Emails In Ukraine Scandal Point Directly To Trump

It has been several weeks since President Trump was impeached, but the evidence for abuse of power continues to roll in. Earlier this week, the defense website, Just Security, obtained unredacted emails that point directly to President Trump’s involvement in delaying aid to Ukraine and show that Administration officials questioned the legality of the move.

The emails were originally released in redacted form in December in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Center for Public Integrity. A federal court mandated that the government release 300 pages of emails, which were made public in two batches on Dec. 12 an Dec. 20. The emails obtained by Just Security can be compared with the redacted releases to confirm their accuracy as well as determine what the Trump Administration considered worthy of censorship.

Among the revelations from the redacted emails was the news that the Ukrainian aid was delayed immediately after the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. CNN reported last month that the redacted emails showed that efforts to freeze the aid began about 90 minutes after the phone call concluded.

Although the president’s interest in the aid predated the phone call, Michael Duffey, associate director of national security programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), emailed Pentagon officials within hours of the call, instructing them to “please hold off on any additional DOD obligations of these funds….”

“Given the sensitive nature of the request,” Duffey added, “I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute the direction.”

Duffey was among the White House officials subpoenaed by House Democrats during the impeachment hearings last year. He did not comply with the subpoena and failed to show up at the hearing.

The emails show that Pentagon officials were concerned that the freeze violated the Impoundment Control Act. The law requires certain steps if the executive branch does not spend money appropriated by Congress. These steps, including congressional notification, were never taken by the Trump Administration. The Administration also never provided a rationale that explained either the initial freeze or its subsequent release.

Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Elaine McCusker followed up with an email to Mark Sandy at the OMB asking if the pause had been approved by legal counsel. The question was redacted in the original email release.

Sandy formalized the freeze on July 25 with a footnote in a budget document that held the money until Aug. 5. Initially, the hold was not deemed to affect the expenditure of the money by the end of the fiscal year.

The next day, July 26, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood emailed Secretary of Defense Mark Esper expressed unanimous agreement among the “Ukraine Deputies Small Group” that the aid should be released. The same email notes that the freeze was at “the President’s direction via the Chief of Staff [Mick Mulvaney].”

On Aug. 6, Duffey notified McCusker that the freeze was being extended. On Aug. 9, McCusker notified Duffey and Sandy at OMB that time was running out to spend the money before the end of the fiscal year. Subsequent emails continued to extend the freeze through the end of August, raising red flags at the Pentagon. Contractors became aware of the hold by Aug. 27 and Politico revealed the freeze publicly in an Aug. 28 story.

The emails point toward the Oval Office as the source of the freeze. In one example cited in the article, Duffey wrote on Aug. 30, that there was “clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”

Officials expressed hope that the money would be released after Vice President Pence met with Zelensky on Sept. 1, but the freeze continued after the meeting with the hold extended again on Sept. 5.

When McCusker emailed Duffey on Sept. 9 saying that the DOD would not be “able to ‘fully’ obligate by the end of FY,” Duffey responded by shifting the blame to the Pentagon, despite McCusker’s repeated warnings that time to spend the money was running out.

“OMB developed a footnote authorizing DoD to proceed with all processes necessary to obligate funds,” Duffey wrote in a formal email that copied in OMB and Pentagon lawyers. “If you have not taken these steps, that is contrary to OMB’s direction and was your decision not to proceed. If you are unable to obligate the funds, it will have been DoD’s decision that cause any impoundment of funds.”

McCusker’s incredulous response was, “You can’t be serious. I am speechless.”

Two days later, on Sept. 11, Duffey emailed McCusker that the freeze had been lifted. When she asked why, he responded, “Not exactly clear but president made the decision to go. Will fill you in when I get details.”

Just Security notes that, in the end, $35.2 million of the aid could not be spent before the fiscal year ended and it expired. The money had to be reappropriated by Congress.

As I discussed back in November, the aid was released two days after the inspector general notified members of the House Intelligence Committee about the whistleblower report. The whistleblower may have actually spurred the president to release the aid in time to avoid a larger violation of the law.

The email chains undercut Republican claims that the aid was held up due to a policy review. There is no evidence in the exchanges that any policy review was being conducted. Instead, officials bided their time while trying to convince the president and the OMB that the freeze was a bad idea. At the same time, many sought legal advice because they were concerned that they could become scapegoats if the money was not released in time for the money to be spent, which would have been a definite violation of the law.

The emails point directly at the president as the source of the freeze. The timing of the freeze points back toward President Trump’s request for the “favor” of a Ukrainian investigation into Crowdstrike and the Bidens as a motive for delaying the aid. The incriminating email exchanges between White House and Pentagon officials also explains why the Trump Administration refused to allow its staffers to testify and ignored congressional subpoenas for documentation about the freeze.

Further, comparing the redactions with the full emails shows that the Justice Department attempted to conceal Pentagon concerns about the freeze. Many of the emails that were redacted contain questions about the legality of the delay and warnings that the money might not be spent in time to comply with the Impoundment Act.

The release also shows that the Democratic decision to rush impeachment was an error. While this error has been somewhat mitigated by Speaker Pelosi’s decision to delay referring the articles of impeachment to the Senate and deny Donald Trump the ability to conduct a pro forma trial while information is still coming out, the House could have done a much better job of investigating the incident. If a third party organization could obtain this information quickly through the Freedom of Information Act, there is no reason that the House could not have asked courts to enforce its subpoenas and compelled Duffey and others to testify.

