NOT A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT!

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-ne...896e31ea08fda3

Translation: It's been edited/redacted.

I get it, you hate Trump, but c'mon - be reasonable. In all likelihood there's not an exact verbatim transcript in existence, because these calls don't get parsed out by a "voice to text" software - they're transcribed by 3-4 people sitting in a basement somewhere and writing the convo as they hear it, comparing the notes afterward, and releasing it as close as they can to the original.

There is no indication that it has been edited or redacted, especially since the Ukranian side was also a part to this and if the summary was meaningfully altered, they would've said something.

[Breccia]

Quoting the whole thing, because this is fucking important.

There's no evidence for Trump's Biden-Ukraine accusations. What really happened?

President Donald Trump says he discussed political rival Joe Biden with the president of Ukraine — a phone call reportedly at the heart of a whistleblower complaint that has led to the launch of formal impeachment proceedings in the House — for one reason: a desire to root out corruption.

The former vice president, Trump said, wielded his influence to benefit his son Hunter’s private-sector work in Ukraine. But despite Trump's continued claims, there's no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of either Biden.

"What Joe Biden did for his son, that’s something they should be looking at," Trump told reporters Tuesday, deflecting questions about the renewed push by House Democrats for impeachment proceedings in the wake of the revelations surrounding his dealings with Ukraine, which include reports that he pressured Ukraine's leader to probe Biden and his family while that country was awaiting U.S. aid he'd delayed.

Here's what we know about Biden's actions as vice president with regard to Ukraine, Trump's accusations and the phone call, and Trump's own dealings with the country's leader.

Biden's anti-corruption work in Ukraine

As vice president, the elder Biden lead the U.S. diplomatic efforts to bolster the country’s fledgling democracy and root out corruption after mass protests ousted the country’s pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Biden spoke frequently with Ukrainian leaders and in April 2014, he traveled to Ukraine, bringing financial support and warning the Russians — who had recently annexed Crimea — to stop intervening in Ukrainian sovereignty.

In May 2014, Hunter Biden was hired by a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, as a board member reportedly making $50,000 a month. He stopped working with the company earlier this year.

The company had ties to Yanukovych, raising eyebrows among White House aides and others who saw potential for a conflict of interest. The Obama White House said at the time that the younger Biden was a private citizen, and that there was no conflict of interest.

Trump's quid pro quo claims

Trump, whose July phone conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was reportedly so unusual it triggered a whistleblower complaint, said Sunday ahead of his departure for an event in Texas that he discussed with the Ukrainian leader "the fact that we don’t want our people like Vice President Biden and his son creating the corruption already in the Ukraine."

NBC News has not confirmed that Ukraine is at the center of the whistleblower issue.

Trump reiterated this version of events to reporters once he arrived in Houston.

"He said, 'I’m not going to give billions of dollars to Ukraine unless they remove this prosecutor.' And they removed the prosecutor supposedly in one hour," Trump claimed, referring to Biden. "And the prosecutor was prosecuting the company of the son and the son. He just shouldn’t have said that. Now, as far as my conversation, it was perfect. It was a perfect conversation."

On Monday, he reiterated this claim.

"It was a perfect call. There was no quid pro quo, unlike Biden," Trump said.

But the revelation of the whistleblower complaint from a member of the U.S. intelligence committee, first reported in The Washington Post, reportedly involving the call came after a monthslong effort by the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to get Ukraine to probe the Bidens — an effort aided by the State Department.

Both Trump and Giuliani have alleged that Biden used the prospect of U.S. financial support to pressure the Ukrainian government to fire its top prosecutor in 2016, because the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was investigating the gas company Burisma, and allegedly, Hunter.

Shokin was widely believed to be soft on corruption, however, and the United States and other Western countries had called for his removal. The country's Parliament ultimately voted to remove Shokin.

Biden has taken credit for getting the prosecutor removed, boasting about it as a win for anticorruption in the country.

But there's little evidence he acted to help his son: Earlier this year, Bloomberg News, citing documents and an interview with a former Ukrainian official, reported the Burisma investigation had been dormant for more than a year by the time Biden called for the crackdown on corruption. The then-Ukrainian prosecutor general told the news agency he found no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden and his son. And PolitiFact reported it found no evidence to "support the idea that Joe Biden advocated with his son's interests in mind."

