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Dissecting the whistleblower transcript today

COTO said:
If we consider this a legitimate grievance, you're basically arguing that any time the US is in the midst of some kind of agreement (trade, arms, whatever) with a foreign nation, the US President can't ask the foreign leader to do something or--Heaven forbid--look into something because it's summarily quid pro quo.

Don't get me wrong. Quid pro quo exists and it's a serious offense, but we can't reasonably conclude it exists based on nothing but the temporal proximity of a request to a deal in progress. There has to be some evidence of "Do this or else the deal gets it." Forgive me but I presently see no evidence of this.

What makes this even more of a debacle for the Democrats is that the "favor or advantage granted" is asking Pres. Zelensky to investigate a claim that his prosecutor was bought off by Joe Biden's son. If you had something on the transcript like "Sign off on my son's hotels or we might reconsider the missile deal," well there you go, but "Yeah, the Democrats' frontrunner's son bragged about buying off your lead prosecutor. Might want to look into that."? Ni de aquí a Lima. The Democrats are going to wind up with egg on their faces if they try to sell that as an impeachable offense.

If he's as corrupt as they say, he's going to slip up sooner or later, they're going to get real "Sign off on my son's hotels or we might reconsider the missile deal"-in-the-transcript evidence, and then they maybe have a shot at changing some hearts and minds. Until then, they're sucking air and possibly handing the man his second term. He's going to be Moby Dick to their Ahab.
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Quid pro quo is fine when its between two governments. It might seem unsavory, but it's been going on for centuries. However, quid pro quo between one government and someone needing help with his reelection is not fine. There is zero indication that Trump was doing anything that would be of benefit to the United States; it was all being done on behalf of his own reelection.
 
veritas1 said:
Please man. The documents were all released. Nothing is hidden. BTW, Durbin, Menendez and Leahy all sent a letter to the Ukraine threatening them unless they cooperated with Mueller.

It got almost no attention, but in May, CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake.

Democrats’ double standard on Ukraine | Marc Thiessen
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What does that have to do with the President using his personal attorney and the country's AG to dig up dirt on his political rival as a "favor", and presumably held millions of dollars over his head while doing it?

The Mueller investigation was a real investigation, and it involved a man named Paul Manafort and his dealings with the Ukraine.
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
Let me ask you something: Given that he needed the aid was the Ukrainian president free to say, "No, I won't help you investigate Biden"?
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Yes?

Why not?

"He's full of bluster, Mr. President. What he's claiming isn't true. I can confirm that."

Or how about:

"We'd best not do that, Mr. President, it might have the appearance of impropriety."

I don't see why he would reasonably refuse in the first place, if not for these reasons. There's also the very real possibility that he already did open an investigation--quietly.

Another question you and everyone else here have to answer is: during the Obama-era "IRS-gate" scandal where conservative groups were supposedly being targeted for additional scrutiny for tax-exempt status, and all the major players at the IRS pled the Fifth, which side were you on? "A little extra scrutiny never hurt anybody. There's nothing to see here." or "This is targeted attack on conservatives and grossly unethical."?

How well does your position then mesh with your position now?
 
Holy crap. It's way worse than I thought it would be.
 
HumblePi said:
I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago

"In December 2015, I was an investigative reporter in the Washington bureau of the Times. That month, I published a story reporting that Vice President Joe Biden had traveled to Ukraine, in part to send a message to the Ukrainian government that it needed to crack down on corruption.

But I wrote that his anti-corruption message might be undermined by the association of his son Hunter with one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies, Burisma Holdings, and with its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Zlochevsky had been Ukraine’s ecology minister under former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian leader who had been forced into exile in Russia.

Hunter Biden had joined the board of Burisma in April 2014, the same month that British officials froze Zlochevsky’s London bank accounts containing $23 million. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, an independent government agency, was conducting a money-laundering investigation and refused to allow Zlochevsky or Burisma Holdings, the company’s chief legal officer, and another company owned by Zlochevsky access to the accounts.

But the British money-laundering investigation was stymied by Ukrainian prosecutors’ refusal to cooperate. The Ukrainian prosecutors would not turn over documents needed in the British investigation, and without that documentary evidence, a British court ordered Britain’s Serious Fraud Office to unfreeze the assets.

In September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt gave a speech in which he attacked the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office for failing to cooperate with the British investigation. In his speech — which I quoted in my story — Pyatt mentioned Burisma’s owner by name.