With the new information, the House can still rectify its mistake. House Democrats should reopen the impeachment investigation and keep digging. The officials mentioned in the email chains have firsthand information linking the freeze to the president. Congress – and the American public – needs to hear from them.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump Just Threw Giuliani Under The Bus

That thumping sound that you just heard was Donald Trump tossing his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, under the wheels of the presidential limo. Yesterday, the president denied that Giuliani was working in Ukraine on his behalf.

When asked by Bill O’Reilly on his radio program what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine on his behalf, President Trump answered, “Well, you have to ask that to Rudy, but Rudy, I don't, I don't even know. I know he was going to go to Ukraine and I think he canceled a trip. But, you know, Rudy has other clients other than me. I'm one person.”

“So, you didn't direct him to go there on your behalf?” O’Reilly probed.

“No, but you have to understand, Rudy is a great corruption fighter,” Trump responded. “He's one of the greatest in the last 50 years.”

The president went on to suggest that Giuliani “felt personally insulted by what happened during my campaign because there were a lot of bad things happening.”

O’Reilly pushed further, saying, “Rudy Giuliani, he's your personal lawyer. Giuliani's your personal lawyer. So, you didn't direct him to go to Ukraine to do anything or put any heat on them?”

Trump continued to deny coordinating with Giuliani, answering, “No, I didn't direct him, but he's a warrior, Rudy's a warrior. Rudy went, he possibly saw something.”

President Trump’s denials are at odds with the facts. Back in May, Giuliani told the New York Times that he was traveling to Ukraine to investigate the “origin of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election” and “the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.”

At the time, Giuliani said that Trump “basically knows what I’m doing, sure, as his lawyer.”

The call summary released by the White House of President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky also undercuts Trump’s attempt to distance himself from Mr. Giuliani. Zelensky tells Trump that “one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine.”

Trump seems totally unsurprised that his lawyer has been in touch with the Ukrainian president. Responding to Zelensky, he says, “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you.”

Further, when the whistleblower scandal first broke, Giuliani claimed that his efforts were aided by the State Department. While the State Department denies that Giuliani worked for them, texts and emails released last week show that Giuliani was in contact with Secretary of State Pompeo as well as Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker.

During last week’s impeachment hearings, witnesses testified that the president’s team instructed diplomats to “talk to Rudy.” Ambassador George Kent also testified that Giuliani vetoed a proposed “anti-corruption statement” to be presented by President Zelensky because it did not mention the Bidens or Burisma.

Mr. Giuliani is currently the subject of three different federal investigations. In addition to both counterintelligence and criminal investigations into his activities in Ukraine, the US attorney in Manhattan and DOJ are investigating his business activities and the FBI is investigating whether he may have been influenced by a foreign government. Additionally, four of Giuliani’s associates have already been charged with campaign finance violations.

The prospect of Trump throwing Giuliani to the wolves raises interesting possibilities. If Giuliani senses that he is being hung out to dry, he has already hinted that he has damaging information about Donald Trump. Just last week, Giuliani said in an interview with Fox News, “I've seen things written like he's going to throw me under the bus. When they say that, I say he isn't, but I have insurance.”

Later, Giuliani tried to walk back his comment, tweeting that it was “sarcastic” and claiming it related to the “Biden Family’s 4 decade [sic] monetizing of his office.” Logically, it hardly makes sense that dirt on Biden would prevent Trump from throwing Giuliani under the bus.

https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1198352974000644097?s=20

President Trump’s move to distance himself from Giuliani is strange, considering that Republicans say that the impeachment hearings are going nowhere. It may signal that federal investigators are closer to indicting Giuliani than was previously known. If Giuliani believes that he is being abandoned by Donald Trump, he may cooperate with House investigators and agree to testify in the impeachment hearings to protect himself.

Whatever happened between President Trump and Ukraine, Rudy Giuliani was in the middle of it. For the nation to learn the truth, Giuliani needs to testify.

Originally published on The Resurgent

The Evidence Against Trump (So Far)

After a week of public testimony in the impeachment inquiry, there are now mountains of transcripts regarding President Trump’s handling of relations with Ukraine. The argument for impeachment boils down to a comparatively few nuggets of information, however, and there is much chaff mixed with the grains of wheat. To that end, I thought it would be useful to identify some of the main pieces of evidence against the president.

So far, it is Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, who has emerged as the key witness against the president. Sondland, a Seattle millionaire who made his money in the hotel industry, was a Trump supporter in 2016 but canceled a fundraiser for the Republican nominee after Trump attacked the Khan family, Muslim-American parents of a fallen US soldier. Sondland later donated $1 million to the Trump inaugural committee and was subsequently appointed ambassador to the EU in March 2018.

In his public testimony, Sondland, who said that he did not have “access to all of my phone records, State Department e-mails and many, many other State Department documents” and was “told I could not work with my E.U. staff to pull together the relevant files and information,” said that Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker “worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the expressed direction of the president of the United States.” Together, Perry, Volker, and Sondland are referred to as “the Three Amigos.”

“We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani,” Sondland said, but “We all understood that if we refused to work with Mr. Giuliani, we would lose a very important opportunity to cement relations between the United States and Ukraine. So, we followed the president's orders.”

“Mr. Giuliani's requests were a quid pro quo for arranging a White House visit for President Zelensky,” according to Sondland. “Mr. Giuliani demanded that Ukraine make a public statement announcing the investigations of the 2016 election/DNC server and Burisma. Mr. Giuliani was expressing the desires of the president of the United States, and we knew these investigations were important to the president.”