Additionally, the most recent former prosecutor general of Ukraine, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg he had no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden.

Other investigations into Burisma's oligarch owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, proceeded, and The New York Times reported Sunday that former associates of the vice president have said Biden did not try to stop them.

Trump's dealings with Ukraine

A week before the president's phone call with the Ukrainian leader, Trump instructed his acting chief of staff to freeze about $400 million in security and military aid, two administration officials told NBC News. This timeline was first reported by the Washington Post.

The administration official who directed the State Department to withhold the aid to Ukraine was acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, according to a senior Democratic aide who was briefed by the State Department last week.

According to a memo summarizing the call released by the White House, Trump stressed how "good" the United States had been to Ukraine.

"I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are," Trump said. "The United States has been very, very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very, very good to Ukraine."

Then he asks Zelenskiy to look into the Bidens.

"There's a lot of talk about Biden’s son, what Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it. ... It sounds horrible to me," Trump said, according to the the White House notes of the call.

Trump also says he wants Zelenskiy to meet with Giuliani and noted that he "heard the prosecutor was treated very bad and he was a very fair prosecutor," according to the memo.

In fact, Shokin, the prosecutor in question, was widely believed to be corrupt, and Bloomberg News has reported that his investigation into Burisma was dormant by the time Biden called for his resignation.

Pressed Tuesday about the call — prior to the public release of the summary — Trump said he did it in protest of other countries' actions.


"My complaint has always been — and I'd withhold again, and I'll continue to withhold until such time as Europe and other nations contribute to Ukraine, because they're not doing it. It's the United States. We're putting up the bulk of the money, and I'm asking why is that?" Trump said, referring to the international aid that's been sent to bolster Ukraine and its fledgling democracy against Russian aggression.

This is not true: The European Union put up $16.5 billion in financial aid, according to a fact sheet from the E.U.'s diplomatic arm. The International Monetary Fund said it would put forward at least $14 billion in a bailout as well.

Bold-red for emphasis.

Trump is blatantly lying. We already knew this when he had 3 different reasons for withholding the aid. It seems one of them was on his mind because he mentioned it in the phone call, claiming the EU wasn't helping. And that's a lie, they were. So was the IMF. It's true they stopped helping because they had a corrupt prosecutor. The prosecutor was removed. They helped again.

[Draco-Onis]

I get it, you hate Trump, but c'mon - be reasonable. In all likelihood there's not an exact verbatim transcript in existence, because these calls don't get parsed out by a "voice to text" software - they're transcribed by 3-4 people sitting in a basement somewhere and writing the convo as they hear it, comparing the notes afterward, and releasing it as close as they can to the original.

There is no indication that it has been edited or redacted, especially since the Ukranian side was also a part to this and if the summary was meaningfully altered, they would've said something.

Nixon pulled the same stunt also do you really think Trump wouldn't do it after everything he has done? do you think he grew morals overnight? This is the administration that lies even when the evidence is in your face.

[Ashnazg]

Nixon pulled the same stunt also do you really think Trump wouldn't do it after everything he has done? do you think he grew morals overnight? This is the administration that lies even when the evidence is in your face.

Because Ukraine is not pro-Trump OR pro-republican (they have significant ties with the Democrats in USA, and given Trump's pro-Russian/MAGA lean, they really don't have a stake in seeing him reelected) and they don't want to be caught complicit in his lying. If the transcript was redacted to show a substantively different message than what actually said, they would leak that to the Dem leaders.

[mvaliz]

I really am asking myself if Dumbass Donnie Dump actually even bothered reading what the Transcript said - or just trusted one of his flunkeys to put it out for him.

Given that there's no pictures, no KFC grease stains, and more than 20 words - I can't imagine he read that all in one sitting and said "OK, sounds good - lets roll with it!" >_<

[Machismo]

I get it, you hate Trump, but c'mon - be reasonable. In all likelihood there's not an exact verbatim transcript in existence, because these calls don't get parsed out by a "voice to text" software - they're transcribed by 3-4 people sitting in a basement somewhere and writing the convo as they hear it, comparing the notes afterward, and releasing it as close as they can to the original.

