Obama spying scandal and the failed attempted coup against Trump

[Don Giovanni]

The Democrats are going for broke. I don't think they wanted to impeach, but they were driven to do it because Trump was investigating them. They're scared their own corruption is getting exposed. Like how China has bought off US leadership and tech companies like Google. This is how they operate. They claim the Ukrainian prosecutor was corrupt and that Trump is committing treason for asking Ukraine to investigate US corruption. Meanwhile the US keeps sending millions and millions of dollars to Ukraine to support Nazi-sympathizing Ukrainians in their country who have picked up arms against the Russians. A lot of people don't know that Ukrainians had supported the Nazis in their war with Russia and many actually left Ukraine alongside German soldiers who were defeated by the Bolsheviks and forced to return back to Germany. These are the Ukrainians leading the charge in their civil war.

Trump is right to encourage foreign countries to investigate US corruption and pressure. They flipped the script from Biden pressuring Ukraine to Trump pressuring Ukraine. Biden is literally on video bragging about how he had their prosecutor fired. He threatened to deny them funds! And if you look at Trump's call, he says nothing of the kind. He tells the Ukrainian president that the manner in which the previous prosecutor was fired was unfair. He was asking him to look into the origins of the Russian hack because Mueller's investigation was total joke. For years now the FBI has refused to look into Cloudstrike's servers, taking Cloudstrike's word that Russian hacked the servers, and here's Trump asking Ukraine to look into them instead because his own agencies won't do it!

[Reaper]

What I find interesting in the lack of interest in Biden's potential corruption by the media. Also the lack of strategy. Surely some polls should be completed and reported on with the question being: 'Was trump right to ask the Ukrainians to investigate Biden?'

[Don Giovanni]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/joe-bi...s_2896259.html

This article was published back in April.

Newly released evidence suggests Ukraine played key role in creating Trump–Russia collusion narrative at behest of Obama officials

As Ukraine underwent dramatic changes in 2014, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden played a critical role in the Obama administration’s involvement in the revolution that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Following the revolution, Biden would use his influence to help force the creation of the troubled National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU). Notably, during the 2016 election campaign, information leaked from NABU about Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort that helped to create the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.

The NABU was formed in 2014 at the behest of the US State Department, Vice President Joe Biden, the IMF and the European Commission, but it took a year to become fully functional and began developing relations with the FBI during that process, in fact the FBI had a representative in their office. The director of the NABU, along with a member of Ukraine's parliament, was responsible for leaking the fact that Manafort's name and signature were written inside the "black ledger" of Ukraine's ousted President, Yanukovych, who was seen as a Russian puppet. Because that material was still part of a pre-trial investigation, not the trial itself, this was illegal.

Manafort is more or less a gun for hire. He's not a Russian agent, much less a turncoat. His service to Yanukovych was never a secret, but he hide the amount of money he made to evade taxes, which is why he's now in jail. He made deals with Ukrainian oligarchs which aren't very different from the kind of arrangements that Hunter Biden had.

Glenn Beck's the Blaze translated audio of the NABU director admitting he helped Hillary Clinton by leaking that information on Manafort and he acknowledged that supporting her was better for Ukraine, since she represented hegemonic interests, while Trump was better for America. He actually says that.

There are concerns in Ukraine that the FBI was running undercover operations outside accepted procedures and that they had access to Ukraine's classified and confidential information. When Ukraine, under the current general prosecutor (not the one fired by Biden) pressed to investigate the NABU, the US rebuffed those efforts and made threats to withdraw funding.

Michael Carpenter, an adviser to Joe Biden, personally issued a public warning to Lutsenko and others pushing for Sytnyk’s removal, stating, “If the Rada votes to dismiss the head of the Anticorruption Committee and the head of the NABU, I will recommend cutting all U.S. government assistance to #Ukraine, including security assistance.”

Time and again we saw this from Biden's camp. Yet we are told Trump did the same thing when in fact he has made no such proclamations, not in public, nor in private. We are told we must take the word of CIA agents who chose to remain anonymous, similarly to how we were told to accept the accusations against Judge Kavanaugh, which remain unproven in the court of law and, in my judgement, falsified testimony.

So to clarify, Biden himself and Hillary's former cohorts in the State Department helped to create a taskforce in Ukraine that maintained suspicious ties to the FBI and later the director of that taskforce illegally leaked information meant to imply that Trump and the former head of his campaign were somehow compromised by Russia.

[Don Giovanni]

Another article, this time published back in January of 2017 when Trump assumed office.

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...ackfire-233446

Politico: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire

Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.

