And losing.
When the first notice of the unnamed whistle-blower’s complaint about—well, something involving the President and the Ukraine surfaced on the New York Times front page, in an article that was so devoid of facts, details and corroboration that its only excuse for publication was to titillate Trump-Haters, I wrote,
“This is what the Times considers front page news now. Instantly, “resistance” members and Democrats will leap to the conclusion that whatever it is, it’s impeachable. Those who are thoroughly sick of the successive coup attempts will assume that this is one more concocted sliming by the Deep State, so we can have a “Russiagate” style investigation that will hamstring President Trump’s second term… For my part, I’ll wait for actual facts, thanks. I don’t trust “the intelligence community” not to manufacture ways to undermine the Presidency, not after Comey, McCabe, the FISA fiasco, the FBI lovebirds texts, and Mueller’s statements, among other smoking guns. I don’t trust the Times reporting, I don’t trust President Trump not to do or say something that crosses ethical or legal lines, and I certainly don’t trust Congressional Democrats to determine what are serious transgressions by this President and what are typical maneuvers that have only become ominous because he isn’t Barack Obama.”
Well, I’ve been waiting. As predicted, Democratic impeachment-mongers and Presidential hopefuls are screaming to the skies, and the mainstream media has been flogging the as-yet non-story, another species of fake news, as if it were the Second Coming. Yet here is how the New York Times itself explained the alleged scandal:
What did Mr. Trump do?
In a July 25 phone call, Mr. Trump is said to have pressed the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, to investigate Mr. Biden’s younger son, Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Mr. Trump has seized on an unsubstantiated theory that Mr. Biden was trying to protect the company from prosecution when he called for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor in 2016. Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers, has pushed the Ukrainian government to investigate the matter.
Is “said to have”? By whom? This is not news reporting, it’s gossip. The Biden theory is unsubstantiated? The theory the Times has published multiple stories about regarding the President’s interactions with the Ukraine is far less substantiated.
Why is this coming up now?
Because of an intelligence community whistle-blower who filed a complaint last month about the president’s actions. An inspector general deemed the complaint “credible” and “urgent” and forwarded it to the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, who has refused to share it with Congress….
Amazingly, it has now been revealed that the “whistle-blower” did not have direct knowledge of the communications between President Trump and the foreign leader in question. An official who has been briefed on the matter, however, told CNN that the whistleblower “didn’t have direct knowledge of the communications.” The official said that the concerns and subsequent complaint came in part from the whistleblower “learning information that was not obtained during the course of their work.” That’s hearsay by definition, and means that the report has no probative or evidentiary value whatsoever until it is independently verified. Until then, it is also not news.
What did the whistle-blower claim?
The full extent of the whistle-blower’s complaint, as well as the whistle-blower’s identity, is not publicly known. Reporting by The New York Times and others has established that the complaint involves Mr. Trump’s interactions with Ukraine and a phone call with a foreign leader — possibly, but not necessarily, Mr. Zelensky. It is not clear if it includes other matters.
This is really what the Times itself says. A “whistleblower” from the intelligence community made a complaint about something he was told by an an unnamed party about a private phone call with a yet to be identified official.
Here’s my favorite, though:
Did Mr. Trump use American foreign policy to pressure Ukraine to investigate a political rival?
This is the big question. The White House this summer blocked a package of military assistance to Ukraine. The aid was intended to help the country defend itself from Russian territorial aggression, including a military conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014. The delay of the aid was first publicly disclosed about a month after the July phone call between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Trump is not known to have openly linked the aid — which has since been released — to his demands for political investigations, but many Democrats believe that may be the case.
“Many Democrats” believe that the President colluded with the Russians and stole the election, despite a three year investigation that found no evidence that this was the case. Many Democrats believe that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted a fellow teen when he was a private school student, despite nothing more than the politically-motivated testimony of the alleged victim reciting a “discovered memory.” Many Democrats believe that the world will end if we don’t turn over our economy and liberties to an all-wise government that will use its power to end climate change, that the Second Amendment should be repealed, and that babies should be aborted in the 9th month if their mothers want them to be.