“In July and August of 2019, we learned that the White House had also suspended security aid to Ukraine. I was adamantly opposed to any suspension of aid,” Sondland continued. “I tried diligently to ask why the aid was suspended, but I never received a clear answer; still haven't to this day.”

After President Trump told the Three Amigos to “talk with Rudy,” Sondland says that the group kept other members of the Cabinet and White House staff in the loop, stressing that they believed that they were pursuing legitimate policy goals and were not a rogue operation. Specifically, Sondland named Secretary of State Pompeo, his Counselor Ulrich Brechbuhl, his Executive Secretary Lisa Kenna, Ambassador John Bolton, Dr. Fiona Hill, Tim Morrison, Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, and Mr. Mulvaney's Senior Advisor Rob Blair. Sondland also said that he raised his concerns about the delayed aid in a meeting with Vice President Pence that included several other people. So far, all of the people named by Sondland have refused to testify with the exceptions of Hill and Morrison.

“Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said.

As it turns out, Rudy Giuliani had been working on the Ukrainians for a while already. The New York Times reported last May that Giuliani was headed to Ukraine in hopes of pushing the Ukrainians into investigating two matters that could benefit Trump in his quest for reelection. “One is the origin of the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election,” The Times said. “The other is the involvement of former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son in a gas company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch.”

Sondland said he remembered the July 10 meeting with Ukrainians and recalled “mentioning the prerequisite of investigations before any White House call or meeting.” However, he disputed the accounts of NSC staffer Fiona Hill and Lt. Col. Vindman that John Bolton abruptly terminated the meeting at that point.

Over the course of the negotiations, the prerequisite for an investigation evolved into the mere announcement of an investigation. “He had to announce the investigations,” Sondland testified. “He didn't actually have to do them, as I understood it.”

In an answer to Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent made clear the nature of the statement that Zelensky was being asked to present. “That was not an anti-corruption statement, sir,” Kent said. The Three Amigos “shared a draft with Rudy Giuliani and Rudy Giuliani said it would not be acceptable if it didn't mention Biden, Burisma, and 2016.”

Sondland did not dispute David Holmes’ account of a phone call between Sondland and the president on July 26. He also said that he had no reason to believe that investigations were not discussed as Holmes testified. He said that the subject of the Burisma investigation likely came up because “because we had been hearing about it from Rudy and we presumed Rudy was getting it from the president.”

Sondland said that he first learned about the hold on the Ukrainian aid package on July 18. It was in this conference call that Ambassador Taylor testified that a White House Office of Management and Budget employee had said “her boss had instructed her not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for Ukraine until further notice.” The direct “boss” of the OMB is Mick Mulvaney, who also serves as chief of staff and reports directly to the president, but the term also could have referred to President Trump himself.

Negotiations had been in process with Ukraine since May regarding the phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky. Sondland said that the White House requests began as “very generic for an investigation of corruption in a very vanilla sense” but “as time went on, more specific items got added to the menu, including the Burisma and 2016 election meddling, specifically -- the DNC server, specifically.”

While Sondland says that he was not specifically told that the aid package was subject to the same conditions as the White House meeting, he says that was the implication. Indeed, Sondland said that he relayed that belief to Andriy Yernak, a top advisor to Zelensky, just after a meeting that included Pence during the vice president’s trip to Warsaw for the Sept. 1 anniversary of the beginning of World War II. Sondland also expressed his belief that release of the aid was connected to the announcement of investigations to Taylor and Lt. Col. Vindman.

Sondland also said around Sept. 9 that he finally asked the president “an open-ended question… what do you want from Ukraine?”

He said that Trump answered, “I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Tell Zelensky to do the right thing.” However, it should be noted that Trump’s denial came as the scheme was falling apart and the White House was gearing up for damage control.

The witnesses provide important background to the summary of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelensky. Several of the witnesses were present for the call and reported that they concerned enough to talk to legal counsel. The summary itself backs up the claims of the witnesses and is itself important evidence against President Trump.

On the call, Trump first laments that the relationship between Ukraine and the US is not “reciprocal.” Zelensky then says that Ukraine would like to buy more Javelin missiles from the US. Trump immediately responds by asking for a “favor.” Trump then specifically cites Crowdstrike, the company that investigated the DNC hack in 2016 and cites a discredited conspiracy theory that the DNC server was sent to Ukraine. Zelensky then responds that his administration has already been in contact with Rudy Giuliani on the matter. Trump next asks that Zelensky “look into” Burisma but specifically mentions “Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution… and Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution.” Zelensky promises that the new Ukrainian prosecutor “will look into the situation, specifically to the company that you mentioned….”

Ambassador Sondland was not on the July 25 call and said that he only read the transcript when it was publicly released. “Looking back, I find it very odd -- very odd that neither I, nor Ambassador Taylor, nor Ambassador Volker ever received a detailed read-out of that call with the Biden references,” he mused.

If any doubt as to the motives of Trump and Giuliani remained, Giuliani admitted in a CNN interview on Sept. 20 that he asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and on Oct. 17 Mick Mulvaney told reporters at a press conference that “corruption related to the DNC server” was “why we held up the money.” Back in June, as negotiations were underway on the “anti-corruption statement,” President Trump told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, “ I think I'd take it” if a foreign country offered him dirt on a political opponent.

While it is true that no one has yet testified that President Trump directly ordered that the aid be exchanged for the Ukrainian announcement, there seems to have been no doubt among White House staff as to the president’s intent. There is an abundance of circumstantial evidence as well as the words of President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Mick Mulvaney that supports the understanding of the witnesses. There are also problems with the Republican denials.