A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.

They accuse Trump of the very things they did.

[Reaper]

Is this getting much airing in the media? ^^

[Don Giovanni]

The usual alternative media sources are trumping it up, but for the most part the CNNs are downplaying this angle and sticking to the narrative that Ukraine is overrun with corruption and that Biden attempted to reform them.

Their narrative doesn't hold up well to scrutiny when one considers how Biden's son landed a questionable, well-paying job with a major Ukrainian energy firm. His son is on record as a cocaine addict and military flunky. His wife was in court claiming that he wastes his vast sums of money on strippers.

More to the point, there isn't any actual proof of Trump's alleged quid pro quo. The released transcript appears to be accurate. It only shows Trump asking the Ukrainian president to work with his Justice Department so that they can get to the bottom of the conspiracy to remove Trump from office. Biden is part of that conspiracy and ought to be investigated.

The only thing keeping this claim together against Trump are two anonymous "whistleblowers." The whole premise of Trump's alleged wrongdoing rests solely in their claims. We have to take their word for it, even if the initial complainant based his testimony on hearsay.

Last, but not least, a lot of skepticism has emerged over the "whistleblowers." And it's not just alternative news sources raising those questions, it's relatively mainstream journalists like Matt Taibi who reports for the Rolling Stone:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...spying-895529/

The Ukraine complaint seems to be the work of a group of people, supported by significant institutional power, not only in the intelligence community, but in the Democratic Party and the commercial press.

Taibi isn't alone. There is widespread belief that the original complainant was actually a whole host of people. There is an argument to be made that Adam Schiff, the Democrat leading the charge of impeachment, was himself likely involved in writing the complaint. In other words, Schiff is the "whistleblower." The New York Times even confirmed reports he had knowledge of the complaint prior to it's filing, something Schiff is now trying to deny.

Whatever the case, the fact the complainants remain anonymous is suspicious in of itself. It means they can avoid scrutiny and that protects them from fallout. It also encourages others to come forward and make claims, regardless of their veracity, without fear of repercussion. Trump's argument that the "whistleblowers" are motivated by bias against him also holds stock. So there is plenty of reason to be skeptical of these complaints.

[Don Giovanni]

Ukrainian President Insists Trump Did Nothing Wrong: "There Was No Blackmail"'

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...s-no-blackmail

Democrats say Trump tried to use $400 million of military aide from the US as leverage to try to strong-arm Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian government to dig up some dirt on Joe and Hunter Biden and their shady business dealings in the country (these include Hunter's position on the board of a private gas company, and Joe's involvement in the ouster of a supposedly corrupt prosecutor). We've detailed many of Hunter's shady dealings here.

Zelenskiy claims it's simply not so.

"There was no a blackmail," Zelenskiy told reporters at an all-day press event in Kyiv. "It wasn’t a subject of our talk."

Zelenskiy said he wasn’t aware when he spoke with Trump that the US had put a hold on the military aid that Dems say was used to blackmail Zelenskiy (reports have shown otherwise: Zelenskiy reportedly wasn't aware of the hold until he discussed it during a later meeting in Warsaw with Vice President Mike Pence).

It turns out Trump withheld the funds without telling Ukraine. It was Vice President Pence who informed Ukraine and now Pence is asking that his transcripts with the President of Ukraine be released. So their narrative is falling apart at the seems, if the President of Ukraine is claiming there was no quid pro quo, how can their narrative hold?

[Don Giovanni]

More to your question Reaper, Fox News released a poll showing 51% support for impeachment from their samples between October 6th and 8th. That's a record level of support for impeachment.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox...mp-impeachment

A lot has happened since the July Fox poll on impeachment -- namely, the launch of an impeachment inquiry in the House following allegations Trump improperly pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens’ dealings in that country. The 9-point increase in support for impeachment since July, however, doesn’t appear to be based solely on the latest allegations. To that point, more Democrats favor impeaching Trump (85 percent) than consider his call with Ukraine’s president an impeachable offense (76 percent). The same holds true among independents: 39 percent favor impeachment, while 30 percent describe the Ukraine call as impeachable.

Trump's favorability (43%) and unfavorability (56%) ratings are still decent. They more and less match Hillary's (41% favorable rating compared to 54% unfavorable rating). I don't think there's enough there for the Senate to impeach, not when the President of Ukraine declares there was no threat and that investigating Biden is part of his judiciary's job.

I think Biden will have to drop out eventually. It's hard seeing him win the nomination and he would have to cope with the impression that he's corrupt if he were to win the nomination. And much like Trump, he's prone to politically gaffes.

