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Trump Ukraine Tag

A plain reading of the so-called Whistleblower Complaint supports the reporting by the New York Times and others that the complainant is in the intelligence community, likely the CIA. It's not so much a whistleblower complaint as a closing argument crafted by lawyers based on information the complainant never witnessed in order to create a pretext for impeachment, or at a minimum to damage Trump's 2020 prospects.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but this seems a little odd. Sean Davis at The Federalist reported that the intelligence community removed an important requirement when it comes to whistleblower information:
Between May 2018 and August 2019, the intelligence community secretly eliminated a requirement that whistleblowers provide direct, first-hand knowledge of alleged wrongdoings. This raises questions about the intelligence community’s behavior regarding the August submission of a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump. The new complaint document no longer requires potential whistleblowers who wish to have their concerns expedited to Congress to have direct, first-hand knowledge of the alleged wrongdoing that they are reporting.

John Solomon, the executive VP at The Hill, downloaded explosive documents on Thursday that contradict Vide President Joe Biden's story on Ukraine. Biden insists he pressured then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire top prosecutor Viktor Shokin because of allegations of corruption. However, Shokin swore in a statement that Biden's true motive lied in his investigation into Burisma Holdings. Biden's son Hunter sat on the company's board.

One thing we can safely conclude at this point is that the current impeachment push is not about the content of Trump's phone conversation with Ukraine's president Zelensky or the "whistleblower" report, although the Democrats and NeverTrumpers will probably continue to pretend it is, at least for a while.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire testified before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning. He answered questions to the best of his ability over the whistleblower report on the phone call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The House committee released the whistleblower's unclassified report this morning.

The Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel determined that the whistleblower on the phone call with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not present an "urgent concern" nor do officials have to hand over the account to Congress. The intelligence community inspector general also discovered the whistleblower "showed indications of 'political bias' and was 'in favor of a rival candidate'" of Trump's. Despite that conclusion, the House and Senate have the whistleblower's account.

President Donald Trump released the transcript of his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that took place on July 25 from 9:03 AM to 9:33 AM. It shows that he asked Zelensky for a review on Vice President Joe Biden's family dealings in Ukraine. However, Trump did not threaten to withhold "military aid as part of a quid-pro-quo, as Democrats have suggested in pressing forward with impeachment."

The Ukraine scandal food fight is about to get a whole lot more interesting. Tuesday, Trump announced via Twitter that he would release the "complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript of my phone conversation with President Zelensky of Ukraine." In this particular conversation, Trump has been accused of pressuring Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Biden, whose son's company received favorable business dealings with Ukrainians while Biden was in office.

We are in the middle of a media feeding frenzy over a supposed intelligence community whistleblower complaint on Trump's conversation last summer with the Ukrainian president. We know almost nothing about the complaint or the conversation, but that has not stopped a full-blown "we've got him now!" type joyfulness throughout the mainstream media and Never-Trump-land.