Many Democrats “believe” what it is politically expedient to believe, and facts be damned.
Did Mr. Biden do something wrong?
There is no evidence that Mr. Biden intentionally tried to help his son when he pushed for the dismissal of the Ukrainian prosecutor…On Saturday, Mr. Biden said he had never spoken with his son about any overseas work. Mr. Biden played a lead role in the Obama administration’s diplomacy with Kiev, but Obama administration officials worried that his son’s work for the energy company, Burisma Holdings, could create at least the perception of a conflict of interest.
Gee, ya think? This is the essence of the appearance of impropriety. Meanwhile, Biden’s claim that he never spoke to his son about the possible conflict his business dealings in the Ukraine created for the Obama Administration is dubious, to be nice about it. Yet the mainstream media didn’t seem to be even slightly curious about this, fulminating instead about the alleged Trump phone call to someone about something that was complained about by a whistleblower based on what somebody told him.
This is, of course, why joe can keep saying that there were no scandals in the Obama administration.
The description of non-story by conservative pundit Roger Kimball seems fair, if harsh. If you disagree, please explain why:’
Another week, another pseudo-scandal fomented by anonymous anti-Trump actors in the “intelligence community” and fanned into attention-grabbing headlines by an impatient, irresponsible press…
We do know that President Trump spoke to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25. Speaking for myself, I hope that he did bring up Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. Andrew McCarthy brings his usual no-nonsense common sense to the issue. “If,” McCarthy writes, Biden “used his political influence to squeeze a foreign power for his son’s benefit, that should be explored. Of course,” he continues, “Trump should not use the powers of his office solely for the purpose of obtaining campaign ammunition to deploy against a potential foe.” May I add, “Duh”? But here’s the thing:
All presidents who seek reelection wield their power in ways designed to improve their chances. If Trump went too far in that regard, we could look with disfavor on that while realizing that he would not be the first president to have done so. And if, alternatively, the president had a good reason for making a reciprocal commitment to Ukraine, that commitment would not become improper just because, collaterally, it happened to help Trump or harm Biden politically…Stepping back for a moment from that snarling imbroglio, I do wonder whether the latest “Trump abused his powers, let’s impeach him!” gambit is not rather an impressive deployment of a rhetorical-political gambit known as the “preemptive tu quoque I-tagged-you-first” strategy. The media and anti-Trump commentariat is jumping up and down in unison saying, “Trump is leaning on a foreign power in order to gain a political advantage.” But what is that charge cover for? A chap called Robert Barnes, writing on Twitter, reminds us of a pertinent fact. “The same Democrats who used all the powers of the Presidency to spy on an opposing campaign, and continue to use every power of the House to invade the privacy of the President, are deeply offended that Trump would want corruption investigated involving a former Vice President?” That’s what Latinists called a nonne question, one that expects the answer “Yes.”
Finally, over at CNN, “Fredo” was stunned when usually-reliable Trump-basher Phil Mudd, a former government intelligence officer regular CNN contributor on intelligence matters, told the younger Cuomo,
“Can you explain to me, A, why it’s the intelligence community’s responsibility to listen to the president of the United States speaking to a foreign leader, and B, why the U.S. intelligence community under the rules provided by the Democrats in Congress are responsible to report to the Congress what the President of the United States says? Last I checked, Chris, when I served, we’re responsible for chasing the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, and terrorists. We’re not responsible for reporting to the Congress what the president says. He can say what he wants, Chris!…The President can say what he wants; it’s not the responsibility of the intel guys to go police the President and go snitch on him to the Congress! Ridiculous!…I am ticked off! This is completely inappropriate! And the Congress should not be asking the intel guys to snitch on the president! NO!”
That’s one anti-Trump pundit with some integrity. And the rest? Oh, I’m sure they are honorable, ethical analysts who have just been confused by their well-meaning patriotic passions and confirmation bias, and not ruthless, irresponsible people who hate the elected President more than they care about the Constitution, the stability of the nation, or the future of the United States.
No, really. That’s got to be it.
