... I'm being serious. Maybe it's the gospel truth, but based on the past 3 years I find that to be very unlikely....

And, fwiw, it's not exactly the pure rosy "perfect" phone call that Trump says it was. Basically, the only thing it didn't contain was a "smoking gun" sentence where Trump explictly said, "get me dirt on Biden or else I'll withhold funding." But that sentence may have simply been forgotten, or not included in people's notes, or the dog ate it.

This is where we are with this administration, folks.

The WTGs were just having the same discussion.

Well perhaps, in part, because they sent the talking points on it..to the Democrats!

Talking Points Email

As my late brother in law used to say.."You can't make this stuff up!!"

I asked Mr. AM the very same question last night. I knew it couldn’t be verbatim, because I-1 doesn’t speak in complete sentences.

It doesn't matter. First of all, the quid pro quo was clear and implicit. But second, you don't need a quid pro quo in order to impeach him.

I don’t trust the parts done in Sharpie marker.

The whistleblower complaint is out.

https://intelligence.house.gov...omplaint_unclass.pdf

As they say, it's often about the cover-up....

Interesting. Maguire (the DNI guy who stopped the complaint from going to Congress) said he did so because the WH claimed executive privilege with respect to a conversation with a foreign leader. Atkinson says he could not override the executive privilege and release the document. edit: A correction...he went to the WH Office of Legal Counsel and they said it *appeared* to fall under executive privilege but they didn't make a final call that it did actually have executive privilege.

Office of Legal Counsel is key. They also said it wasn't "urgent" (a legal term), so DNI didn't have to release the complaint to Congress.

Here's what I learned from the complaint that I did not already know.

1. A number of WH officials thought that abuse of power had taken place.

2. WH did not put the transcript in the usual place for such transcripts, where it would have been available to cabinet-level officials and the relevant foreign policy folks to use.

3. Giuliani's Madrid meeting with Yermak, where "multiple officials" told the whistleblower that a future meeting or call with Trump depended on Ukraine "playing ball."


Here's my take.

This complaint is the thin edge of the wedge, but somebody now needs to pry the rest of the information out. The complaint itself is too thin. We need to see the rest of the "top secret" stuff, and the "WH officials" and other "sources" who provided the whistleblower with information need to be named and questioned. Without that corroboration, we don't really have much.

Putting the transcript on a secure standalone system designed to protect "national security" is a clear abuse. The transcript is sensitive because it is politically damaging to the GOP, not because of its national security secrecy. Follow this lead. People who did this need to be identified and investigated.

The "multiple officials" who confirmed to the whistleblower that the Ukrainians were told to "play ball" need to come forward, or be dragged forward. Their evidence needs to be made public, under oath. The whistleblower's hearsay isn't enough.

My big takeaway is that seemingly there was a verbatim transcript. What happened to it? Why was a memorandum of recollections released instead?

It seems that it now resides in a place normally reserved for super-secret things like covert operations.

And evidence of impeachable offenses.

And now . . . Trump is in full tin-pot dictator mode, suggesting that the people who snitched should be treated like spies.

Dang.

Maybe people who hand top secret information to our enemies should be treated like spies...

quote:

Originally posted by Steve Miller:
I don’t trust the parts done in Sharpie marker.

HA!

1. I noticed no one tried to argue that the phone call was totally OK and "beautiful". They all just attacked the Dems or the whistleblower. Squirrel!

2. If the conversation was so beautiful (per I-1), why was it stashed away in the super-secure location where no one can look?

3. Apparently this isn't the first time that conversations have found the secret hiding place. What other goodies are there?