[Don Giovanni]

I just saw a breakdown of the poll sample. 48% Democrats, 40% Republicans and only 12% Independents. The Independents need to be at 20-30%. Democrats over Republicans makes sense, but neither represents over 40% of a proper sample. Too many people identify as independents for those numbers to make sense. It's a skewed poll. I don't know if they used similar metrics the last time they took this poll, but for Fox News to release a poll like this raises questions because Fox used to be biased in favor of Republicans. Trump has come out denouncing Fox. He used to question the direction they were moving, but now he's openly trashing them. I think the polling was gamed. I can't imagine more than 40-45% favor impeaching Trump, but I do agree those numbers probably saw an uptick recently, but not enough to suggest a majority of Americans support it. I'll see if I can find the breakdown in the their last polling figures.

[Don Giovanni]

POLITICAL IDENTIFICATION
Democrat Republican Independent
DATE TOTAL Solid Lean TOTAL Solid Lean Other
6-8 Oct 19 48% 40 8 40 33 7 12
15-17 Sep 19 49% 41 8 39 31 8 12
11-13 Aug 19 48% 42 6 40 34 6 12
21-23 Jul 19 46% 40 6 40 33 7 15
9-12 Jun 19 46% 39 7 41 34 7 13
11-14 May 19 48% 41 7 40 32 8 12
14-16 Apr 19 42% 35 7 42 33 9 16
17-20 Mar 19 44% 37 7 41 34 7 14
10-12 Feb 19 43% 33 10 42 31 11 16
20-22 Jan 19 41% 33 8 39 31 8 20
9-11 Dec 18 46% 38 8 40 33 7 15

Really it's 27% independents, which comes out to 40% Democrat and 33% Republican. But they play with the numbers a lot. Back in January, they had 36% Independents and they probably did that to boost the president's ratings (when Fox may have been more supportive of the president).

Something might be gamed instead, but those numbers look reasonable to me.

I should point out that Fox News has been leaning more to the left lately. And Murdoch sons are huge leftists:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/04/rupert-murdoch-liberal-son-james-takes-shot-at-fox-news

Sources with “direct knowledge” of James’s plans told the Financial Times that he “wanted to distance himself from the conservative media outlets controlled for decades by his father but had yet to decide how exactly he would invest in the news media.” They added that he was eyeing a range of options, and that the process was “at an early stage.” (The F.T. could not immediately reach James Murdoch for comment.) The potential move would in part reflect the complex family dynamics between Rupert, James, and Lachlan Murdoch, the latter of whom recently took over at Fox. James had long sought to run the company, but struck out on his own last year after the reins were handed to his brother.

[Don Giovanni]

Lo and behold, the whistleblower worked with... Biden!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...ficials-reveal

They couldn't do better than this? This is the extent of their reach? They have the media in their pocket and this is who they scrounge up? They're getting more and more desperate. This is sad.

[Don Giovanni]

Another Matt Taibi article that just about sums up the lunacy of what's happening:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup

My discomfort in the last few years, first with Russiagate and now with Ukrainegate and impeachment, stems from the belief that the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.

The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped.

The first big shot was fired in early January, 2017, via a CNN.com headline, “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.” This tale, about the January 7th presentation of former British spy Christopher Steele’s report to then-President-elect Trump

Trump stands accused of using the office of the presidency to advance political aims, in particular pressuring Ukraine to investigate potential campaign rival Joe Biden. He’s guilty, but the issue is how guilty, in comparison to his accusers.

Trump, at least insofar as we know, has not used section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor political rivals. He hasn’t deployed human counterintelligence “informants” to follow the likes of Hunter Biden. He hasn’t maneuvered to secure Special Counsel probes of Democrats.

And while Donald Trump conducting foreign policy based on what he sees on Fox and Friends is troubling, it’s not in the same ballpark as CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post and the New York Times engaging in de facto coverage partnerships with the FBI and CIA to push highly politicized, phony narratives like Russiagate.

Trump’s tinpot Twitter threats and cancellation of White House privileges for dolts like Jim Acosta also don’t begin to compare to the danger posed by Facebook, Google, and Twitter – under pressure from the Senate – organizing with groups like the Atlantic Council to fight “fake news” in the name of preventing the “foment of discord.”

I don't agree with everything he writes, but there are few commentators with his liberal bonafides who staunchly opposes Trump and yet are aware of the current political travesty being waged against him.

