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Maguire Walks a Tightrope

September 26, 2019 at 10:25 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Clare Malone: “A thing that we are seeing with the Maguire testimony is the tightrope walking he does to make sure he stays on the president’s good side in order to maintain his confidence — something Maguire explicitly says is necessary in order for him to maintain influence re: intelligence activities. We’re seeing the lengths that Maguire went to in order to make sure that he wasn’t getting on the wrong side of the White House.”

“Maguire continues to say that this complaint is ‘unprecedented,’ but I also wonder how he would act in the same situation with a president of a different personality. Would he have been less careful/parsing about his decision to submit a report to Congress? It’s an unknowable thing, but so much of this revolves around Trump’s personality and well-documented capriciousness, I think.”

Maguire Admits Whistleblower Did the Right Thing

September 26, 2019 at 10:07 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire is trying to avoid being political in this morning’s House Intelligence Committee hearing.

When asked by Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) whether he thought the whistleblower was a “political hack,” as President Trump asserted, Maguire said the person was “acting in good faith” and eventually told Schiff: “I think the whistleblower did the right thing.”

What an Inappropriate ‘Quid Pro Quo’ Looks Like

September 26, 2019 at 10:01 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was asked by the Boston Globe to describe what he thinks would be “an inappropriate quid pro quo scenario” in relation to President Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s president.

Said Graham: “‘Uh, hey pal, you know, you need to like, go after the Bidens or I ain’t gonna give you any money.’ He’d be really, like, thuggish about it.”

House Intelligence Hearing on the Whistleblower

September 26, 2019 at 8:45 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence, will testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee at 9 a.m. ET.

The whistleblower complaint has now been made public.

Playbook: “The Democrats’ goal is to understand what the White House and DOJ did to block Congress from getting the whistleblower’s complaint and IG report, and why. Was there a cover-up? Who ordered what, when, why and through what channels?”

The three major broadcast networks have switched to live coverage of the hearing, demonstrating the historic nature of this event.

Leave your reactions in the comments.

Whistleblower Report Made Public

September 26, 2019 at 8:38 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

The House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday released the whistleblower complaint at the heart of a controversy over President Trump’s efforts to have the government of Ukraine investigate Joe Biden and his son.

The complaint cites President Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president, efforts to hide the call records inside the White House, concerns about Rudy Giuliani from many U.S. officials and an abrupt stoppage of foreign aid, among other things.

Verbatim Transcript of Call Moved to Separate Network

September 26, 2019 at 8:28 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Just Security: “According to a person familiar with the content of the complaint who spoke to Just Security, when the call was over, senior White House officials pulled the verbatim transcript out of the system that it is traditionally stored on and moved it into a separate system reserved for extremely sensitive/highly compartmented programs.”

“This person said that the call between the two leaders had nothing to do with highly classified programs. But, by moving it into this separate system, the White House could control who could see the transcript: only a very small group of people.”

How Trump Planned to Turn Biden Into Clinton

September 26, 2019 at 8:21 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Axios shows how President Trump is reviving his 2016 playbook, “trying to sully or smear the Biden family reputation, like he did with the Clintons during his last campaign.”

There are six-parts to the playbook:

Argue that your opponent is guilty of something as bad or worse than the accusations against you.
Create constant fog, amplified by Twitter. Allege the media is guilty, too.
Convince party leaders and Fox News to fall instantly in line, focused solely on your opponent’s supposed transgressions.
Demand documents and testimony, fostering an “everyone’s dirty and hiding something” atmosphere.
Stymie anyone on your side who’s thinking of dissenting by torching them on Twitter, like he did to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT).
Bet that your own standing, while getting no better, gets no worse.

Trump Clings to CrowdStrike Conspiracy Theory

September 26, 2019 at 8:17 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “President Trump’s apparent embrace of bizarre conspiracy theories involving the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike in his phone call with Ukraine’s president is a striking illustration of his doubts about the U.S. intelligence agencies’ unanimous conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic servers in the 2016 presidential election.”

“While it is Trump’s efforts on that call to enlist a foreign government to dig up dirt on his political rival Joe Biden that have Democratic lawmakers launching impeachment proceedings, the fact that Trump is still suggesting there’s some sort of frame job in election interference has officials and cybersecurity experts just as irate.”

Impeachment May Crowd Out Some 2020 Candidates

September 26, 2019 at 8:15 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “Behind the scenes, many of the 2020 Democratic candidates have been grappling with a new reality: For the first time, a presidential primary will unfold with a sitting president seeking re-election while also facing an impeachment inquiry.”

