Mar-A-Lago Raid
- Thread starter thebobmaster
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The US government was spending on items that Ukraine had been promised. If the US provides those goods, Ukraine does not need to expend its own finances on them from other sources. Governments identify where they need to spend based on what needs to be financed. You've identified... one step of separation.
Are you seriously suggesting that the only communications between the US and Ukrainian governments are those that are publicly available? I can't see any reading of your paragraph above which doesn't make that very silly assumption.
I'd love to believe there wasn't. I'd love to believe that international security and foreign relations aren't navigated around the egos and corruption of powerful assholes. But the world continues to disappoint. You're determined to deny and downplay it.
Which they still expected, on schedule. You're really suggesting that the Ukrainian leadership went "Oh no, the US government isn't operating a month ahead of schedule, they must have changed their plans."
No, what I'm telling you is that we have the private communications of the diplomats that arranged for the phone call with Zelensky. The Ukrainians, in private correspondence, we're asking if the reports were true. The Americans were texting each other about how crazy it was. None of the people who arranged that call, the same people coordinating for Zelensky to make a public statement on the Bidens, had any idea before the news broke that foreign aid to Ukraine had been effected in any way. This is not an argument that we don't have record of them talking about it. We have positive evidence that they didn't know, from private exchanges that there is no reason to believe are performative. You think Trump intended to extort Ukraine, and sent his dogs to get a statement from Zelensky without ever mentioning the stakes to them? You think the Ukrainian government knew there was a problem, without any record that they did, and then whoever did know failed to mention it to the individuals in charge of communicating with the US government on their behalf?
There was no correspondence through official channels. There was expressed lack of knowledge in the private correspondence behind the scenes. You're speculating that Ukraine was informed of the funding being withheld through extra double secret back channels that the impeachment investigation didn't even acknowledge the existence of. That's bold.
Like, it's amazing to me that they investigated Trump for extorting Russia, and when they released the private communications of the people most involved we can see them respond to the news reports with basically "Did you guys know about this? Cause we don't know anything about this", and just nobody cared, the impeachment moved forward, no opinions were changed by that revelation.
And you're just ignoring all the actual evidence to defend this weird anti-reality bit you have going. Like the actual testimony of the actual people who actually heard Trump say to withhold the funds until Ukraine investigates the Democrats, especially Biden.
Try this, its more condensed so its easier to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump–Ukraine_scandal
But I am curious, what other cognitive disconnects from reality you got? Earth still round to you? Do storks bring babies out where you live? Oh, what are your thoughts on the moon landing and the sun being the center of the solar system?!?
Okay this is interesting: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-fbi-fourth-amendment-special-master-attorney/
He has the right to ask for one, but I don't see how the courts can grant it, seeings how it was top secret documents taken, and a special master doesn't have security clearance. I mean we all know what they're doing - fishing for any information about who the spy is. They probably expect the special master to review everything and then tell them who all the witnesses are. But I can't see a judge approving this.
He has the right to ask for one, but I don't see how the courts can grant it, seeings how it was top secret documents taken, and a special master doesn't have security clearance. I mean we all know what they're doing - fishing for any information about who the spy is. They probably expect the special master to review everything and then tell them who all the witnesses are. But I can't see a judge approving this.
I wouldn't trust anyone in Trump's circle to even be within a thousand feet of a witness list, because it would only be a matter of time before it got "accidentally" leaked and his supporters started loading their guns.
Ah, a nice condensed 37,000 word summary. Would you care to quote the part where someone heard Trump say to withhold the funds until Ukraine investigates the Democrats? Maybe you're thinking of Bill Taylor, who testified that he was told security assistance was contingent on an investigation... from Gordon Sondland, only after the news reported that and Taylor demanded answers. Maybe you're thinking of Gordon Sondland, who said he was pushing for that investigation himself... at the behest of Rudy Giuliani, who was working with (and very likely being paid by) Yuriy Lutsenko, who was the one feeding Giuliani tales of the Bidens' misdeeds in the first place. Not a single person in that entire investigation, to my knowledge, ever testified that Trump told them security assistance was contingent on anything. Rudy Giuliani is almost certainly guilty as sin, but I don't think you care about that a fraction as much.