[Don Giovanni]

There is some reason to believe that John Bolton and Fiona Hill are the sources of the complaint.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/u...testimony.html

WASHINGTON — The effort to pressure Ukraine for political help provoked a heated confrontation inside the White House last summer that so alarmed John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, that he told an aide to alert White House lawyers, House investigators were told on Monday.

Mr. Bolton got into a tense exchange on July 10 with Gordon D. Sondland, the Trump donor turned ambassador to the European Union, who was working with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to three people who heard the testimony.

The aide, Fiona Hill, testified that Mr. Bolton told her to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council about a rogue effort by Mr. Sondland, Mr. Giuliani and Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, according to the people familiar with the testimony.

“I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Mr. Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, told Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to two people at the deposition. (Another person in the room initially said Mr. Bolton referred to Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Mulvaney, but two others said he cited Mr. Sondland.)

Her testimony did not establish a quid pro quo between the suspended aid and Mr. Trump’s pressure for investigations, according to the person. But she confirmed that the administration leveraged a coveted White House invitation for Mr. Zelensky to a commitment to investigate corruption, which was seen as code for investigating Democrats.

So the guy who helped to fan the flames for war in Iraq is the likely the main source of the original whistlerblower complaint. What a joke.

[Don Giovanni]

The DOJ has officially opened up a criminal investigation into the origins of the Russia collusion investigation:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/u...stigation.html

For more than two years, President Trump has repeatedly attacked the Russia investigation, portraying it as a hoax and illegal even months after the special counsel closed it. Now, Mr. Trump’s own Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into how it all began.

Justice Department officials have shifted an administrative review of the Russia investigation closely overseen by Attorney General William P. Barr to a criminal inquiry, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move gives the prosecutor running it, John H. Durham, the power to subpoena for witness testimony and documents, to convene a grand jury and to file criminal charges.

Mr. Barr began the administrative review of the Russia investigation in May, saying that he had conversations with intelligence and law enforcement officials that led him to believe that the F.B.I. acted improperly, if not unlawfully.

They're investigating, among other things, how George Papadopoulos got into contact with Josef Misfud and whether Misfud has ties to Western and/or Russian agencies. Ari Melber interviewed Papadopoulos on MSNBC, raising questions concerning Papadopoulos' credibility:

George Papadopoulos has contended he was entrapped and I think that to be true. In the video below, Rep. Jim Jordan explains the oddities behind how Papadopoulos was ensnared into this tangled web and how his interactions were used to launch this investigation, but moreover, he points out how odd it is that Misfud lied three times to the FBI, is the original source of the claim that Russia has Hillary's emails, and yet was never charged with a crime despite the fact that numerous others tied to the Trump campaign, including Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and a three-star general, Mike Flynn, were charged with lying to the FBI. Why is Misfud free to go and why can't it be said he's a Russian or Western agent?

Misfud appears to be a double agent, meant to act as a bumbling pawn for the Russian government. The intent is for him to collect information on some of their intents and activities. There is evidence to suggest that in fact he is a Western asset and this would explain why he was not charged, despite being under "investigation" and the most obvious person of interest.

In other news, John Bolton is playing a bigger and more open role in the Ukraine investigation:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/25/john...nt-panels.html

• Lawyers for former national security advisor John Bolton have been in touch with officials working on House committees conducting an impeachment probe into President Donald Trump.
• Bolton reportedly was so disturbed by efforts to get Ukraine to investigate Trump's political opponents, among them ex-Vice President Joe Biden, that he called it a "drug deal."
• Bolton reportedly had called Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, a "hand grenade," in reference to Giuliani's efforts to pressure Ukraine.

A lot of evidence points to Fiona Hill being the original whistleblower, that John Bolton is the second whistleblower (Fiona Hill's source), and that Adam Schiff and a team of lawyers were involved in writing the complaint. The whole thing is a concoction, another WMD lie.

I do think the House will vote to impeach Trump due to the Democrat majority, but the votes are not there for a conviction in the Senate when a super majority is needed. Trump is facing the same fate as Bill Clinton. I also think Trump will easily win a re-election.

My big concern is the agitation for civil war. Both sides are guilty of this.

[Don Giovanni]

The Beltway's 'Whistleblower' Furor Obsesses Over One Name

https://www.realclearinvestigations....er_120996.html

Some think Eric Ciaramella is the whistleblower. It may be his name on the complaint, but it's plainly evident that it's really a group of them, huddled together, and that this guy is the lowest hanging fruit they could have hoped to have used as cover. Fiona Hill isn't too far behind and she worked with him in the NSC as adviser to McMaster. Ciaramella was a personal aide to McMaster.