First, only the president had the authority to delay the aid package. This is not a decision that could have been made by low-level staffers. Testimony indicates that the State, Defense, and NSC were unanimous in their disapproval of the delay even if they had the power to enact it. Even Mulvaney would not have made a call of this sort without presidential approval.

Second, the Trump Administration claimed that the aid was delayed due to concerns about corruption. In reality, the Defense Department had certified that Ukraine had met the congressional standards placed on the aid not once but twice. The first certification was in May, not long after the Times reported on Rudy Giuliani’s trip to Ukraine. The second was in July just prior to the conference call in which Sondler and Vindman learned of the hold placed by “the boss.”

Even though Ukraine had been certified as meeting the standards to receive the aid, the money was not released until more than two months later. The hold was finally removed from the aid package on Sept. 11, two days after the inspector general of the intelligence community notified Democrats and Republicans of the House intelligence committee that he had received the whistleblower complaint and found the information credible.

Finally, the Republican stonewalling lends credence to the claims of the witnesses against the Administration. So far, senior Trump Administration officials have denied the witness allegations, but have declined to do so under oath. The Administration has also refused congressional requests for documents and information. Failure to answer a congressional subpoena is itself grounds for impeachment per Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and it is fair to assume that if the Administration possessed exculpatory evidence that it would make it public.

The evidence that Donald Trump abused his office as president and bartered aid approved by Congress for an announcement of an investigation into Joe Biden that would benefit him personally is strong. The case is made stronger by the fact that Republicans who have direct knowledge of the President’s actions refuse to testify and provide exculpatory evidence. However, the president cannot escape the consequences of his actions by ordering his subordinates not to cooperate with Congress.

The Trump Administration should provide any information that could prove the president’s innocence to congressional investigators. At a minimum, Bolton, Mulvaney, and Pompeo should testify under oath so that the country can learn the truth.

To justify the president’s actions, the Trump Administration must explain why the aid to Ukraine was delayed for months and why it was not released until after the scandal broke.

If not, it’s time to impeach.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Impeachment Drives Wedge Between Trump And Pompeo

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has emerged as an official staunchly loyal to President Trump. Pompeo has worked to stonewall House Democrats in their impeachment investigation and refused to testify in the inquiry, but that may not be enough to keep him out of trouble with the president. Reports from current and recent administration officials indicate that Mr. Trump is not happy that many of Pompeo’s subordinates are speaking to Congress despite the Secretary’s instructions not to do so.

NBC News reports that “four current and former senior administration officials” have said that the president blames Secretary of State Pompeo for his appointments of several State Department officials who have recently testified about the Trump Administration’s mishandling of the foreign aid package to Ukraine. In particular, Mr. Trump is reportedly upset about the appointment of Bill Taylor, the Chargé d’Affaires Ad Interim For U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine whose testimony to House investigators established a quid pro quo in which the Trump Administration demanded favors from Ukraine to release the congressionally appropriated aid. Taylor was appointed temporary head of the Ukraine embassy last June after Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was recalled.

A senior official said that the opinion inside the White House “just felt like [Pompeo should] ‘rein your people in.’”

The impeachment inquiry has put Pompeo in a difficult position as the head of a federal department that now questions his leadership and as an advisor to a president who demands unflinching loyalty. With State Department officials alleging wrongdoing that Pompeo must have been aware of, the secretary is walking a tightrope.

“He feels like he's getting a bunch of blame from the president and the White House for having hired all these people who are turning against Trump,” an unnamed official said of Pompeo, “and that it's the State Department that is going to bring him down, so it's all Pompeo's fault.”

Back in October, Trump told reporters that Pompeo had made a mistake hiring Taylor, who he called a “Never Trumper.” Two days later, Pompeo was conspicuously absent from the national security team that was present when a US military force launched a raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pompeo was home in Kansas for a friend’s wedding.

Pompeo reportedly defended himself to the president by saying that the State Department is a large agency where he cannot be expected to know and control every employee. Nevertheless, sources say that “Pompeo feels under siege” and continues to be “iced out.” He is still present for meetings, but Trump listens to him less.

From the other side, Pompeo has lost credibility with State Department employees for not standing up to the unethical behavior of President Trump and his shadow diplomatic team. National Security Advisor Michael Bolton reportedly pushed back on the quid pro quo scheme, but there have been no reports that Pompeo tried to advise the president against the plan. He also stood by while Rudy Giuliani and his cohorts allegedly conducted a disinformation and character assassination campaign against Marie Yovanovitch. Ambassador Mike McKinley resigned over Pompeo’s refusal to defend Yovanovitch.

At its core, the friction between Trump and Pompeo is based on the fact that good people were appointed to positions in the State Department. These good people objected to the unethical conduct of the president, Rudy Giuliani, and others such as Gordon Sondland. If there had been no wrongdoing in Trump’s diplomacy, there would have been no reason for officials in the State Department to blow the whistle, but now Pompeo gets the blame for State Department employees showing disloyalty by blowing the whistle on the president’s scheme.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Here’s How Ukraine Got Its Aid Without Investigating Hunter Biden

One of the central Republican talking points in the Ukraine scandal has been that the Ukrainian aid package was ultimately released without President Trump getting his requested announcement from President Zelensky that Ukraine was opening an investigation into Hunter Biden and Burisma. If Ukraine got its aid without submitting to Trump’s demand, the president’s defenders argue, then how could there have been a quid pro quo? The answer was not always readily apparent, but, as more information comes out, the inner workings of the secret deal are becoming known.

