RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/no-trump-is-not-facing-the-death-penalty-over-ukraine/

Bill Weld beclowns himself in trying to spread this misinformation.

Bill Weld used to be a serious guy. A scholar graduated from Harvard and Oxford, a man with gravitas in the legal community. Before he began seeking elective office in the late 1980s, Weld was a high-ranking and extremely knowledgeable federal prosecutor. For a time, he was the chief of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division under President Reagan. I have not been a fan of his post-DOJ political career, but I’ve never thought of him as a clown.

Now, he has beclowned himself.

It was a “Hold my beer” moment of one-upmanship on Morning Joe Monday, MSNBC, where the Trump-deranged legions make their 24/7 calls for Trump’s impeachment, is one of few venues where Weld can find an audience for his forlorn GOP-nomination challenge to the president.

Weld was talking about the president’s conversations with his Ukrainian counterpart. Trump has admitted that he urged President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden for corruption. Former vice president Biden, of course, is a favorite to emerge as the Democrats’ 2020 nominee opposing Trump.

For most of us, the potential removal of a president of the United States over misconduct allegations may seem extraordinarily grave, having never happened and rarely been tried lo these 230 years of constitutional governance. For former Governor Weld, though, grounds for Trump’s impeachment are so matter-of-factly to be assumed that he’s moved beyond them. Way beyond them.

Trump, he asserts (and I’m not kidding, though I wish I were), may need to be put to death.

The details of the Trump–Zelensky communications are still emerging. Yet Weld decided he knows enough to pronounce that Trump’s purported “pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election” is not a matter of merely “undermining democratic institutions.” No, no, “It’s treason pure and simple.” Not content with ludicrous overstatement, Weld took pains to add: “And the penalty for treason under the U.S. Code is death. That’s the only penalty.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/gregg-jarrett-trump-whistleblower

The latest media mass hysteria over a whistleblower’s complaint that, according to FoxNews.com “reportedly involved allegations President Trump made a troubling and unspecified ‘promise’ to a foreign leader,” is based on precious little information.  That has not stopped journalists from convicting Trump in the court of public opinion and predicting his imminent demise.

Who exactly is this unidentified “whistleblower”? What is the specific nature of his or her “urgent concern” complaint against the president?  Does this complaint really qualify under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA)?  These are just a few of the most fundamental questions that remain largely unknown.

Despite the paucity of facts, some reasonable observations and conclusions can be drawn.

It appears that an American spy in one of our intelligence agencies may have been spying on our own president.  The complaint suggests that this intel agent was listening in on Trump’s conversation with a foreign leader.  Was this person officially asked to listen to the conversation or was he or she secretly listening in? We don’t know.
This agent, who is an unelected and inferior federal employee in the government hierarchy, apparently believes that it is his/her job to second-guess the motivation behind the words of the elected president, who is the most superior officer in the U.S. government. 
Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping power to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate with leaders of other nations, make demands or offer promises.  The Constitution does not grant the power of review, approval or disapproval to spies or other unelected officials in the executive branch. 
The ICWPA law defines the parameters of an “urgent concern” complaint as an abuse or violation of law “relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters.”  The president’s conversation with a foreign leader does not seem to fall under this whistleblower definition. 
It appears the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) agrees with this assessment. His agency’s general counsel wrote a letter stating the complaint did not meet the ICWPA definition because it involved conduct “from someone outside the intel community and did not relate to intelligence activity,” according to a report by Fox News. This is why the DNI refused to forward the complaint to congress. 

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-biden-pass-andrew-mccarthy

It was in the national interest of the United States that Ukraine, under siege by our Russian nemesis, be given the full quantum of military aid extended by Congress. It was in the political interest of President Trump that Ukraine aggressively investigate credible allegations of corruption and conflict-of-interest against former Vice President Joe Biden, a favorite among the Democratic candidates seeking to run against Trump in 2020.

The national interests of the United States and the political interests of the president are not the same thing. If President Trump conflated them in his discussions with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that was a failure of judgment.

But have we lost our capacity to say conduct is censurable without turning it into something it is not – such as effective immunity for Biden and grounds for Trump’s impeachment?

Don’t get me wrong. It is not my purpose to minimize the politicization of American foreign relations. To the contrary, I just wrote a book, “Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency.” In many ways, it is a “cri de coeur” for a restoration of a vital American norm. Incumbent administrations must not wield the awesome powers of the presidency, especially the powers to conduct foreign affairs and gather foreign intelligence, out of sheer partisanship.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, it is proven that Trump used his enormous influence over Kiev, or worse, his control over the release of defense aid Ukraine needs, strictly to better his electoral chances against Biden. That would be an abuse of power.

It would also make the 45th president, well, the 45th president in American history to exercise his powers under the influence of his political standing. That is particularly true of presidents seeking reelection, even if we suspect that most exploitations of foreign relations power for electoral advantage have been less crude than Trump’s alleged squeezing of Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-stands-up-for-religious-freedom-11569279353

President Trump isn’t known as a champion of human rights, but on Monday he became the first American president to convene a meeting at the United Nations on religious freedom. He kicked off the U.N. General Assembly’s annual session with a “Global Call to Protect Religious Freedom.”

Flanked by Secretary-General António Guterres and Vice President Mike Pence, the president declared: “No right is more fundamental to a peaceful, prosperous, flourishing society than religious freedom, yet it is rare around the world. As we speak, many people of faith are being jailed, murdered, often at the hands of their own government.” More than 80% of the world’s population lived in nations that restrict religious freedom as of 2009, and the situation hasn’t improved, according to Pew Research.

Mr. Trump is also scheduled to hold bilateral meetings with several world leaders, including Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan and Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi. Administration officials say he will speak to them about violations of the human rights of religious minorities, including Christians. Topics will likely include Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and Egypt’s Islamic extremist groups.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/23/bidens-real-foreign-election-interference-russiagate/

It looks as though Joe Biden is about to bumble and babble and bluster his way to a third failed run for president. Even before President Trump took aim at Hunter Biden for his shady financial ties to the Ukraine while his father was vice president, Biden was struggling with basic facts and weird stories about confronting a disobedient black teen with a chain in the 1960s.

Now it looks like Biden might be forced to answer serious questions about how his children capitalized on the former vice president’s international political connections and how Biden himself ran interference when his family’s grift was jeopardized.

According to news reports based on a “whistleblower” complaint, President Trump requested over the summer that Ukraine investigate an energy company that appointed Hunter Biden to its board in 2014, shortly after President Obama named Joe Biden as his emissary to the country.

While details about the younger Biden’s windfall are unclear, The Hill’s John Solomon reported in April that Biden’s company was paid a six-figure sum each month for more than a year. When Ukrainian officials began to probe possible corruption at the company, the vice president pressured the country to halt the investigation and fire the lead prosecutor, even threatening to withhold U.S. aid. (A fact he later bragged about.)

Ukranian officials concurred: That move not only spared Hunter Biden, who continued to serve on the gas company’s board until earlier this year, but quashed another political scandal for the Democrats in advance of an election year.