There is no indication that it has been edited or redacted, especially since the Ukranian side was also a part to this and if the summary was meaningfully altered, they would've said something.

Why would the Ukrainians say something? They don't want to piss anyone off, and they want to stay out of it.

The solution is simple, release the full audio.

[Machismo]

Because Ukraine is not pro-Trump OR pro-republican (they have significant ties with the Democrats in USA, and given Trump's pro-Russian/MAGA lean, they really don't have a stake in seeing him reelected) and they don't want to be caught complicit in his lying. If the transcript was redacted to show a substantively different message than what actually said, they would leak that to the Dem leaders.

You may want to go read the transcript again, Zelensky was trying to kiss Trump's ass.

- - - Updated - - -

That would be dependent on there being audio.

I see no good reason why there wouldn't be. People were listening in, and "gisting" the conversation. Any translator with any semblance of experience would be recording it, and no government would be stupid enough to not record it.

the only reason why it's gone, would be that someone decided to delete it.

[Edge-]

I really am asking myself if Dumbass Donnie Dump actually even bothered reading what the Transcript said - or just trusted one of his flunkeys to put it out for him.

It's the EXACT same playbook as the Trump Tower meeting.

Deny and lie.
Get caught lying, admit that something happened but it didn't matter.
Get slightly more specific about what happened, double down on it not mattering.
Release information that's damning (Trump Jr. emails) in the name of "transparency" while tripling down on it not mattering.
Move goalposts for wrongdoing ("NO QUID PRO QUO!" which...doesn't matter in this instance) while getting Republican support (see: Graham) and continuing to claim nothing wrong happened.

It worked for them before, I hope it doesn't work again.

[Machismo]

It's the EXACT same playbook as the Trump Tower meeting.

Deny and lie.
Get caught lying, admit that something happened but it didn't matter.
Get slightly more specific about what happened, double down on it not mattering.
Release information that's damning (Trump Jr. emails) in the name of "transparency" while tripling down on it not mattering.
Move goalposts for wrongdoing ("NO QUID PRO QUO!" which...doesn't matter in this instance) while getting Republican support (see: Graham) and continuing to claim nothing wrong happened.

It worked for them before, I hope it doesn't work again.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.

[Ashnazg]

Why would the Ukrainians say something? They don't want to piss anyone off, and they want to stay out of it.

The solution is simple, release the full audio.

They do, but if they're being asked to lie for Trump, there's no way they're going to go along with it to any large degree - they're better off hedging their bets with the Dems.

You may want to go read the transcript again, Zelensky was trying to kiss Trump's ass.

Yes - everyone knows the way to Trump's heart is through his ass, but that's because he was on a private call, engaging in "diplomacy". If it came down to being forced to pick sides, publicly, there's no way they'd throw their weight behind the Republicans. Supporting Dems is simply more beneficial to Ukraine.

[Draco-Onis]

Because Ukraine is not pro-Trump OR pro-republican (they have significant ties with the Democrats in USA, and given Trump's pro-Russian/MAGA lean, they really don't have a stake in seeing him reelected) and they don't want to be caught complicit in his lying. If the transcript was redacted to show a substantively different message than what actually said, they would leak that to the Dem leaders.

Because Trump is still president and they still have billions at stake before he leaves office if he even does in 2020, the same reason this was Trump blackmailing him. Ukraine has more reasons than anyone to go along with anything he says.

[exochaft]

I get it, you hate Trump, but c'mon - be reasonable. In all likelihood there's not an exact verbatim transcript in existence, because these calls don't get parsed out by a "voice to text" software - they're transcribed by 3-4 people sitting in a basement somewhere and writing the convo as they hear it, comparing the notes afterward, and releasing it as close as they can to the original.

There is no indication that it has been edited or redacted, especially since the Ukranian side was also a part to this and if the summary was meaningfully altered, they would've said something.