For example, at first, it appeared that the quid pro quo for aid might relate solely to the July 25 phone call between the two presidents. After testimony from numerous Trump-appointed State Department officials, however, it now seems that trading aid for political favors had been official Trump Administration policy for weeks, if not months.

Likewise, light is also being shed on the Ukrainian side of the deal. The New York Times reported last week that, after the Ukrainians initially protested to Bill Taylor that they “did not want to be used as a pawn in a U.S. re-election campaign,” they bowed to pressure and became willing to make the announcement to get the US aid they needed to fight Russia-backed rebel forces. Accepting Trump’s demand to make an announcement would have risked jeopardizing future aid by politicizing the Ukrainian war, but the Zelensky government felt that it had no choice.

“I said that resumption of the U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anticorruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks,” Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified to Congress.

Per the Times report, President Trump wanted Zelensky to make the announcement on CNN, but, aware that Trump considered CNN to be “fake news,” the Ukrainians were concerned that an appearance on the network work would further alienate Trump. But Trump had also tweeted in August that Fox News “isn’t working for us anymore.” The Ukrainians finally scheduled an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sept. 13 in which the announcement would have been made.

As Bill Taylor testified last week, “Ambassador Sondland said that this conversation concluded with President Zelensky agreeing to make a public statement in an interview on CNN.”

Zakaria confirmed that an interview agreement was close, saying, “Things picked up around August and September, I went to Kiev to meet with him. It seemed it was confirmed. And then it fell apart.”

But why did the Zelensky interview never happen? On Sept. 9, the inspector general of the intelligence community notified Democrats and Republicans of the House intelligence committee that he had received the whistleblower complaint and found the information credible. The Trump Administration released the aid package two days later on Sept. 11.

Even at that point, it isn’t clear that President Trump authorized release of the aid. Bloomberg reported last week that, because September was the last month of the federal fiscal year, the aid money had to be spent by Sept. 30 or else it would have to be reappropriated by Congress. To spend the money by the end of the month, it had to start moving around the middle of the month because of a two-week notification requirement for Congress.

National Security Advisor John Bolton, an outspoken critic of Trump’s extortion plan, stepped up in early September and authorized the State Department to spend the money. The move reportedly took the White House by surprise. A week later, Bolton resigned.

In the end, the Republican claim of “no harm, no foul” falls apart unless you think that incompetence is an adequate defense for abuse of power. President Trump clearly intended to a quid pro quo that would have benefited his reelection campaign by smearing Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee. That the scheme fell apart before it came to fruition is not a credit to the president’s ethics and morality. Rather, the Republican argument that an unsuccessful crime is not a crime at all is reminiscent of Sideshow Bob’s claim that he was imprisoned for a crime that he did not commit.

“Attempted murder,” lamented Bob to the Simpson family way back in season six. “Now honestly what is that? Can you win a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?”

The evidence points toward an unethical quid pro quo in which President Trump abused his presidential power to attempt political gain. The attempt almost succeeded, but the fact that it failed does not exonerate the president. If he emerges from the Ukraine scandal unpunished, there is every indication that he will continue to abuse his office as long as he holds it.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Bill Taylor Transcript Links Trump Directly To Quid Pro Quo For Aid

Another day brings another transcript of testimony that eviscerates the Trump Administration’s claim that there was no quid pro quo involving foreign aid for Ukraine. The House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees released the transcript of Ambassador William Taylor, Chargé d’Affaires Ad Interim For U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, Ukraine this afternoon, which filled in details from Taylor’s opening statement, which was released previously.

In a statement accompanying the transcripts, the chairs of the three committees said, “The testimony of Ambassador Taylor—a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and nonpartisan diplomat—shows how President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine and conditioned its release, as well as a vital White House meeting, on the President of Ukraine publicly announcing investigations into debunked conspiracy theories involving the Bidens and the 2016 election.”

The link to the complete testimony can be found here while another link containing select excerpts of the testimony is here.

Among the revelations from Taylor’s testimony, Ambassador Taylor said that there was an official diplomatic channel to Ukraine that included then-Special Envoy Kurt Volker, Ambassador Sondland, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and Rudy Giuliani as well as Taylor himself. The “irregular” policy channel eventually began to diverge from official US policy toward Ukraine.

This became obvious to Taylor on July 18 when, on a conference call, he heard “a staff person from the Office of Management and Budget say that there was a hold on security assistance to Ukraine but could not say why. Toward the end of this otherwise normal meeting, a voice on the call, the person who was off-screen, said that she was from OMB and her boss had instructed her not to approve any additional spending of security assistance for Ukraine until further notice.”

Taylor and the other participants in the call were astonished. “The Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons but also the assurance of U.S. support,” he explained.

The origin of the order was said by the OMB staffer to come from President Trump. In Taylor’s words, “All that the OMB staff person said was that the directive had come from the President to the Chief of Staff to OMB.”

“In an instant, I realized that one of the key pillars of our strong support for Ukraine was threatened,” Taylor added. “The irregular policy channel was running contrary to the goals of longstanding U.S. policy,” policy that was approved by Congress. That longstanding aid included “weapons, it was training, it was the communications equipment, it was sustainables… [that] allowed Ukrainian soldiers to actually defend themselves.” The aid had been given under both the Obama and Trump Administrations.

Taylor also discussed the text message exchange with Gordon Sondland regarding the delayed aid in which Sondland asked Taylor to call him.