“In the case of former Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky, the U.K. authorities had seized $23 million in illicit assets that belonged to the Ukrainian people,” Pyatt said. Officials at the prosecutor general’s office, he added, were asked by the United Kingdom “to send documents supporting the seizure. Instead they sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys attesting that there was no case against him. As a result, the money was freed by the U.K. court, and shortly thereafter the money was moved to Cyprus.”

When Joe Biden arrived in Ukraine in December 2015 to press for more aggressive anti-corruption efforts by the government, Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma made his father’s demands, however well-intentioned, appear politically awkward and hypocritical. That was the point of my story. I quoted Edward C. Chow, who follows Ukrainian policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who said the involvement of the vice president’s son with Zlochevsky’s firm undermined the Obama administration’s anti-corruption message in Ukraine.

“Now you look at the Hunter Biden situation, and on the one hand you can credit the father for sending the anticorruption message,” Chow said. “But I think unfortunately it sends the message that a lot of foreign countries want to believe about America, that we are hypocritical about these issues.”

In fact, Hunter Biden has been the black sheep of the Biden family for years. He was the younger son who could never live up to the example set by his older brother, Beau, an Iraq war veteran and the attorney general of Delaware who died of brain cancer in 2015, cutting short a promising political career.

In 2014, Hunter Biden was discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine use. He had also been involved in a hedge fund with his uncle, James Biden, Joe Biden’s brother, that went bad in the face of lawsuits involving the Bidens and a business partner.

Hunter Biden was the family millstone around Joe Biden’s neck, the kind of chronic problem relative that plagues many political families. George H.W. Bush had his son Neil; Jimmy Carter had his brother Billy.

Still, when Joe Biden went to Ukraine, he was not trying to protect his son — quite the reverse."
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I fear the truth is too complicated for people to understand.

I called into this conservative radio show to debunk the Biden corruption lie. I explained this to them. They ignored it. They saw the video of Biden bragging and they refuse to believe it was anything other than corruption.

It amazes me that these people would believe the same man who said Obama birth certificate was fake and who said Ted Cruz' father was involved in the JFK assassination.
 
veritas1 said:
You can't win and you know it. Therefore, rather than let democracy work, you want to subvert it. That's been the intention since the election. You can't beat Trump at the ballot box and it galls you to no end.
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Trump is gonna be defeated in the next election, but, for the first time ever (with today's release) I think he actually will be impeached.

Nixon and Trump. Leaving office.

Christians. Left holding the corrupt bag.
 
Airyaman said:
Quid pro quo is fine when its between two governments. It might seem unsavory, but it's been going on for centuries. However, quid pro quo between one government and someone needing help with his reelection is not fine. There is zero indication that Trump was doing anything that would be of benefit to the United States; it was all being done on behalf of his own reelection.
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You're assuming Pres. Zelensky couldn't say 'no', knew he couldn't say 'no', and Pres. Trump knew Zelensky knew he couldn't say 'no'. All speculation based on temporal proximity. No other evidence to support it.

It's evidence of Pres. Trump's lack of forethought and political savvy. I'll grant you that much.
 
Hypothetical said:
that letter does not say what you state, at all.
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OF COURSE the newly elected president of Ukraine Zelensky wanted US weapons desperately!! Trump was intentionally stalling handing over the money to buy anti-tank missiles, the Javelins. Russia was right at their door and howling to take over more of the Ukraine. This was an extremely tenuous situation for Zelensky to be put into. He was forced against a wall by Trump and he knew it.

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COTO said:
You're assuming Pres. Zelensky couldn't say 'no', knew he couldn't say 'no', and Pres. Trump knew Zelensky knew he couldn't say 'no'. All speculation based on temporal proximity. No other evidence to support it.

It's evidence of Pres. Trump's lack of forethought and political savvy. I'll grant you that much.
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This has nothing to do with the other party saying "no". It has everything to do with Trump basically saying "You want us to sell you the Javelins? OK, do me a favor...".
 
COTO said:
Quid pro quo exists and it's a serious offense, but we can't reasonably conclude it exists based on nothing but the temporal proximity of a request to a deal in progress. There has to be some evidence of "Do this or else the deal gets it."
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You have a point Guiliani admitted that "cleaning up corruption" was a precondition of getting funds. But it's a bit obvious given Guiliani's involvement and Trump's mention of Biden that the "corruption" they were interested in was Biden.

The fact that Trump suspended the aid before the call, then released it after the whistleblower suggests quid pro quo. Why else was the aid that Congress approved suspended?

Finally, if you insist that a politician must explicitly state the quid pro quo then corruption will be impossible to prosecute. Only idiots explicitly state things. Trump is an idiot but not that big an idiot.
 