No, I'm suggesting the Ukrainian government was aware that the aid had been blocked. Because it's patently ridiculous to suggest they were never aware of that. It's also ridiculous to suggest that the Ukrainian government would also still be happily expecting it to come "on schedule" if it's been unexpectedly blocked by the President (coincidentally just as he's asking for political favours, of course).
All this is based on the fact that a specific, small number of functionaries didn't know.
So fucking what? Do you think that Trump was the only person who did know? And that his decision hadn't been communicated to the Ukrainians at any level?
To be perfectly honest, if Trump personally decided to block the funds and then didn't inform the Ukrainian government at all, that's arguably even worse.
Nice try, to characterise it in the most ridiculous possible way. "Extra double secret" was a nice touch. Let me try again.
There was no correspondence through official channels (which is already fucking shady, considering we're talking about congressionally-allocated funds and matters vital to a foreign state's national security). There was an expressed lack of knowledge in the private correspondence of a few functionaries. I'm suggesting that Ukraine was informed that aid was being withheld, because it's completely ridiculous to suggest that they were never informed of matters of high import to their own national security, and it would've been even worse if they hadn't been.
I love the way you create this magic dichotomy and insist it's one or the other.
I don't think Trump is an idiot. He's smart, but he also has crippling personality flaws that often sabotage the output of his intelligence. Thus I certainly do think he's aware enough to send a bunch of stooges to do inappropriate work with nothing written down because he knows the State Dept. or intelligence services would baulk or raise red flags, and cunning enough to not blab his illegal plots too obviously. Or, if you like, I think he's a clumsy mafioso.
Why? Why do you believe, with no evidence to support it, that Ukraine was immediately aware of an internal delay, one that within the order itself insisted that it would not stop the DoD from delivering the aid on schedule. Why do you think the impeachment investigation, which set out to prove that Trump withheld security assistance to extort the Ukrainian government, never did anything to establish that the Ukrainians knew the delay before the news reported it publicly?
It's not ridiculous to suggest they weren't aware. It's ridiculous to suggest that a delay in release of funds ordered literally the same day as the phone call with Zelensky would have made an immediate impact on Ukraine's finances such that they would just guess there was something going on.
Covfefe
You know reading through this thread really has been an exercise in 'Tell me you've never handled classified material without telling me you've never handled classified material', even in the most basic senses of the word.
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I don't know if they were immediately aware of it. That's a stipulation that is completely unnecessary to my point, and which you've only added to make it seem unrealistic.
I believe that governments are generally kept abreast of developments that are important to their country's national security.
And if the aid was always going to make it on the same timetable anyway, why did Mick Mulvaney directly relate the freeze to the DNC server nonsense? Why did Giuliani also (falsely) state that the US President is within his rights to make the aid dependent on a foreign government's actions? Why did Trump himself initially say it was withheld due to "corruption", including a direct reference to the Bidens? Why did they release it only after a whistleblower made it public? Why did the DOD itself press for it to be in writing that the hold endangered the status of the funds?
The investigation established the series of events, which makes that as obvious as possible.
25 July: Call between Zelensky and Trump. Zelensky says he knew about the withheld funds from this day. Other Ukrainian officials corroborate it was known from July. On the same day as the call, the Ukrainian Embassy queried the status of the funds.
6 August: Ukrainian embassy again queries the status of the funding.
12 August: First whistleblower filing.
28 August: First public report of the scandal, in Politico. This is the date Trump insists the Ukrainians first found out about it.
You're just regurgitating the Trump defence, after its already had its credibility obliterated.
Dude, funding commitments decide what countries commit to spend. This is like the most basic government economics.
Most racists in position of power and/or with a large platform will gladly work together with the people they utterly despise - black people, asians, women, gays, trans people - so long as they can use them to further their power and their message. The GOP are fine with keeping people like Dave Rubin, Glen Greenwald, and Candace Owens around to back them up eventhough they see them as lesser human beings, just so long as they echo the same rhetoric. They're racist, homophobic assholes, but they're not stupid; they know that getting people they openly hate to join their cause is a powerful tool.
No, no he did not. He said, from the article you linked:
The meeting he was referencing was September 1st.
You are choosing to interpret "he didn't know before the phone call" as "he found out that day", but not only does one not follow from the other, he never even said that. All he said was that he didn't know during the phone call, and the author of that article chose that particular phrasing.