“There is no political playbook for this. No pollster or strategist to speak from experience. What is clear, from interviews with advisers and allies with the various campaigns, is that the top candidates like Mr. Biden and Ms. Warren believe they are sufficiently established in the race that they can continue to command attention for their candidacies and messages. Second-tier and third-tier candidates, however, are at much greater risk of falling off the radar screen for an electorate that may soon be at a standstill, distracted by an impeachment circus in Washington.”

Trump Predicts Market Crash If He’s Impeached

September 26, 2019 at 8:05 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Trump claimed that stock markets would crash if he were impeached.

Said Trump: “If they actually did this the markets would crash Do you think it was luck that got us to the best Stock Market and Economy in our history. It wasn’t!”

Quote of the Day

September 26, 2019 at 7:13 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“I think it’s very natural for people to look at circumstances and see them in the light that’s most amenable to their maintaining power, and doing things to preserve that power.”

— Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), quoted by CBS News.

Cracks Emerge Among Senate Republicans

September 26, 2019 at 7:09 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Several Senate Republicans were privately stunned Wednesday and questioned the White House’s judgment after it released a rough transcript of President Trump’s call with the Ukraine president that showed Trump offering the help of the U.S. attorney general to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden,” the Washington Post reports.

“One Senate Republican, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said the transcript’s release was a “huge mistake” that the GOP now has to confront and defend — while the party argues at the same time that House Democrats are overreaching with their impeachment inquiry of Trump.”

White House Moved Records onto Separate Network

September 26, 2019 at 6:37 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

The whistleblower complaint that focused on President Trump’s request of Ukraine’s government to investigate Joe Biden also alleges White House officials moved the records of some of Trump’s communications with foreign officials onto a separate computer network, the Washington Post reports.

Inside Trump’s Frenetic Response to the Whistleblower

September 26, 2019 at 6:23 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “The helter-skelter way the administration handled the aftermath of the whistleblower complaint could be a harbinger of the coming impeachment fight, with the White House scrambling to respond to a mercurial and frustrated president, who is increasingly sidelining his aides and making decisions based on gut instinct.”

“Even some allies of the president worry that his team may not fully understand the potential upheaval that an impeachment fight could wreak on Trump and his administration, especially as he heads into the 2020 election.”

Netanyahu Begins Attempt to Form Coalition

September 26, 2019 at 6:20 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began Thursday the daunting task of trying to cobble together a coalition government amid political deadlock that emerged from this month’s repeat elections, which had no clear winner,” the AP reports.

“He now has up to six weeks to attempt to resolve the political impasse, but his odds appear slim. Even with the support of smaller allies, both Netanyahu and his main challenger, Blue and White party leader and former army chief Benny Gantz, lack the support for the required 61-seat parliamentary majority needed to establish a government. That’s including the support of Netanyahu’s traditional ultra-Orthodox and religious-nationalist allies.”

Ukraine Scheme Began as Effort to Pardon Manafort

September 25, 2019 at 11:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Murray Waas: “The effort by President Trump to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son had its origins in an earlier endeavor to obtain information that might provide a pretext and political cover for the president to pardon his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, according to previously undisclosed records.”

“These records indicate that attorneys representing Trump and Manafort respectively had at least nine conversations relating to this effort, beginning in the early days of the Trump administration, and lasting until as recently as May of this year. Through these deliberations carried on by his attorneys, Manafort exhorted the White House to press Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit individuals, both in the US and in Ukraine, who he believed had published damning information about his political consulting work in the Ukraine.”

“A person who participated in the joint defense agreement between President Trump and others under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including Manafort, allowed me to review extensive handwritten notes that memorialized conversations relating to Manafort and Ukraine between Manafort’s and Trump’s legal teams, including Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.”

The Pee Tape Is Real, But It’s Fake

September 25, 2019 at 10:42 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Ashley Feinberg: “Someone made this video and most likely recorded it in a hotel room that costs about $18,000 a night. Was it all for the sake of feeding rumors, or for confusing everyone, or for tricking some overconfident journalist into the ultimate feat of Fake News? The only thing we can say definitively is that based on the room in which it appears to have been filmed, this can’t possibly be the real thing. Probably.”

Whistleblower Agrees to Testify Before Congress

September 25, 2019 at 9:45 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The anonymous whistleblower who filed a complaint with the intelligence community inspector general, which includes allegations about President Trump’s conduct, has tentatively agreed to meet with congressional lawmakers,” CNN reports.

“The meeting could take place on the condition that acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire approves appropriate security clearances for the individual’s legal counsel so that they can accompany their client.”