After reviewing the anonymous whistleblower complaint that reportedly centers on President Trump and Ukraine on Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) said that it exposed “serious wrongdoing,”
Calling it “well-written,” Schiff thanked the whistleblower and indicated the complaint was urgent.
“What this courageous individual has done has exposed serious wrongdoing, and I think it a travesty that this complaint was withheld as long as it was, because it was an urgent matter, it is an urgent matter,” he told reporters.
The acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, received the complaint weeks ago but kept it from Congress citing a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that it was not an “urgent matter” and therefore not necessary to give to congressional intelligence committees.
“There was simply no basis to keep this from the committee,” Schiff said. “And the idea that the Department of Justice would have intervened to prevent it from getting to Congress throws the leadership of that department into further ill repute.”
The complaint reportedly centers on a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In a memorandum of the exchange released by the White House Wednesday, Trump is shown repeatedly pressuring Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, among other matters.
Publish the fucking thing!
NO MERCY!!! NO QUARTER!!!
The Trump/GOP strategy has become clear - confronted with the realization that continued stonewalling would only amplify the eventual revelations, the administration decided to simply release the Trump-Zelensky call transcript and the whistleblower report, and claim that the objectively shocking contents are actually benign. Claim that there is nothing there, that the documents don’t show what they clearly do show. Echo this message through all right wing outlets - Fox News, pundits, GOP operatives, senators and congresspersons. Repeat until folks who initially understood that the revelations are damning start to question themselves - “it can’t be that bad if all of these sensible people are saying it is nothing!”. This is magnitudes beyond the normal art of the spin. This is coordinated gaslighting, as an explicit strategy.
The truth is on trial, and the stakes never higher. If this strategy works, there is no limit to what truths can be subverted by coordinated bad actors. We need all corners of the media (except Fox News, of course) to recognize what is happening, and call it out for what it is. We need a few brave GOP Senators (Mitt?) to call a spade a spade. Impeachment must proceed, and quickly.
Dark times indeed.
The ‘deplorables’ are soon going to find out that they have been ‘had’ by Trump. Boy, are they going to have egg on their faces!
I thought the original report was that Trump pressured the Ukrainian President eight times to investigate Biden?
Impeach Barr. He’s neck deep in this (as the call summary shows) and his involvement in having the OLC issue their bogus hold on the whistleblower complaint was far more obviously corrupt than his Mueller Report skullduggery.