OPEN-SOURCES TIMELINE-ORGANIZED OUTLINE OF UKRAINE CORRUPTION INTERFERENCE CONNECTED TO HUNTER BIDEN, 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, AND 2019 ICIG ‘WHISTLEBLOWER’ ACTIVITY CONT.

PART FIVE

2019 ------------------------------

STATE DEPT REQUESTED VISITS

The call was preceded by visits between Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian official Andrei Zermak, at the very request of the State Department, part of a diplomatic effort to repair relations with Ukraine and newly elected president Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky has been trying since last summer to hand over evidence of corruption by Americans in Ukraine during the Obama administration. Those efforts faltered when the U.S. Embassy in Kiev failed to issue visas in a timely manner so they could hand over this evidence, and when thereafter Ukraine hired a former U.S. attorney to hand over the evidence to the U.S. Attorney in New York, they got no response. The evidence involved efforts by the Democratic National Committee to pressure the Ukrainian government to meddle in our election, and the payoff to Joe Biden’s (and apparently John Kerry’s) son as well. At each step of the way, Giuliani informed U.S. officials of the discussions.

THE CALL

Minister Vadym Prystaiko was a participant in the discussions between the U.S. and Ukraine and has specific knowledge of the phone call.  Minister Prystaiko says the phone call was long, friendly and covered a variety of important issues.  There was no undue pressure or “coercion” from U.S. President Donald Trump. 

WHISTLING IN THE DARK

CNN reported Thursday that the intelligence community inspector general suggested to the House Intelligence Committee that the complaint raised concerns about multiple actions. He would not say whether those instances involved Trump, sources familiar with the closed-door briefing told CNN. The inspector general, Michael Atkinson, was legally unable to discuss the complaint itself, since Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has declined to hand it over. Democrats say he is compelled to provide the complaint under whistleblower legislation, and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said his committee may take legal action if it isn't turned over. The Washington Post on Wednesday said the complaint referenced a "promise" Trump allegedly made to the unidentified leader...

The whistleblower didn't have direct knowledge of the communications, an official briefed on the matter told CNN. Instead, the whistleblower's concerns came in part from learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work, and those details have played a role in the administration's determination that the complaint didn't fit the reporting requirements under the intelligence whistleblower law, the official said.

What is going on here? Some employee at CIA learned of a phone call between President Trump and some foreign leader. This employee did not like what the president said. And because the conversation involved classified information, he called himself a “whistleblower” and informed “former officials,” who took what is now “Whistleblower-gate” to the Washington Post. The anonymous CIA employee also informed another like-minded employee, the agency’s inspector general, who promptly took the allegations to the House Intelligence Committee’s Democrats. In turn, they promptly demanded Trump’s conversation be made public.

INVESTIGATING THE COMPLAINT

A whistleblower complaint about President Trump made by an intelligence official centers on Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter, which has set off a struggle between Congress and the executive branch. The complaint involved communications with a foreign leader and a “promise” that Trump made, which was so alarming that a U.S. intelligence official who had worked at the White House went to the inspector general of the intelligence community, two former U.S. officials said. Two and a half weeks before the complaint was filed, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political newcomer who was elected in a landslide in May. That call is already under investigation by House Democrats who are examining whether Trump and his attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani sought to manipulate the Ukrainian government into helping Trump’s reelection campaign. Lawmakers have demanded a full transcript and a list of participants on the call. (read more) Three Democrat-controlled house committees – Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Government Reform – have announced that they will investigate whether a host of ethical and legal rules have been violated.

A lawyer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence “had contradicted the inspector general and found that the whistleblower complaint did not meet the statutory definition of an urgent concern because it involved a matter not under the DNI’s jurisdiction.” Inspector General Michael Atkinson made it clear when he testified behind closed doors to members of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday that he disagreed with the lawyer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “Atkinson told lawmakers…he felt the matter was under the DNI’s purview – and also that it was urgent ‘in the common understanding of the word.” According to two people familiar with his testimony, “Atkinson told the committee that the complaint did not stem from just one conversation.” In the three hours of his closed door testimony, Atkinson “repeatedly declined to discuss with members the content of the complaint, saying he was not authorized to do so.”

The house committees’ chairs say they will scrutinise a telephone call between the US president and Mr Zelensky on 25 July, during which Mr Trump allegedly told the Ukrainian president to reopen the Biden investigation if he wanted to improve relations with the US. They claim that Kurt Volker, the US special representative for Ukraine, was told to intercede with President Zelensky by the White House, and they are looking into the activities of Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trump’s personal lawyer. Mr Giuliani urged Mr Zelensky soon after his election to focus on the Biden case, but the Ukrainian president is said to have refused, protesting that he did not want to get drawn into American internal politics. This led to Mr Giuliani cancelling a trip to Kiev, saying he felt that he would be “walking into a group of people that are the enemies of our president … in some cases the enemies of the United States”.

