Unprecedented

The Complaint:  Early yesterday the White House released a lightly redacted version of the so-called Whistleblower Complaint.  Only about nine pages long, the complaint is bigly problem for all involved in the Ukraine mess.  The Whistleblower begins by acknowledging that he (or she, but going forward I’ll use he) did not personally witness much of what he included in the complaint but that it was put together based on information shared with him by a number of other concerned witnesses to a series of events, most notably the now infamous July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Zelensky which most if not all of them listened to from the White House situation room. A few takeaways from the complaint: first it details how members of the White House staff, including several White House lawyers, realized that Trump had veered into dangerous territory on the July call when he pressured Zelensky to cooperate in an investigation into his rival Joe Biden in exchange for military aid so instead of placing the transcript of the call into the usual computer/record keeping system for such communications they stashed it into the super-secret, isolated computer system usually used for “codeword-level” intelligence information, a computer generally used to protect details of covert operations such as the raid that killed Osama bin Laden rather than routine conversations with world leaders.  Second, Trump dangled but held up having a meeting with Zelensky, one that Zelensky very much needed in order to send the message to Russia of Ukraine’s importance to the US, leaving the impression that he would only agree to the meeting after Zelensky started investigating Biden. Trump had earlier pulled VP Pence from the US traveling squad attending Zelensky’s May inauguration, leaving Energy Secretary Perry as the most senior US participant, a fairly direct message that absent cooperation on the investigation Zelensky wasn’t worthy of someone as senior as Pence.  Third, as a result of the trouble stirred up by Trump’s lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani who was busy working his contacts to dig up Biden dirt and the DNC server, two US Ambassadors, Kurt Volker, the special representative for Ukraine negotiations and Gordon Sondland, the Ambassador to the European Union, had to go into damage control mode, trying to explain to members of the new Ukrainian administration how to understand and respond to the messages that they were receiving from Trump through Giuliani, particularly when those messages conflicted with direction coming from more usual State Department contacts.

The Whistleblower:  The NY Times took a lot of heat yesterday after the paper reported that the Whistleblower was a CIA Analyst who for a time had been detailed to the White House.  Critics were concerned that the NY Times report risked identifying the Whistleblower, subjecting him to Trump’s retribution, not an unreasonable concern given that Trump railed against both the Whistleblower and any and all of the White House staff who had worked with him saying that in the old days “we used to handle people like that differently than we do now,” implying that the lying, partisan hack and his abettors should be subjected to one of those old time electrocutions or maybe even a firing squad.  While initially criticism of the Times appeared valid, it turns out that while the White House still doesn’t know who the Whistleblower is, they already knew that he works for the CIA.  They know that because before the Whistleblower submitted his formal complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General, he expressed his concern about Trump’s abuse of power for his own political interests and provided details of the July call to the CIA’s top lawyer who, following “normal procedure,” relayed those concerns to the White House and the Justice Department. Shortly after that, growing concerned that his report wasn’t getting proper attention, the Whistleblower then filed his formal complaint with the Inspector General. The Whistleblower’s lawyers are now working with House Intelligence Chairman Schiff to obtain permission for him to testify before Congress, presumably in a manner that will continue to protect his identity because already two Trump friendly conspiracy theorists have put out a bounty for him.  As to those White House lawyers, they concluded that the Whistleblower’s complaint didn’t qualify as a valid intelligence concern since Trump isn’t a member of the intelligence community so they forwarded it to Justice to look into as a criminal complaint.  Justice determined that there was no crime and did nothing, not all that surprising given that Attorney General Barr believes that, as president, Trump can do no wrong and that he is also involved in the whole mess. Some, if not all of these lawyers, probably should start hiring lawyers of their own, they might need them very soon.  At last count 225 members of Congress were on the impeachment bandwagon and reports are that Speaker Pelosi wants to get the impeachment done by Thanksgiving because who doesn’t want some must see TV alongside their Turkeys?                      

The DNI’s Testimony:  Yesterday Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, a former Vice Admiral and Navy SEAL, testified about the Whistleblower’s Complaint first in an open televised hearing before the House Intelligence Committee and then later in the day before a closed door session of the Senate Committee.  In some ways the House hearing went about as expected. Chairman Schiff and the other Democrats pressed Maguire for details about how he handled the complaint, got him to acknowledge that the Whistleblower was an honorable fellow (or lady) and that the complaint appeared to be legitimate.  Ranking Member Devon Nunes and the Republicans with one or two exceptions took the opposite tack, attacking the Whistleblower as a perpetrator of misinformation and hearsay and their Democratic colleagues as desperate impeachment crazy lunatics who were just re-upping that old Russian “witch hunt” to get rid of their hero, Trump.  Maguire, who had only been in his job for minutes when the Whistleblower Complaint came to his attention, seemed like a fish out of water despite his days swimming among the sharks.  He had a difficult time explaining why he thought that sending the complaint to the White House lawyers and Attorney General Barr’s Justice Department, a group of people implicated by the Whistleblower, made any sense.  He kept on saying that the whole situation was “unprecedented” given Trump’s involvement and that he sought legal advice because he thought it was the right thing to do given that whole executive privilege thing.  Sadly he didn’t seem all that concerned that absent the insistence of the Inspector General that the existence of the complaint had to be reported to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, his action would have led to the squashing of the complaint or might have convinced the Whistleblower to do something illegal, like go to the press, Snowden style, in order to get his concerns the attention they warrant.  Early in the administration a lot of people were pleased that Trump appointed so many military people to senior positions, believing that such an honorable crowd would help restrain Trump’s worse instincts. Others weren’t so sure, it turns out that the doubters are right, those military guys are for the most part honorable but they are also trained to follow the chain of command and are ill equipped to cope when the person at the top of that chain is rotten to the core.   

Other News:  Trump is continuing to wage two of his favorite wars.  He has his EPA going after California, claiming that the state’s homeless population is responsible for polluting all the of the state’s waterways with their hypodermic needles. Improperly disposed of needles, a problem, but it’s hard to buy into the EPA’s claim that needles are really the concern.  The EPA is also blaming California for not doing a better job keeping the air clean; that from the administration that want’s to allow more carbon emissions. On the immigration front, Trump has ordered that the number of refugees allowed to resettle in the US in the coming year be cut to 18,000, down from the administration's previous refugee ceiling of 30,000 and an 80% cut from the 110,000 allowed into the US during the last year of the Obama administration.  So much for those huddled masses yearning to be free.   

Shana Tova to all.