“During that phone call,” Taylor related, “Ambassador Sondland told me that President Trump had told him that he wants President Zelensky to state publicly that Ukraine will investigate Burisma and alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Ambassador Sondland also told me that he now recognized that he had made a mistake by earlier telling Ukrainian officials to whom he spoke that a White House meeting with President Zelensky was dependent on a public announcement of investigations. In fact, Ambassador Sondland said everything was dependent on such an announcement, including security assistance. He said that President Trump wanted President Zelensky in a box by making public statement [sic] about ordering such investigations. In that same September 1st call, I told Ambassador Sondland that President Trump should have more respect for another head of state and that what he described was not in the interest of either President Trump or President Zelensky. At that point, I asked Ambassador Sondland to push back on President Trump’s demand. Ambassador Sondland pledged to try.”

The testimony undercuts Republican claims that there could be no quid pro quo because the Ukrainians were not aware of the hold on the aid by hinting at a prior conversation between Sondland and the Ukrainians that linked “everything” to Zelensky’s public announcement of investigations. The Ukrainians may have been aware of Trump’s demands as early as June 28 when the president held a phone call with Zelensky that cut out the regular diplomatic chain-of-command. This phone call was not monitored or transcribed outside of Trump and the irregulars.

President Trump continued to insist on Ukrainian action before he would release the aid. Taylor describes a conversation with Sondland in which he was told, “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.” Taylor says that both Sondland and Volker used the term “signing the check” in conjunction with discussions about releasing the aid.

And because it always comes back to the Russians, Taylor described why the delay in aid and the pressure on Zelensky was detrimental to national security, telling the committee, “The Russians [are] loving it. The Russians are paying attention. The Russians are paying attention to how much support the Americans are going to provide the Ukrainians.”

“The Russians want to know how much support the Ukrainians are going to get in general, but also what kind of support from the Americans,” Taylor continued. “So the Russians are loving, would love, the humiliation of Zelensky at the hand of the Americans, and would give the Russians a freer hand, and I would quit.”

Ambassador Taylor’s testimony should be devastating to Donald Trump and his defenders. Not only does Taylor link the president directly to a quid pro quo that tied Ukrainian military aid and White House access to investigating a political opponent, he also undercuts claims that the Ukrainians did not know about the delay in aid until much later. The dishonesty of the White House claims about Trump’s phone call with Zelensky are troubling but totally expected but Taylor’s testimony, which has been corroborated by other witnesses, goes further. The ambassador paints a picture of a president who does not listen to advisors and who is willing to stab allies in the back for a momentary political gain, even as the lives of their soldiers are on the line.

Originally published on The Resurgent

More Republicans Are Admitting To Ukraine Quid Pro Quo

Quite a while back, a wag formulated the stages of Trump scandals. Using the formula that has been proven time and again over the past three years, the Ukraine scandal is now moving into stage three as Republicans begin to acknowledge that President Trump attempted to engage in a quid pro quo arrangement with President Zelensky of Ukraine.

The Trump scandal cycle goes something like this:

1. Denial (“fake news”)

2. Attack the source (“Deep State”)

3. Admit that allegations are true, but say they aren’t serious (“He only attempted a crime unsuccessfully”)

4. Admit that the allegations are serious, but say that Democrats are worse (“What about Hillary”)

Over the past few weeks we have zipped past denials that the whistleblower’s account was false and that it was based on secondhand information. Those claims were shot down by the release of the call summary and corroborating statements and testimony from other members of the Trump Administration.  The destruction of the first line of defense led to…

The claim that the whistleblower was a liberal in league with Adam Schiff and that he had a bias toward the Democrats. Unfortunately for Trump’s defenders, claims of bias could not be credibly applied to members of the Trump Administration such as Bill Taylor, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, and the well-known nonliberal John Bolton. When character assassination failed to stop the bleeding, Republicans began to…

Stop denying that there was a quid pro quo and instead argue that it was not illegal. Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney was one of the first White House insiders to admit to a quid pro quo several weeks ago. However, Mulvaney quickly attempted to walk back his comments to avoid being hung out to dry by the president’s legal team.

Now it seems that Mulvaney was ahead of his time. Yesterday, Trump advisor Kelly Ann Conway told CNN’s Dana Bash, “I don't know whether aid was being held up and for how long” when pressed about whether there was a quid pro quo.

Conway doesn’t seem to be the only Republican unwilling to go very far out on a limb for Donald Trump on the matter. A few Republicans, such as Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, have long acknowledged that Trump’s actions were bad but not impeachable. Now others are more open to the strategy.

The Washington Post reports that Sens. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are among the Republicans who admit that there was a quid pro quo but deny that it was unethical or illegal. Kennedy reportedly argued at a private Republican luncheon that quid pro quos are common in foreign aid while Cruz held that “corrupt intent” must be present to make such an arrangement illegal.

There are several big problems with this line of reasoning. First, is that it is “illegal to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a US election.” That statement is from Ellen Weintraub, chair of the Federal Election Commission in a tweet from June, more than a month before President Trump’s phone call with President Zelensky.

https://twitter.com/EllenLWeintraub/status/1139309394968096768?s=20

Weintraub’s tweet came a day after Trump openly told reporters that he would accept campaign help from foreigners. The call summary released by the White House confirms that Trump specifically asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, which would directly aid Trump’s reelection campaign.

The second problem is that Trump himself undercuts Republican efforts to find a middle ground with his own strategy of denying everything. Over the weekend, Trump said in a tweet, “There is no quid pro quo!” The president doesn’t seem to be willing to give an inch on the issue and continues to insist that the call was “perfect.”