Yeah, the chances that this transcript is not representative of the exact conversation are almost nonexistent. Also, the content of the conversation seems pretty typical, and the whole Biden issue is a legitimate issue as it ties into actual corruption issues that actually have some weight behind them.

The story about Biden and his son has actually been known for a while, but it's been mostly ignored (especially during the primary season) or not followed up on. Politically strong-arming a country in the interest of your own country is one thing, but politically strong-arming a country as the Vice President to funnel money into companies where your son is a high ranking member (and suddenly appointed to said company with zero experience) is completely another... doesn't help all these types of interactions happen during Biden's trips to said countries and that his son even traveled together with him for some of these encounters. The IG issue is of more importance, since he was investigating corruption in the same company Biden's son was in. Irony is that Biden's dealings with Ukraine with respect to his son aren't even the major issue, similar things happened with China on a much worse scale. What's worse is that Kerry's son is implicated in similar issues, and joint activities that are just as dubious. If you're wondering why people's sons keep popping up in such scandalous activity: it's illegal for politicians to receive aid/favors/etc from foreign powers and entities... but it's not illegal for your children to receive them. If you want Congress to actually do something useful, changing this law would be much better than most things floating around Capitol Hill.

Now, I'd absolutely love for this Biden issue to be all proven false, as that'd be a great thing for the country. However, this screams abusing national political power for personal gain, and it's something that actually has credible evidence (not some completely unverified dossier) and should be cleared up regardless if the person is running for President or not. Having Trump inquire about this is actually a good thing. Even from the transcript and taking the primary into consideration, this likely has no intent to mess with the election... especially in light of how polling and the Democratic primary process works. If Trump was really going out of his way to hamstring the election, he'd be going after Warren since not only is she competitive with Biden but she's vastly everyone's second choice for Democratic nominee... if you don't know why that matters in the early primary process, it basically means that when straw polling and lobbying happens during primary nights in these states, as the field gets whittled down almost all the votes that were not initially for Biden/Warren will go to Warren. The point is this: there's no personal gain for Trump to have Ukraine investigate the issue, but it's in the interest our of country that such potential corruption gets dealt with.

Anyways, not to digress too much, all the circumstantial "evidence" people keep throwing up in this thread concerning Trump's handling of the situation actually implicating corruption are complete nonsense. A lot of how situations are handled, even at the Presidential level, are nothing new and even practiced as recently as Obama with the same level of frequency and intensity. Actually, I doubt many people have even have personal exposure to national level negotiations/discussions and are just parroting what their favorite news source tells them to thing about it. I can empathize with people, though, as that amount of repetitive messaging concerning Trump hatred is on the border of brainwashing at this point. Trump's far from a perfect person, but that's no reason to descend into madness whenever he comes up in conversation.

[mvaliz]

***bucket of thread-derailing talking point "BUT BIDEN" nonsense***

Yeah, no - welcome to the ignore list.

[Edge-]

https://twitter.com/JaxAlemany/statu...91361825632258

Guys...the White House just accidentally sent their talking points out to Congressional Democrats. And then tried to recall the email.

Incompetence abounds.

[Breccia]

I really am asking myself if Dumbass Donnie Dump actually even bothered reading what the Transcript said

It wouldn't matter either way.

The dividing line seems to be

A) Trump directly and specifically asked a foreign country to interfere with an election, and he sent Giuliani, a non-administration member, to make it happen.
B) He did not spell out a quid-pro-quo over the phone.

This is the line in the sand the Republicans are going to use, because they have no other choice anymore. Trump, who's worked with mobsters for quite some time, either thinks the lack of quid-pro-quo means he did noting wrong, or is pretending that to give his rabid fanbase some tripe to swallow. He's either intentionally lying that part A isn't a crime, or unintentionally lying because he'd too stupid to know it's a crime, or saying whatever the fuck he wants because he thinks he's above the law.

Any Trump follower must, therefore, point at part A and say "This is not a crime".

They are wrong.

And we don't even have the whistleblower, or Giuliani's conversations, both of which are now desired evidence and the WH is sitting on them. Giuliani very likely didn't write down a transcript in Madrid, and of course, that was the point of two unofficials meeting in a third country.