Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Bark louder, little dog.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Impeachment Inquiry / The Whistleblower Saga

Summer Rerun: Reality Winner Deserves Her Pardon

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60 Minutes originally ran Scott Pelley’s story last December. They re-ran it on Sunday, and posted the entire transcript online:

… In 2018, at the age of 26, Winner pleaded guilty. The judge said he would make an example of her—she served four years behind bars, plus three, now, answering to a probation officer. She still can’t talk about the case.

Reality Winner: I’ve had four years of just trying to say I’m not a terrorist. I can’t even begin to talk about my actual espionage indictment. Or have a sense of accomplishment in having survived prison. Because I’m still stained by them accusing me of being the same groups that I enlisted in the Air Force to fight against. So I don’t let myself feel anything regarding the actual act or the charge. Until I can let it be known that I’m not what they said I was.

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Murderous Douchebags Open Thread: A Note on Translation

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From a native Russian speaker (who emigrated to America in his teens):

Sounds a lot like a Michael Cohen analog, actually — talk like a made man, act like a cheap shyster offering payoffs funded by a second mortgage.

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Assassinating OUR OWN Ambassador: “It Would Be Wrong, That’s For Sure”

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Yeah, that’s not exactly how Nixon phrased it, but even 1974’s comparatively innocent news readers understood what he meant. Those pious disavowals didn’t save him from leaving the Oval Office one step ahead of criminal prosecution.

There will be, no doubt, any amount of parsing and hair-splitting by tomorrow morning, crimesplaining that Dear Leader Trump never meant anything bad should happen to Ambassador Yovanovitch — it was just sarcasm, a thought experiment if you will, assuming he even understood what his less-evolved aides might’ve been suggesting. That didn’t work for Nixon, who was infinitely smarter and a whole lot more experienced than the figurehead in today’s Stupid Watergate. Even if Trump could be restrained from claiming full credit for every unsavory plot, I frankly doubt any of the current Oval Office Occupant’s minions and coatholders are anywhere near as loyal as Tricky Dick’s boys. The smartest ones left — low bar, that — are already talking to their lawyers. Or the feds.

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Repub Venality Open Thread: Little Prince Rand Hates Nepotism, So He Outs A Whistleblower

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Little Prince Rand Decries Nepotism - Jack Ohman

 

https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1195049695615340544

Paul’s hometown paper, the Courier-Journal:

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul said Thursday he may try to force a Senate vote on motions that would allow President Donald Trump to call on Hunter Biden and other witnesses to testify in an impeachment trial…
“I believe very strongly the president should be able to call his own witnesses,” Paul told reporters on Thursday, according to Politico. “The rules that are put forward will be amendable, so yes I will consider strongly that the president should get his full due process, which to me means bringing in his own witnesses.”

Last week, Paul blocked a Democrat-led resolution that reasserted the Senate’s support for protecting whistleblowers.

And after calling for the media to release the alleged whistleblower’s name, Paul went ahead and said the name of the suspected anonymous whistleblower during a radio interview Wednesday…

When asked Thursday for a comment on Paul’s decision to name the alleged whistleblower, Paul’s communications team referred The Courier Journal to another interview the senator did Wednesday with One America News Network.

In that interview, Paul said the alleged whistleblower’s name once again but claimed that he hasn’t specifically said that the person is, in fact, the whistleblower.

Regardless, he said he thinks this individual should be brought in as a “material witness.”

https://twitter.com/Fakefancylawyer/status/1195050390032670721

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Ambassador Taylor’s Opening Statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

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The Washington Post has obtained and published Ambassador Taylor’s opening statement to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The link to it is here. And the pdf can be directly accessed from Balloon Juice below.

Ambassador_Taylor_Opening_Statment

Open thread!

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Watching the Disinformation Being Made in Real Time: The New York Times Reported Some New Information On How the Whistleblower Filed His Complaint and Fox’s John Roberts Teed It Up as a Conspiracy for the President to Swing at During His Press Conference

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The New York Times has reported greater detail of how the Intelligence Community whistleblower went about bringing his complaint. We already knew, from previous reporting, that he or she first tried to go through the anonymous internal whistleblower complaint hotline at their own, home agency. This then triggered that agency’s counsel to coordinate with the White House Counsel’s Office, the National Security Council Counsel’s Office, and the Department of Justice. When the whistleblower learned of this, he or she decided they needed to find a way to get the concerns before Congress as soon as possible and this is where today’s New York Times‘ reporting starts off:

The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint, according to a spokesman and current and former American officials.