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1191158055397969920?s=20

The third problem is that most voters don’t see Trump’s actions as being as innocent as congressional Republicans do. A new Fox News poll found that 49 percent want Trump impeached and removed. While voters said that it was inappropriate to ask foreign leaders to dig up dirt on his political opponents by a 64-27 margin, 56 percent of Republican primary voters thought it was okay to do so. Thirty-two percent of Republicans believe that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens compared to 60 percent overall.

At this point, the evidence is that Donald Trump either acted corruptly or incompetently. If the president was ignorant of the fact that asking a foreign government for help in an election is illegal after years of the Russian investigation, Weintraub’s statement to the contrary, and what must have been numerous discussions by White House lawyers, it must have been a case of willful ignorance. Even more than for an average citizen, to a president who should have known better, ignorance of the law is no excuse.

There is also the possibility that yet another smoking gun will emerge that undercuts the Republican defense that Trump did not have a “culpable state of mind,” as Sen. Kennedy put it. With news breaking quickly and damaging testimonies coming at an alarming pace, it isn’t impossible that Rudy Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney, John Bolton or others could testify to Trump’s “corrupt intent,” either purposefully or accidentally.

At that point, the script of the Trump defenders will likely shift to read, “Sure, he broke the law, but he’s still better than [insert Democrat here].” The Trump base will buy that argument but what about the rest of the country?

Originally published on The Resurgent

State Dept. Nixes Sondland Testimony

hortly before his testimony before a joint closed-door meeting of the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees today, the State Department ordered U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland not to appear. A statement issued by Sondland’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, said that the ambassador was “profoundly disappointed that he will not be able to testify today” and had traveled from Brussels for the testimony and added that he “stands ready to testify on short notice, whenever he is permitted to appear.”

The State Department did not respond to requests for comment about the decision to order Sondland not to testify. The ambassador was mentioned in a series of text messages obtained by House investigators from then-special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker.

Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters that Sondland was in possession of documents relating to Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry on his “personal device.” 

“The failure to produce this witness, the failure to produce these documents, we consider yet additional strong evidence of obstruction of the constitutional functions of Congress,” Schiff said.

President Trump responded in an uncharacteristically grammatical tweet that he “would love to send Ambassador Sondland… to testify, but unfortunately, he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court….”

Donald J. Trump

✔@realDonaldTrump

I would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify, but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s rights have been taken away, and true facts are not allowed out for the public....

33.6K

9:23 AM - Oct 8, 2019

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The Administration’s decision not to allow Sondland to testify sets up a confrontation with Democrats in Congress. It is unlikely that the Administration’s attempt to stonewall will stymie the impeachment process since it was stonewalling that initially spurred Speaker Pelosi to support an impeachment inquiry, however, the House has not yet voted to officially begin the inquiry.

The next step for House investigators is likely to be a subpoena for Sondland’s testimony. Refusal to cooperate may increase support for the impeachment inquiry, which has already increased markedly over the past few weeks. A new Washington Post-Schar School poll found that Americans support the inquiry by 58-38 percent. Those numbers have almost exactly reversed since July.

The Trump Administration continues to claim that it has done nothing wrong despite the release of a transcript that shows that President Trump asked Ukrainian President Zelensky to investigate Democrat Joe Biden and Trump’s open call for China to investigate the Bidens. Regardless, the lack of cooperation and the sense that the Administration is covering up its actions seems to be fueling the push for impeachment.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Third Republican Senator Breaks With Trump On Whistleblower

For four years now, it has been an open question of what it would take to get Republican congressmen to break with Donald Trump. As the whistleblower scandal widens, it appears that we may be reaching a point of enough-is-enough. So far, at least three Republican senators have broken with the party to criticize President Trump for requesting that Ukraine aid his personal attorney in investigating Joe and Hunter Biden.

The first Republican senator to speak out against the president’s actions was Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a frequent Trump critic. Back in September, Sasse said that the whistleblower allegations contained “real troubling things.” Sasse added, “Republicans ought not just circle the wagons” to protect Trump.”

Earlier this week, Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), joined Sasse in breaking with the Administration. In particular, Grassley was at odds with Republican attacks on the credibility of the whistleblower based on the belief that the complaint was based on secondhand information.

“This person appears to have followed the whistleblower protection laws and ought to be heard out and protected. We should always work to respect whistleblowers,” Grassley said in Politico. “Complaints based on second-hand information should not be rejected out of hand, but they do require additional leg work to get at the facts and evaluate the claim’s credibility.”

Now, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) is also breaking ranks. “Whistleblowers should be protected," Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa told a constituent at a town hall yesterday. "I stand with Chuck Grassley on this. We have laws in place."

NBC News reported that the constituent also asked, “Where is the line [that Trump would have to cross to lose Republican support]?”

"You didn't pledge an oath to the president, you pledged it to our country, you pledged it to our Constitution. When are you guys going to start standing up and actually be there for us?" the constituent asked.

Ernst answered, “The president is going to say what the president is going to do. It's up to us as members of the Congress to continue working with our allies making sure that we remain strong in a face of adversity."

A lot of Americans would like to know just what it will take to break the bond between Trump and the GOP. This is not the first time that Republican officials have criticized the president’s actions. Some Republicans have criticized the president on issues such as the firing of James Comey, interference in the Russia investigation, and the trade war. However, few, if any, have gone so far as to retract endorsements of the president’s re-election campaign.

It is beginning to look like the 2020 campaign may look a lot like a mirror image of 2016. In the last election, Hillary Clinton was damaged by the constant drip of damaging information from her email scandal and WikiLeaks dumps of stolen DNC emails. This time around, it appears that the drip of damaging information may be aimed at Donald Trump.  