Ethics Alarms 
Simple, Jack. The Democratic Party and their allies in the media are heavily into the myth that they and only they are the good guys, and the other side are evil. They are so into it that now that they believe, as uberlefty Ted Rall (who wrote that Iran is on a higher moral plane than the US) wrote at the beginning of the Trump presidency, that it is the duty of honorable public servants to either resign rather than serve under this president, or turn against him:
“If you’re a member of the armed forces or the police, you are morally required to resign and find another job.
If you work in a political post within the federal government — the diplomatic corps, for example — or a post that has policy implications, like the NSA or CIA, a morally upright person has no choice but to quit in protest.
If you have the opportunity to expose wrongdoing from within, you must act as a whistleblower.
If you have the chance to resist Trump’s protofascist policies, you must do so. You must hide the undocumented worker on the run. You cannot submit a bid to construct the Wall. You must, if you work for an insurance company, try to avoid enforcing rules that deny healthcare.”
– From “Three Rules of Resistance” which you can look up, should you be inclined to read it all. It’s full of justifications and rationalizations, of course, including the “these are not normal times” garbage.
Normally Ted is an outlier and a provocateur, but it’s pretty obvious that his thinking has gone mainstream in the Democratic Party. At this point they really and honestly believe that it is the job of the Deep State to spy on the president and then expose anything that might make him look bad, either to a leaky Congress who can then pass it on to the media, strictly from public-mindedness, of course, or to the media directly. Some might applaud this as being necessarily ruthless, to bring a president down who’s absolutely got to go for the greater good. However, these actions should scare them as much as they infuriate the right and Trump’s allies. If these people get real power they could just as easily decide that anyone is a threat that the Deep State needs to go after and either smear or bring criminal charges against. Who’s the protofascist again?
I looked up Ted Rall. Apparently he has written a book: The Anti-American Manifesto.
This is the blurb on Amazon. I may get it and read it: I have to understand how these people see and what the terms of their predicates are.
Once again, I miss dearly the participation of the self-exiled Ethics Alarms resistance member—Chris, deery, Charles. et al. I want them to explain how they can justify these kinds of unconscionable attempts to deceive the public. Do they have some secret, valid justification beyond, as Chris memorably asserted, the fact that he just KNEW the President was up to no good and had committed impeachable offenses. That appears to me to be the best, least damning mindset, the other alternative being “we’re just lying to bring the guy down, because we want power so bad we can taste it.” IS there something else? I’d like to know what it is, if so. But from my adventures around the web and social media, such devotees of resistance cant seem to be happy just making wild claims and getting their “likes.” “Our democracy is imploding!” posted one friend whom a know for a fact is too smart to conclude this based on the Ukraine suspicions, but he writes this anyway, because he assumes nobody will challenge it. (Heh,heh,heh…)
But I want to be challenged, if only to be able to show how terrible the knee-jerk arguments are.
This is HJ as D. A., because even the evil side is entitled to a defense.
So, look, Jack, they knew from the whistleblower that Trump had talked with a foreign leader, and the indications were pretty good that he was trying to get dirt on a potential opponent in next year’s election. That there was dirt on this particular opponent, well, they knew that, too. But an effort to get a foreign leader to present that dirt to the world goes against our nation’s principles. Worse, they suspected Trump was using the leverage of promised foreign aid to lean on the foreign leader (who we since learned is the President of Ukraine). Even an intelligence inspector general said all this was troubling.
So, yeah, they ran with a half-baked story, but part of the intent was to flush out more information. That worked. Others asked questions. The DNI briefed the House Intelligence Committee, more information will be forthcoming, and The NYT should not be ashamed of helping that process along. We now know Trump did discuss Joe and Hunter Biden in that phone call with Zelensky, something we know only because The NYT got the ball rolling.
Like you, I don’t like seeing the media using unnamed sources, “people familiar with the situation.” But, given the political climate and the very real fear people have about speaking out, that’s what we have to live with.
Publications that stand up to authorities and strive to ferret out information that those in power want to keep hidden do a valuable service to the nation. We should not castigate them for that.
“indications were pretty good that he was trying to get dirt on a potential opponent in next year’s election.”
