Editors note: at V’PAC our Illustrious Senior Editor DLH has written often about the foreboding nature of the Deep State players and their efforts to end Trump’s presidency, now focused on so much nonsense involving Ukraine. His communication set forth below presages the Americans for Limited Government post by Robert Roman, that organization’s Vice President of Public Policy and that of Gary Bauer of Campaign for Working Families and his similar inquietude. Indeed a number of comments echo DLH posts. Bold emphasis ours.
DLH writes: My worst fears it seems are confirmed:
Just from what I have read of the documents released yesterday and today…and that is not 100%, but substantial…it is obvious that this is, indeed, the “6th way from Sunday” Schumer has spoken of.
As one reads this stuff, and I would emphasize, especially the “whistleblower”s” complaint, this is the product of the Deep State, bringing to bear all of its resources. It’s purpose, I believe, fully accomplished, is to completely neutralize any and all of the results, records, and documentation gathered by IG’s, DOJ, AG, and independent investigators…all the material and proof that Trump has promised to release, proving the vast extent of corruption in the virtually entire Obama administration and especially the law enforcement and national security apparatus!
It is intended, and achieves, the purpose of pre-empting, diluting, and completely dismissing any allegations or findings or evidence gathered by Trump, his administration, his allies, and anyone who suggests that his is is anything other than a ‘criminal organization’!
It is VERY artfully and professionally done and has taken full advantage of Trump’s “patience”, and the devilish efforts of the embedded Obama holdovers, establishment, and deep state operatives’ efforts to stonewall, slow-walk, subvert, withhold, and destroy (evidence)…to delay releasing the damning evidence that existed.
Robert Romano at Americans for Limited Government:
In 2017, President Donald Trump’s conversations with foreign heads of state in Mexico and Australia — which are classified information — were leaked to news outlets with the purpose of undermining U.S. policies on immigration, the southern border wall and refugees.
Americans for Limited Government’s reaction at the time was to call for then-National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and the entire National Security Council staff to be fired.
Because there was only one of two ways for the contents of those conversations to get to the press. Either, they were intercepted and leaked, or transcripts were taken from the White House by staff and given to reporters, with the latter being more likely.
We were pretty outraged at the time. The communications between heads of state being kept secret is vital to national security and the President’s conduct of foreign affairs. They still are, and will be long after President Trump has served out his term or terms of office.
Well, it’s happened again. This time with President Donald Trump’s now declassified July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
First, it was transcribed by White House staff, as per usual practice, and then, according to the now declassified so-called whistleblower complaint, somebody or somebodies with access to the phone call on the National Security Council disagreed with the President’s approach to Ukraine policy.
Trump had asked for Ukraine’s assistance in getting to the bottom of the origins of the phony Russiagate investigation by intelligence agencies in 2016, and brought the firing of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General at former Vice President Joe Biden’s urging when he threatened $1 billion of loan guarantees to Zelensky’s attention, who noted he was already aware of the matter.
Biden for his part was given wide latitude by former President Barack Obama to run Ukraine policy after Viktor Yanukovich was overthrown, a coup which the U.S. backed. The prosecutor he had fired, Viktor Shokin, says he was investigating a natural gas firm, Burisma Holdings, who Biden’s son, Hunter, served on the board of directors of and that that’s why he was fired. Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations in Jan. 2018 he threatened then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko with the $1 billion unless he fired Shokin: “I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ …Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.” Was Obama aware of this?
The intelligence whistleblower also implied that the U.S. could be withholding military assistance to Ukraine until Zelensky agreed to go after Biden, but no such coercion could be found in the transcript and Zelensky has stated publicly that he was not pressured. the President had put a brief pause on military assistance to Ukraine pending a review by the Defense and State Departments, which was ultimately released on Sept. 11, and now reports suggest that Ukrainian officials were unaware of the pause in funding until after the call took place.