At this point, it appears that the whistleblower scandal will continue to unfold in a slow dribble of embarrassing and possibly incriminating leaks about Donald Trump. With 13 months left to go before the election, Republicans have time to rally behind an alternative candidate, but time is running out. If the leaks are coordinated, as it appears that they are, Democrats may stage the scandal so that the most embarrassing and damaging information comes out after Mr. Trump has clinched the Republican nomination next year, leaving Republicans with both a mortally damaged candidate and an economy that is slowing due to the trade war. 

While most Republicans are still standing by the president at this point, the excuse that “this is just Trump being Trump” only goes so far. If continued revelations of poor judgment and possible criminal wrongdoing, together with a slowing economy, continue to dog Trump to the point where his campaign appears to be beyond salvaging, Republicans may finally start to may a clean break with the president. By then, however, it may be too late for 2020.

Originally published on The Resurgent

The Chicken, The Egg, And The Intelligence Community

Currently, there is a debate raging within the conservative community about the relationship between President Trump and the intelligence community. America’s intelligence agencies have come under fire from many Republicans for their purported attempts to undermine the president, with some even claiming that a coup attempt is underway.

To me, the debate is reminiscent of the old debate about whether the chicken or the egg came first. On one hand, there are the Trump loyalists who say that the intelligence community tried to undermine the president from Day One. They cite Peter Strzok and the Russia investigation as evidence that leftists in the intelligence agencies have been out to get Trump all along.

On the other hand, there is the argument that the intelligence community was suspicious of Trump because he acted suspiciously. As a candidate, Donald Trump hired numerous associates with ties to Vladimir Putin and even publicly called upon Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails at a time when Putin’s cyber warriors had hacked into the Democratic National Committee only weeks before.

In truth, the friction between the president-elect and the intelligence community began as soon as the votes were counted, if not before. Perhaps out of hubris, Trump rejected the findings of intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election, which may have raised more suspicion among intelligence operatives.

When the Russia investigation began, I don’t think that anyone knew where it would lead. Including Donald Trump. The president knows what he did and said himself, but he could not know whether members of his campaign were working illicitly with the Russians. His attacks on investigators looked a lot like a coverup to much of the country.

Ultimately, the Mueller report found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between members of the Trump campaign, but it did confirm Russian meddling in the election. Trump seems to have never really accepted that finding, however. Another recent leak indicated that Trump told the Russians in 2017 that he was not concerned about the election meddling.

Trump has also consistently undermined US intelligence agencies with claims, so far unsupported, of illegal wiretaps and abuse of FISA surveillance authority. Trump’s reluctance to blame Putin together with such attacks likely fed discontent in the ranks and sowed more suspicion of the president.

The intelligence community and others within the Trump Administration responded with leaks. I haven’t found a comprehensive list of leaks over the past three years, but, suffice it to say, that the Trump Administration has leaked like a sieve. The volume of leaks about President Trump and his staff is too large to recount here. The leaking embarrassed Trump and understandably made him suspicious and paranoid as well. The leaks apparently ultimately led to the decision to consolidate sensitive material in a single, classified location. When this news broke, it again made Trump look like he was hiding something.

The question is what he was hiding and why he was hiding it. Was the material isolated merely to stymie would-be leakers or was it because it contained information that would be embarrassing or incriminating to Donald Trump? At this point, no one really knows.

The key point in the intelligence debate is that America’s intelligence agencies do not take an oath to support the president. Their oath is to “ support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” If intelligence officials discovered that Donald Trump was breaking the law, for example, by ordering off-the-books spying on a campaign opponent, they would have a duty to take action. That seems to be what the whistleblower did, following proper channels.

But what if the president’s actions were not illegal, but only ill-advised? Perhaps laws were not broken but the president gave the impression of being incompetent or of having loyalties to someone or something other than the Constitution of the United States. That’s more of a gray area, but it is reasonable that Trump’s actions could have so concerned intelligence officials that they thought the American people needed to know. That does not presume that these intelligence officials are leftists. A traditional national security conservative could come to the same conclusion that a dangerously incompetent chief executive is a threat to the country.

This assessment would not be unique to members of the intelligence community. The Trump Administration has left a large number of former staffers in its wake, some who were fired and some who left voluntarily, who have sounded the alarm about Donald Trump. Trump supporters attribute these criticisms by former Administration officials to sour grapes and that is probably true in some cases. Others, such as the apolitical James Mattis, who penned a tactfully blistering resignation letter when he stepped down from his position as Secretary of Defense last year, are not so easy to dismiss. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was less diplomatic when he called Trump a “moron” and said that the president often wanted to have his own way, regardless of the law. This is the picture painted by the Mueller report as well, which featured sworn testimony that President Trump had ordered staffers to illegally obstruct the Russia investigation.

Even if the whistleblower complaint represents a coordinated effort, that would not preclude the possibility that the participants acted in good faith. If mistrust of Donald Trump in the government is widespread and based upon good cause, a coordinated effort to expose his faults and misdeeds would not necessarily be unreasonable or unethical.

So which came first, the chicken or the egg, Trump’s animosity toward the intelligence community or the intelligence community’s distrust of Donald Trump? The chicken came first according to the Genesis account and it is arguable that the intelligence community’s mistrust of Trump came first but was not without cause. Trump’s associations and actions during the 2016 campaign generated legitimate suspicion.  Since then, the two sides have participated in a vicious cycle in which the actions of one served to heighten the suspicion and paranoia of the other.

Originally published on The Resurgent