What are the indications, in the absence of even a first hand account of the conversation? They aren’t pretty good, unless one assumes “Orange Man Bad.”
“But an effort to get a foreign leader to present that dirt to the world goes against our nation’s principles.”
Where do you see such an effort? That’s baseless speculation. A President has every right to say “I think you should be investigating this.” That’s not an abuse of power. That’s just power. And what “principles”? If this is the norms thing again, I guarantee that most if not all modern Presidents have requested actions from foreign governments that might have political benefits to them in the States. Previous Presidents haven’t had politically motivated moles in key positions seeking to sabotage them, knowing that the news media would give them cover.
“So, yeah, they ran with a half-baked story, but part of the intent was to flush out more information. That worked.”
Pure ends justifies the means reasoning. On the front page? With those non-details? Come on.
Is this where I get mad and threaten to leave?
No. 😉
The indications came from the whistleblower, and assuming “Orange Man Bad” is a reasonable assumption.
Given Trump, or most any president seeking a second term, we can be sure he’d want any dirt made public. Otherwise, why push for an investigation? If it were for criminal prosecution, the FBI would have been on it. No, it was political.
The principle is free and fair elections, without foreign interference. And, what other presidents have or would have done is irrelevant. This is about this president, this phone call, and what actually transpired.
Call them moles if you wish, but there always have been civil servants who put their allegiance to the Constitution ahead of politics. The oath is not one of loyalty to any president, but to the country. You call it undermining the president; I call it standing up for the rule of law.
Since that original article, we have learned that the call was with Zelensky, that it took place when Joe Biden was leading all Democratic presidential contenders, and that Trump pushed for an investigation of the Bidens. Just coincidence, right? Sometimes, the ends do justify the means.
You’re assuming far too much, HJ.
It’s still not interference, HJ, not a crime, not an impediment to free elections in any way. Fair and free elections occur when we know what we need to know about the people running. It doesn’t matter to me one bit who finds the truth about a candidate’s misconduct, and there is no “principle” involved that says that something discovered in a Ukrainian investigation is off limits to be used in an American election. Presidents should not be spied on by US intelligence, and their conversations with foreign leaders should remain between them. What other Presidents do and have done is relevant, because what this President does is uniquely hamstrung by leaks, accusations and innuendo. If all or most Presidents pressure foreign governments to do things that a President might find politically useful, whatever they are, without explicit quid pro quos, then this President should be able to do the same without hysteria erupting and shouts of “abuse of power.” It is NOT abuse of power, because it is part of Presidential power. “Gee, it would be nice if you could sign that trade agreement before the election!” That’s asking for foreign interference? No, that’s international politics as usual. It’s just “bad” if Trump does it..and we still have no evidence, just assumptions.
And what would you “get mad” about? I don’t get mad because people have differing opinions, and I assume, being of sound mind, you don’t either.
I’m not of sound mind. I’m D.A., not HJ.
Now I’m completely confused….
I believe he means “D.A.” to be “devil’s advocate”.
In my world, it means “District Attorney.” Or “Dick Allen.”
Please spare me until tomorrow. I’m old. It’s late. I’m D.A., not HJ, and adopting a second persona is not all that easy.
But, tomorrow, watch out!
[This HJ as the D.A. again, and this does not mean I am a fan of Satan (AKA NYT), but somebody’s got to defend him.]
“It’s still not interference, HJ, not a crime ….”
It certainly is interference if Zelensky opens an investigation based on Trump’s urging and his withholding of security funds authorized by Congress, an investigation that otherwise would not have happened. Whether it is a crime is irrelevant to the ethical issue. I believe that’s the “Marion Barry’s Misdirection.”
“… what this President does is uniquely hamstrung by leaks, accusations and innuendo.”
And that excuses bad behavior (if there was such) on his part? I don’t think so.
“If all or most Presidents pressure foreign governments to do things that a President might find politically useful ….”
Well, sure, everybody does it, so that makes it okay for this president. A golden rationalization for the golden (not orange) man; great!
“… and we still have no evidence, just assumptions.”