CaughtInThe said:
Trump is gonna be defeated in the next election, but, for the first time ever (with today's release) I think he actually will be impeached.

Nixon and Trump. Leaving office.

Christians. Left holding the corrupt bag.
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In an ideal world, he's impeached, the Senate doesn't convict him but his approval rating drops to 28% like Nixon at the end. Then he hangs like an albatross around the GOP's neck until the election.
 
HumblePi said:
OF COURSE the newly elected president of Ukraine Zelensky wanted US weapons desperately!! Trump was intentionally stalling handing over the money to buy anti-tank missiles, the Javelins. Russia was right at their door and howling to take over more of the Ukraine. This was an extremely tenuous situation for Zelensky to be put into. He was forced against a wall by Trump and he knew it.

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You keep reposting this but it says nothing. What does Biden have to do with Crowdstrike?
 
Airyaman said:
This has nothing to do with the other party saying "no". It has everything to do with Trump basically saying "You want us to sell you the Javelins? OK, do me a favor...".
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If there was anything remotely close to your paraphrase in the transcript, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
 
Airyaman said:
This has nothing to do with the other party saying "no". It has everything to do with Trump basically saying "You want us to sell you the Javelins? OK, do me a favor...".
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These people will be in denial for 6 months to 2 years.
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
I fear the truth is too complicated for people to understand.

I called into this conservative radio show to debunk the Biden corruption lie. I explained this to them. They ignored it. They saw the video of Biden bragging and they refuse to believe it was anything other than corruption.

It amazes me that these people would believe the same man who said Obama birth certificate was fake and who said Ted Cruz' father was involved in the JFK assassination.
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It's a choice. They can read just as well as anyone. They can comprehend what they read. Yet, they will dismiss what they've read, they will ignore substantiation and documentation of facts. It doesn't matter when there's deceitful men like Devin Nunes sitting in the US Senate. And by the way..... not that this has any meaning to anyone but myself. When this hearing began and Devin Nunes was to make his statement and welcomed Joseph Mcguire, both of them shared a very telling smile-grin-signal of cooperation. That's what I clearly saw and didn't see it between Mcguire and any other Senator.
 
SonOfDaedalus said:
In an ideal world, he's impeached, the Senate doesn't convict him but his approval rating drops to 28% like Nixon at the end. Then he hangs like an albatross around the GOP's neck until the election.
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I didn't think I would actually say this but with today's information, which is the tip of the iceberg, I think republicans in the senate have a good chance of impeaching him.

And that's a huge thing.
 
COTO said:
If there was anything remotely close to your paraphrase in the transcript, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
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That's basically what he said. It's right from the call memo. From that memo (there is nothing in between what Zelensky says and how Trump responds):

President Zelenskyy:...We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes

The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf
 
Airyaman said:
This has nothing to do with the other party saying "no". It has everything to do with Trump basically saying "You want us to sell you the Javelins? OK, do me a favor...".
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If only he had said that...but he didnt. In fact, Trump never mentioned anything about it. Once you make your way through the liberal hyperventilation, there is nothing here.
 
Fletch said:
If only he had said that...but he didnt. In fact, Trump never mentioned anything about it. Once you make your way through the liberal hyperventilation, there is nothing here.
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That's basically what he said. It's right from the call memo. From that memo (there is nothing in between what Zelensky says and how Trump responds):

President Zelenskyy:...We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes

The President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Unclassified09.2019.pdf

Who are you going to believe, your lying eyes or...?
 
Fletch said:
You keep reposting this but it says nothing. What does Biden have to do with Crowdstrike?
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Here -- let me help you out and spell out the real meaning of the words for your either extremely naive or totally corrupted Trump mind.


President Zelensky: Ukraine is under attack. I am a new president and I ran on the platform that I will get money from the US to buy missiles to strike back at Russia and I will do this no matter what I have to promise to the US president. If I agree to anything, he will give us our money and weapons.

President Trump: Zelensky knows I have him and the Ukraine by the balls. I stalled him getting our money as long as I could and Congress is forcing me to release it. Before I do, I'm going to insist to Zelensky that he will agree to investigating Joe Biden and I'm going to insist to Zelensky to say that the DNC server was in the Ukraine and that it was the DNC that hacked the election and not the Russians.
 
CaughtInThe said:
I didn't think I would actually say this but with today's information, which is the tip of the iceberg, I think republicans in the senate have a good chance of impeaching him.

And that's a huge thing.
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How about you dems hold a vote in the House first?
 
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