GIULIANI’S HEATED ‘CONFESSION’

During a heated exchange, host Chris Cuomo asked Giuliani diretly “Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?” “No, actually I didn’t. I asked the Ukraine to investigate the allegations that there was interference in the election of 2016 by the Ukrainians for the benefit of Hillary Clinton, for which there is already a court finding,” Giuliani responded. Cuomo asked him again “”You never asked anything about Hunter Biden? You never asked anything about Joe Biden and his role with the prosecutor?” “The only thing I asked about Joe Biden is to get to the bottom of how it was that Lutsenko, who was appointed, dismissed the case,” Giuliani said. Cuomo pressed the issue, “So you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?” “Of course I did,” Giuliani said. When asked about his contradicting answer, Giuliani tried to clarify by saying he didn’t ask specifically for Joe Biden to be investigated but asked Ukrainian officials “to look into the allegations that related to my client, which tangentially involved Joe Biden in a massive bribery scheme.”

ENDLESS SMEAR OPPORTUNITIES

Since there is zero chance of any president disclosing the contents of private conversations with foreign heads of state, a standoff ensued. That guarantees endless opportunities for the intelligence community to leak ludicrous tales without substance. These are the empty calories that sustain the ruling class’s 2020 campaign. 

BROAD AUTHORITY

The Washington Post, after a thousand words in a story that speculates on Trump’s dangerous, possibly unconstitutional behavior, includes the following half-sentence: “ [legal experts] also noted that the president has broad authority to decide unilaterally when to classify or declassify information. Not quite. The president’s authority over national security information is more than broad. It is total. All who exercise such authority do so on his behalf and by his leave. That is because any and all foreign intelligence activities—which are subordinate to foreign and military policy in general—are pursuant to the president’s judgment... arguably the most naked, most shameless attempt yet by the deep state to strike a blow at Trump by going to the press with an interpretation of classified information that neither the press nor the public has seen, will not see, and that concerns an activity that, in itself, is perfectly proper and indeed constitutes the president doing his job.

The identity of the person the press claims is a whistleblower is unknown as yet. He, as the Other McCain notes, is almost certainly “a Democrat operative [snip] a perfect example of the ‘Deep State’ problem that Trump’s supporters have been talking about for three years. The bureaucrats seem to believe they should have more influence on U.S. policy than the President himself, if the President doesn’t share their world view.”  As the President observed earlier, all his conversations with foreign leaders are surely listened in on by various members of the intelligence community here and abroad, so the report of a “whistleblower” having access to secretive conversations seems utter bunk. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, through the agency’s counsel, declined to turn over  the complaint to Congress, indicating it was not “urgent,” a threshold that must be met before turning over such complaints, and that the allegations in the complaint concern “conduct by someone outside the Intelligence Community” and that they involve “confidential and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community.”  In any event, this leaker (not a whistleblower, in my view) was operating on limited facts...

REFUSING TO FORWARD THE COMPLAINT TO CONGRESS

If you think for a moment that the decision by the DNI not to turn over the leaker’s complaint to Congress was inappropriate, consider this:

1.Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping power to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate with leaders of other nations, make demands or offer promises.  The Constitution does not grant the power of review, approval or disapproval to spies or other unelected officials in the executive branch.

2.The ICWPA law defines the parameters of an “urgent concern” complaint as an abuse or violation of law “relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.”  The president’s conversation with a foreign leader does not seem to fall under this whistleblower definition. 

3.It appears the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) agrees with this assessment. His agency’s general counsel wrote a letter stating the complaint did not meet the ICWPA definition because it involved conduct “from someone outside the intel community and did not relate to intelligence activity,” according to a report by Fox News. This is why the DNI refused to forward the complaint to congress. 

Despite the paucity of facts, some reasonable observations and conclusions can be drawn.

1 It appears that an American spy in one of our intelligence agencies may have been spying on our own president.  The complaint suggests that this intel agent was listening in on Trump’s conversation with a foreign leader.  Was this person officially asked to listen to the conversation or was he or she secretly listening in? We don’t know.

2 This agent, who is an unelected and inferior federal employee in the government hierarchy, apparently believes that it is his/her job to second-guess the motivation behind the words of the elected president, who is the most superior officer in the U.S. government. 

3 Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping power to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate with leaders of other nations, make demands or offer promises.  The Constitution does not grant the power of review, approval or disapproval to spies or other unelected officials in the executive branch. 

4 The ICWPA law defines the parameters of an “urgent concern” complaint as an abuse or violation of law “relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.”  The president’s conversation with a foreign leader does not seem to fall under this whistleblower definition. 

5 It appears the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) agrees with this assessment. His agency’s general counsel wrote a letter stating the complaint did not meet the ICWPA definition because it involved conduct “from someone outside the intel community and did not relate to intelligence activity,” according to a report by Fox News. This is why the DNI refused to forward the complaint to congress. 

To put this in plain language, a spy who allegedly spied on the president does not have a legitimate whistleblower complaint against that president under the law.  The ICWPA is a mechanism to report alleged misconduct by members within the intelligence community, of which the president is not.  Yes, the alphabet soup of intel agencies ultimately report to the president, but that does not make Trump a member of that community and subject to its rules of conduct.

CONTINUES