There was enough evidence for the NYT article on Sept. 20. That was a week after Rep. Schiff said that there was a whistleblower complaint, that the acting DNI had refused to pass the information on to Congress, and that the DNI Inspector General considered the complaint legitimate.
It also was after The NYT learned (via The Washington Post, apparently) that there was an acknowledgement by the Inspector General for the DNI that the complaint “… relates to one of the most significant and important of the D.N.I.’s responsibilities to the American people.”
If it’s that important to the DNI, then it’s important to the American people, and it’s appropriate for The NYT to pursue the story.
Nah.
1. A President of the US doesn’t have to make an explicit threat: lesser nations are inclined to accommodate them. Any time a Presient asks for a favor, there is that unspoken threat lingering. It is not unethical to use it.
2. And if its a bluff? How do you prove it isn’t? A bluff isn’t t5hge same as a quid pro quo.
3. It’s not Marion’s Misdirection until there’s actually something to misdirect from. Nepostism is a conflict of interest, and harms the public. Suggesting that a foreign country investigate actual misconduct isn’t, no matter who it might benefit.
4 “… what this President does is uniquely hamstrung by leaks, accusations and innuendo.” And that excuses bad behavior (if there was such) on his part? I don’t think so.
In fact, it justifies appropriate measures to allow the President to do his job. That’s not “wrongful conduct,” and neither is having frank, confidential conversations with foreign leaders.
5. Referencing the Times article is circular reasoning, since the Times had no legitimate basis for a story. ANYTHING that can be used to undermine Trump is “enough” for the Times—that was demonstrated during the Mueller investigation.
6. If what Trump said was within the established Presidential tool box–and it is–and he is being condemned because 1) a Deep State mole revealed what he had no business revealing and would not have revealed with another POTUS, and 2) it’s Trump, then the fact that no law was broken is absolutely relevant. If it’s really a “norm”—and I am certain it is—then it can’t be a “high crime” or a misdemeanor.
The Devil and the Democrats lose on this. It sounds like they are desperately trying to avoid the truth coming out about Biden/Obama and how the “scandal-free President” allowed Joe to provide a cash cow for his son while warping foreign policy. There’s nothing sinister about asking a government to find out the truth. I like the truth. I liked learning that the Democrats rigged the nomination and gave Hillary inside information before town meetings, and that the Clinton Foundation was the scam I thought it was, all of which knowledge was assisted by the Russian hacks. As with the Pentagon Papers, the public information value overrode the criminal methods value—but here, there was no criminal act being requested. And if this non-crime goads the Democrats into impeachment, the Democrats really lose. I once thought they weren’t that stupid, but I’m beginning to doubt it.
[The real HJ]
Dang it, Jack. You make it hard for me to play D.A. for The NYT, a role I do not relish anyway. Maybe one or more of the missing liberals will see how poorly I’ve done presenting their arguments and step back in.
Meanwhile, we know The NYT and a number of others will go after Trump repeatedly and unfairly, and we know that they are scrambling for subscribers and web-site clicks. That doesn’t excuse them, but it does put us on notice that we need to read widely and skeptically.
Frankly, Jack, I think you can stop fighting the urge, and I think your conclusion is right on the money. I also think you don’t need to spend a whole lot of time showing how dumb the other arguments are.
All you need to do is look at the other side’s goals, both in the past and in the present, and I think you’ll have your answer. The Democrats briefly had unlimited power in 2009 and 2010. They gave us Obamacare, which, I have to conclude is probably here to stay because it has now had almost a decade to become entrenched, and all the stars would need to line up for it to be repealed. The one chance we had was shot to hell so the John McCain could flip the president off one more time before he died. Harry Reid decided to eliminate the filibuster so that Obama’s appointees could sail through. Of course, now that that has backfired, the fact that Harry Reid originated it is conveniently thrown down the memory hole.
The Democrats goals for the future read like an exercise in tyranny. Pack the courts, eliminate the filibuster for everything, kill the electoral college, eliminate the second amendment, greatly curtail the First amendment, and push everything else down to the bottom of the agenda in favor of investigating the president and keeping the cloud of impeachment over his head. Then there is the proposal for taking over the healthcare sector and taking over the whole economy with medicare-for-all and the green New deal, and probably doing a huge amount of damage to the banking industry by canceling huge amounts of debt.
