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Ukraine Tag

A U.S. official said that the Pentagon has a "high level of confidence" that Iran shot down the Ukrainian plane after takeoff in Tehran on Wednesday:
Investigators are trying to determine what downed the Ukraine International Airlines flight on Wednesday. The probe is expected to be particularly thorny, with heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran over the killing of a top Iranian general likely to complicate international cooperation.

As the intricate web of foreign business interest ties to American politicians becomes more clear, it turns out that the progeny of the Speaker of the House may be entangled in its threads.

Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Rep. Adam Schiff, the House Intel Committee Chairman who beclowned himself repeatedly in the Trump/Russia conspiracy mongering, had knowledge of the whistle-blower's concerns about Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian president before an official complaint was filed.

A photo revealed on Monday's Tucker Carlson tonight seems to contradict what former Vice President Biden told reporters last month -- that he'd never discussed his son Hunter's foreign business deals with him. The photo taken in 2014 shows "former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter golfing in the Hamptons with Devon Archer, who served on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings with Hunter," reports Fox News.

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.