Politico’s Caitlin Emma and Connor O’Brien, who first reported the pause in aid in late August, noted that “United States military aid to Ukraine has long been seen as a litmus test for how strongly the American government is pushing back against Moscow.” Surely it was viewed that way, as the question of military assistance to Ukraine, which the Obama administration rejected, was long an element of the now-debunked conspiracy theory that President Trump was a Russian agent.
Next, according to the complaint, the disgruntled White House officials complained to a U.S. intelligence official, who writes he or she did not have access to the conversation, but transcribed the gist of it in a whistleblower complaint on Aug. 12.
Then, the complaint was transferred from the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Aug. 26. A part of the accompanying letter said, “the ICIG’s preliminary review identified some indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of the Complainant in favor of a rival political candidate.” But, even with that bias, plus the fact that the complaint was based on hearsay and that it contained numerous factual errors, remarkably, found the complaint to be “credible.”
The Justice Department then evaluated the legal merits of the complaint, which were ultimately rejected by the Office of Legal Counsel on Sept. 3.
Finally, the New York Times and the Washington Post got a hold of it and began detailing the conversation on Sept. 19, which was still classified at that point, meaning the disclosure of the information to the press was likely a crime in violation of federal statute.
Now, the New York Times reported on Sept. 26 that the intelligence officer was from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who had been assigned to the White House at some point.
Since the disclosures, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for President Trump to be impeached before anyone could even see the transcript.
In sum, a politically motivated CIA complaint against President Trump on Ukraine policy has led instantly to an impeachment push by Democrats in the House of Representatives. Was that the point?
Since these disclosures, the Trump administration has pushed back, with the Justice Department confirming that U.S. Attorney John Durham is in fact looking at foreign involvement in the counterintelligence investigation of Trump in 2016, including Ukraine. Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said on Sept. 25, “A Department of Justice team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is separately exploring the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election… While the Attorney General has yet to contact Ukraine in connection with this investigation, certain Ukrainians who are not members of the government have volunteered information to Mr. Durham, which he is evaluating.”
The so-called whistleblower complaint refers directly to the Durham investigation into the origins of the Russiagate investigation, and the efforts by Rudy Giuliani and reporting by The Hill’s John Solomon to uncover the same.
A footnote states, “In an interview with Fox News on 8 August, Mr. Giuliani claimed that Mr. John Durham, whom Attorney General Barr designated to lead this probe, was ‘spending a lot of time in Europe’ because he was ‘investigating Ukraine.’ I do not know the extent to which, if at all, Mr. Giuliani is directly coordinating his efforts on Ukraine with Attorney General Barr or Mr. Durham.”
If the concern was about Biden, why include the Durham investigation? Why complain about Barr and Durham, and tie them to Trump, Giuliani and Solomon? That only appears relevant to the complaint in order to discredit the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation. They’re the targets.
Trump was trying to get to the bottom of the origins of Russiagate in his phone call to Zelensky, and Biden came up, too. The President believes the investigation might have originated in Ukraine. Biden ran Obama’s Ukraine policy and has bragged about getting that country’s top anti-corruption prosecutor fired. The Justice Department is looking at Ukraine. So are Giuliani and Solomon.
And so, a CIA agent working at the White House gets all of that information, into a neat package in the whistleblower complaint, was elevated by senior intelligence officials even though it was erroneous, which fortunately was rejected by the Justice Department, and then the classified information was illegally parceled out to the New York Times and Washington Post by somebody in order to make it public.
Within a week of the reporting House Democrats are ready to impeach Trump.
That’s a lot of coincidences.
So, did the CIA just try to overthrow President Trump and to discredit Attorney General Barr, Giuliani and Solomon to cover up the origins of the Russiagate investigation by intelligence agencies that falsely accused Trump and his campaign of being Russian agents in 2016, and to protect Biden?
And what did Biden know about the Russiagate investigation and when did he know it?
Maybe not, and maybe nothing. But if this were a novel, I’d say we are getting to the interesting part.