These are not the proposed actions of a legitimate opposition party, or even a party with the nation’s best interest at heart. These are the proposed actions of a political party that has one goal, and one goal only: to obtain and keep complete power. They used to cloak it in trying to help everyone, but now they aren’t even trying to do that.
I asked before, and I ask again, who are the real fascists here?
Then engage with Here’s Johnny, aka DA, while I try to get a post up.
I periodically check your posts on twitter to see if anyone engages, and you should be delighted to know that your tweet announcing this post has been visited by none other than the disgraced Chris, who insists you are currently lying about what he said AND insists that all *you* have to do is simply “invite” him back and he’ll explain all of this.
Slightly paraphrasing George S. Kaufman’s famous reply when singer Eddie Fisher whimed about having trouble attarcting younger women as he aged:
On Mount Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to twenty-four times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was unsurpassed in the world of astronomy until the construction of the Mount Palomar telescope, an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to advances and improvements in optical technology, it is capable of magnifying the stars to four times the magnification and resolution of the Mount Wilson telescope – Mr. Fisher, if you could somehow put the Mount Wilson telescope inside the Mount Palomar telescope, you still wouldn’t be able to detect my interest in what Chris thinks about Ethics Alarms, me, ethics, or anything at all.
Well, we knew Chris was lurking. He cannot stand the fact that there is a minute corner of the Internet that progressive virtue signalling does not override their enemies. He would do ANYTHING to destroy anyone or anything that opposes those who, like him, know better how to run everyone else’s lives. His bile and intolerance really show who these people really are, and give credence to the secret desire to introduce the reeducation/death camps here in America. Post EA ban, he even tracked me down on an inactive blog I created for my children. I did not engage: I simply removed his hate filled comment from a site my kids might read.
The world is a better place without his progressive bullshit on Ethics Alarms.
Just a casual observation. Assuming the report from the “whistleblower” was made in good faith, reporting a credible rumor to the inspector general for further investigation, rather to Congress or directly to the public, would seem to be potentially the most responsible course of action for such information. The whole intelligence apparatus’s job is to collect and analyze ambiguous information.
Yet, this is not quite news. We do not know, for instance, the actual nature of the “whistle” blown. Was he tattling on the nature of the President’s conversation directly? Or was he concerned that certain official were loose lipped with (leaking) the contents of sensitive diplomatic talks?
In the quest to throw shade on the President, they essentially preemptively burying was is quite possibly another story of dysfunction in the intelligence community. Make Trump look bad, and damn the facts!
Amusing; they breathlessly run a story built on unverified rumors about Trump possibly doing something that might be construed as improper, and in the same article classify questions about Biden’s unqualified, kicked-out-of-the-navy, cokehead son getting a sweet deal with a Ukrainian gas company as “an unsubstantiated theory. Yep, totally unbiased!
BTW, how can we send you info or a link outside of a post here? I tried Facebook messenger a few days ago, but not sure if you got it (I don’t really use Facebook for much).
jamproethics@verizon.net
Thanks, Sent you something (sender: cathammer)
cathammer…
That’s… priceless.
I consider it sort of an online ID Rorschach test.
This one just may backfire on the democrats. Digging into this could end up exposing corruption by Joe Biden involving the obstruction of investigations into his son.
This is standard operating procedure for the Swamp. How does on enter Congress on less than $200,000 per year and emerge two years later a multi-millionaire? And you kids are suddenly independantly wealthy.
Here is a clue: insider trading is legal for Congress. For the rest of us peons?
Ask Martha Stewart.
Buckle up, the Left is really getting into undermine our constitutional system mode. You think it was bad before with assaults on elections, assaults on the Electoral College, assaults on the Supreme Court, assaults on the nominating process, assaults on the Senate, just sit back and watch.
Nothing they won’t try to destroy to avoid admitting they ran the one person in this nation less electable than Donald Trump…