The early account by the future whistle-blower shows how determined he was to make known his allegations that Mr. Trump asked Ukraine’s government to interfere on his behalf in the 2020 election. It also explains how Mr. Schiff knew to press for the complaint when the Trump administration initially blocked lawmakers from seeing it.

The C.I.A. officer approached a House Intelligence Committee aide with his concerns about Mr. Trump only after he had had a colleague first convey them to the C.I.A.’s top lawyer. Concerned about how that initial avenue for airing his allegations through the C.I.A. was unfolding, the officer then approached the House aide. In both cases, the original accusation was vague.

The House staff member, following the committee’s procedures, suggested the officer find a lawyer to advise him and file a whistle-blower complaint. The aide shared some of what the officer conveyed to Mr. Schiff. The aide did not share the whistle-blower’s identity with Mr. Schiff, an official said.

“Like other whistle-blowers have done before and since under Republican and Democratic-controlled committees, the whistle-blower contacted the committee for guidance on how to report possible wrongdoing within the jurisdiction of the intelligence community,” said Patrick Boland, a spokesman for Mr. Schiff.

Mr. Schiff’s aides followed procedures involving the C.I.A. officer’s accusations, Mr. Boland said. They referred the C.I.A. officer to an inspector general and advised him to seek legal counsel.

Mr. Schiff never saw any part of the complaint or knew precisely what the whistle-blower would deliver, Mr. Boland said.

“At no point did the committee review or receive the complaint in advance,” he said. He said the committee received the complaint the night before releasing it publicly last week and noted that came three weeks after the administration was legally mandated to turn it over to Congress. The director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, acting on the advice of his top lawyer and the Justice Department, had blocked the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, from turning over the complaint sooner.

Much more at the link, some of it previously reported.

There’s nothing actually shocking here. The whistleblower, concerned he needed to get the information to Congress ASAP, approached a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to seek guidance on how to do so. That staffer told the whistleblower to make a formal complaint under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA) to the appropriate inspector general – either the IG at their own agency or the Intelligence Community Inspector General. This is what the whistleblower did. He or she filed the complaint with Mark Atkinson, the Intelligence Community Inspector general.

Brad Moss, a national security lawyer who works with Mark Zaid, who is currently of counsel for the whistleblower’s attorney Andrew Bakaj, and who is walled off from the case so he can publicly comment, provides the Office of the Director of National Intelligence guidance for bringing a whistleblower complaint.

https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1179472717856333824

Here’s the link to the guidance at the ODNI website.

So while The New York Times‘ reporting is interesting, as it fleshes out the timeline and presents more context for all of us, there’s nothing irregular, strange, unprofessional, unethical, and/or illegal here. Enter Fox News’ John Roberts. Roberts had the first two questions at the President’s 2 PM EDT press conference. His second question teed the President up by framing this new reporting as a conspiracy between Congressman Schiff and the whistleblower, intimating that Congressman Schiff actually directed the complaint, fabricated the key accusations, and basically created his own need for oversight to drive impeachment. The President, as I’m sure you’re shocked to learn, took Roberts’ line of bullshit and ran with it.

Kevin McCarthy, the House Minority Leader, is already pushing the President’s and John Robert’s take on The New York Times‘ reporting.

As has RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.

If I had to make a professional estimate, as soon as The New York Times‘ story was reported, a set of disinformation talking points was prepared and quickly circulated throughout the Republican, movement conservative, and conservative news and digital information media ecosystems framing the reporting this way. This is why Roberts’ framed the reporting in the way he did, in line with the disinformation now being pushed, which was done to tee up the President’s response at the press conference.

We’ve just watched the disinformation process in real time.

And Congressman Schiff has decided to push back directly on the disinformation.

Open thread!

 

 

Watching the Disinformation Being Made in Real Time: The New York Times Reported Some New Information On How the Whistleblower Filed His Complaint and Fox’s John Roberts Teed It Up as a Conspiracy for the President to Swing at During His Press ConferencePost + Comments (222)

Whistleblower Inquiry Open Thread: How Fast Can Bill Barr Tap Dance?

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Not quite fast enough this time, I’m hoping! He was invaluable when it came to covering up Iran-Contra, and he did yeoman service during the Great Clenis Hunt, but he was younger then. And “we” were more naive about just how irretrievably corrupt the GOP had become…

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