One Ukrainian official claims to have read a document that she can neither say when it was nor produce documentation of that contradicts literally everyone else, including the accounts that you claim corroborate her. Zelensky flatly denies when she said. The officials who would have sent such a wire from the mebassy would be easy enough to track down, and none of them testified. Laura Cooper when asked directly if Ukraine knew about the hold said only that they seemed aware there was an issue by August 6th. And there's no record at all of where the Ukrainian embassy would have gotten that info.
Like, if for my job I'm ordering something from one of our vendors, and I don't hear anything for a few days, I might reasonably reach out myself for the lead time. If they beat around the bush, I might start to suspect something is up. But at no point am I going to assume they are permanently withholding the goods for a totally unrelated reason. If I'm not told there is an exceptional problem, I'm never going to assume there is one. If the assistance hadn't been held, the Ukrainian Embassy would likely have been asking exactly the same questions. Unless you've got evidence that someone answered "oh, you're not getting that, cause Trump blocked it", all they would have seen is business as usual.
And, you know, maybe hearsay is a reasonable thing to look to in the absence of better evidence, but we have documentation of internal discussions, text and emails that were sent between officials, giving all but definitive evidence that Ukrainian leadership found out from Politico, which matches moth the White House's explanation of the timeline and Zelensky's.
Okay, I don't really want to get into this again as it was bad enough 2-3 years ago, but...
What seems to be the case is that the Ukrainians were expecting the money in mid-July, but it did not arrive with no explanation. One might note that the US officials were also expecting to send the money in mid-July, until they were told by the White House to hold it (also without a reason). Thus, Ukraine became aware of a problem in July - however, they did not know the specifics. What September represents is Ukraine finally seeing a confirmation that or explanation why the money hadn't arrived as expected in July.
The subsequent investigation provided ample, credible, supporting evidence via multiple sources that the money was indeed withheld to pressure Ukraine into investigating Biden, although there is no explicit and completely unambiguous statement to this effect from Trump himself. Tstorm's defence therefore is roughly akin to arguing that unless a suspect confesses, he cannot be convicted of a crime. And we all know that isn't true.
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Yep, one is noticeably whiter than the distribution of the general population, and the other is noticeably blacker than the distribution of the general population. Almost like both administrations were aiming for those results as a goal.I mean its annicdotal, but there's the side-by-side photos of the Obama White House interns vs the Trump White House ones.
What about second row from the top, third seat? And top row, seat 6, though he might just be really tan.
Or you could argue the Obama administration wanted a cross-section of multiple races to have an inclusive and multi-cultured department, and the Trump administration really just wanted white people because darkies make daddy Trump uncomfortable.
I encourage you to actually listen/read the transcript of the interview, because you're missing the key part.
Again: this is the same day the Ukrainian embassy queried the status of the funds.Zelensky said:
Firstly, no, Zelensky did not "flatly deny" when she said. Nothing he said contradicts her account.
Secondly, to be perfectly honest, all you have here is incredulity. You don't believe her. But that's based on.... the fact she didn't produce documentation (which... she wasn't asked to do, and wouldn't really be expected?) as well as your misapprehension that what she said was somehow at odds with other accounts. But it wasn't.
We have numerous credible first-hand accounts, from both Ukrainian and American sources, that the Ukrainians were aware of the block long before 28 August. We have the DOD itself warning that the block endangers the legal apportionment of funds. The only statement contradicting these is the defence statement of Trump himself during the proceedings. His is the account which runs contrary to all other accounts; which is tailored to save his own skin; and which you're uncritically parroting.
1) The White House didn't tell the budget office to hold the money until July 25th. How do you think a hold placed July 25th prevented the money from being transferred in mid-July?
2) The money wasn't being transferred to Ukraine, it was being released to the Department of Defense, so even if the budget office expected to release it in mid-July, the money wasn't going to Ukraine, it was going to the Department of Defense, to be spent on military supplies, weaponry, and support, specifically sourced from the US, and available to the DoD until the end of September.
The first record of anyone making that connection is literally Politico. The investigation found exactly zero record of anyone from any source connecting military aid to an investigation until after it was reported in the news, and most of the people talking about it were referencing the news reports.