Gary Bauer writes:
Blumenthal’s Bluster
As the impeachment of President Trump begins, the battle lines are hardening. Senator Lindsey Graham dismissed the allegations against the president as “a nothing burger.” Senator Richard Blumenthal had a visceral reaction to Graham’s quip, saying:
“Donald Trump is going to choke on this supposed nothing burger. He will go down with this supposed nothing burger in his throat because what it shows is repeated, concerted, premeditated criminal conduct.”
I found Blumenthal’s statement very revealing. Like much of Hollywood’s “art,” (here and here) it reveals the degree of hatred festering on the left toward Donald Trump.
My old friend Bill Bennett, commenting on this raw hatred, said it reminded him of the animosity Inspector Javert had for Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, which had tragic results.
Sadly, I suspect the left has given little thought as to how it might heal the wounds caused by impeachment or how it might begin to help reunite the country that has been so divided by its extreme policies and growing anti-Americanism.
But let me remind you, my friends, that the left’s hatred isn’t just about Donald Trump. It’s about you. It’s about me. It’s about all the 63 million “deplorable and irredeemable” people who voted for Donald Trump. They tell us that all the time.
The left’s rage didn’t begin with Donald Trump. It smeared Ronald Reagan, Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, George W. Bush, John McCain and even Mitt Romney. The left viciously attacked Brett Kavanaugh and it is still attacking him.
Today is the anniversary of Christine Blasey Ford’s Senate hearing. And Kamala Harris is still demanding Kavanaugh’s impeachment.
Where We Stand
It is hard for anyone to keep up with all the nuances of this dispute, and the developments that have taken place at such a rapid pace. Of course, that’s the left’s goal — to confuse and demoralize conservatives. But let me just summarize where we are:
An anonymous CIA employee, with an identified anti-Trump bias, has filed a complaint about a presidential phone call to another head of state.
The employee was not on the call.
His identity, and those of anyone he worked with, is being hidden.
What he alleged has been shown from the transcript to be false, and there are numerous inconsistencies in the complaint.
On this basis, we’re being told by virtually every Democrat and reporter in America that the president must be removed from office.
That’s it.
The Deep State
From the time of the campaign all the way until now, the president has been under repeated attacks from elements of America’s intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI. Many of the people, like Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, and Strzok, have been removed. But there are still many more who have not been identified and “weeded out.”
The president has appointed various people he was told would clean house. Former Indiana Senator Dan Coats, an old friend of mine, was named director of national intelligence. But he quickly became a mouthpiece for the agency he was running rather than a reformer of the agency. Thanks for nothing, Dan.
Early in his administration, a CIA official resigned and wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post lambasting the president. He was promptly hired to be a commentator for NBC News. More recently, an intelligence analyst at the State Department used his resignation to make a big splash in the news.
The current controversy reportedly originated with an employee at the CIA. The current head of the CIA is Gina Haspel, a career officer and the first woman to lead the CIA.
The president was told, and we were all told, that she was the ultimate professional who would not tolerate any nonsense. Clearly, she needs to call in all agency supervisors and review the rules regarding their involvement in partisan politics.
It is worth remembering that even before the inauguration, then President-elect Trump was expressing his frustration with the intelligence community. At the time, Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer bragged to Rachel Maddow, “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
If this abuse of our intelligence agencies cannot be ended, then the globalists have won and we have lost the country. I pray and still believe that is not true. But the jury is still out.
So referencing a bullshit footnote to the NYT article referred to in Ramano’s article: “In an interview with Fox News on 8 August, Mr. Giuliani claimed that Mr. John Durham, whom Attorney General Barr designated to lead this probe, was ‘spending a lot of time in Europe’ because he was ‘investigating Ukraine.’ I do not know the extent to which, if at all, Mr. Giuliani is directly coordinating his efforts on Ukraine with Attorney General Barr or Mr. Durham.” I have a footnote with more honesty:
I do not know the “extent to which, if at all, Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi have been doing the nasty” but the calumny is clear and I am heavily invested in eye wash sales to boot.