RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/25/the-transcript-is-damning-to-biden-not-trump/
Picture the 2020 presidential debate between Donald Trump and the Democratic nominee. The challenger turns to the president and charges: “You asked the Ukrainian president to investigate your opponent’s son’s shady business dealings.”

He adds, “you released the transcript of your phone call last year with him in which you said, ‘there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.’

“And then you said, and I quote, ‘Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution. So if you can look into it, it sounds horrible to me.’”

Finally, arriving at his rhetorical crescendo, the nominee declares victoriously, “Horrible? What’s horrible wasn’t me as vice president using the threat of withholding $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees that Ukraine needed to stay solvent to get the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating my son’s client fired. No, what’s horrible is a president of the United States using the power of his office to dig up foreign dirt on a political opponent.”

It doesn’t quite work, does it? In fact, it would, if you will, trump Joe Biden’s long history of verbal blunders as the gaffe of all gaffes of the entirety of his four-and-a-half decades in Washington.

Democrats — from high-ranking party operatives to rank-and-file primary voters — know this, which is why the transcript released by the Trump White House on Wednesday dooms Biden’s 2020 chances, not Trump’s.

https://spectator.us/dems-swig-pickwick-papers-impeachment/

Compare the anodyne narrative of the transcript to the mad impeachment hysteria that has addled the brains of the anti-Trump sorority in the Democratic party.

I am not thinking of that scene at the beginning of Dickens’s novel where Mr Blotton says he regards Mr Pickwick as a ‘humbug’. That was nice, especially when Mr Pickwick angrily demands to know whether the Rt. Honorable gentleman called him a humbug in its ordinary or ‘common sense’. No, no responded Mr Blotton, he had ‘merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view’. Well, that’s all right then, rejoined Mr Pickwick, and peace and amity reigned once more among the members of the Pickwick Club.

There is a lesson in there somewhere for the Democrats, but when it comes to their virulent case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, more pertinent is the episode describing the case of Bardell v. Pickwick. The widow Bardell, ‘fat, fair, and forty’, is Mr Pickwick’s landlady. She willfully misconstrues some innocuous comments he makes. Item: ‘Dear Mrs. B., Chops and tomato sauce. Yours, Pickwick.’ Out such gossamer musing she constructs a proposal of marriage and, when no proposal is forthcoming sues Pickwick for breach of promise. Much hilarity, and not inconsiderable inconvenience, ensues, but it all comes right in the end, at least for Mr Pickwick.

It’s not so great for Mrs Bardell, but what happens to her is nothing like what is about to happen to the Democrats. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House was opening a ‘formal’ impeachment inquiry. Why? Because the president had a conversation with the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in July. President Trump congratulated Zelensky on his recent victory and expressed the wish that the US and Ukraine would work together in a spirit of friendship. He noted that the US had an ongoing inquiry into Ukrainian-based efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election and he asked Zelensky to talk to Attorney General Barr. ‘There are a lot of things that went on,’ Trump said, and ‘I would like you to get to the bottom of it.’ For his part, Zelensky expressed the hope that Rudy Giuliani would be available to help them with the inquiry. Trump is enthusiastic about that idea and notes that ‘there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great.’

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/26/complaint-from-so-called-whistleblower-is-riddled-with-gossip-blatant-falsehoods/

The formal complaint from an anti-Trump “whistleblower” alleging various crimes by President Donald Trump is riddled with third-hand gossip and outright falsehoods. The document was declassified by Trump Wednesday evening and released to the public Thursday morning. The complaint, which was delivered to the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees, follows the same template used in the infamous and debunked Clinton campaign-funded Steele dossier.

Rather than provide direct evidence that was witnessed or obtained firsthand by the complainant, the document instead combines gossip from various anonymous individuals, public media reports, and blatant misstatements of fact and law in service of a narrative that is directly contradicted by underlying facts. A footnote in the document even boasts about its use of “ample open-source information.”

Contrary to news reports asserting that the complaint included volumes of information incriminating Trump, it is instead based entirely on the president’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and various public media reports.

“I was not a direct witness to most of the events” characterized in the document, the complainant confesses on the first page. Instead, the complainant notes, the document is based on conversations with “more than half a dozen U.S. officials.” Those officials are not named, and their positions are not identified anywhere in the letter.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/26/impeach-joe-biden/

Until the transcript of President Donald Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky emerged on Wednesday, Democrats were in a mad fury with accusations that Trump had bribed a foreign government to investigate the business dealings of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

The claim, based on a whistleblower’s second-hand account, which none of them had seen, alleged that Trump withheld aid to Ukraine on the condition that it open an investigation on Biden.

Circumstantially at least, there seemed to be some crumbs to back this up. Aside from the mysterious whistleblower claim, the administration had held up an aid package shortly before the call. And then, statements made by Trump and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, seemed to confirm some elements of the story.

When the transcript of the call came out, however, the story fell apart. There was no discussion of aid. Trump did not cajole or pressure Zelensky.

Of course, since the impeachment train had already left the station, Democrats couldn’t suddenly shrug their shoulders and say “never mind.” So the mere fact that Trump brought up the topic of the Biden investigation is now grounds for impeachment.

But if that’s all there is to it, why isn’t Biden under the impeachment cloud?

amgreatness.com/2019/09/25/ukraine-gate-is-about-the-russian-hack-that-wasnt/

“CrowdStrike’s Ties to Democrats While lawmakers and pundits on the Left and NeverTrump Right breezed past Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike—either out of subterfuge or ignorance—it is significant. CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm with strong ties to the Democratic Party. After the DNC server was hacked in early 2016, Perkins Coie, a politically connected law firm, hired CrowdStrike on behalf of the DNC to find out who was behind the intrusion. (Perkins Coie is the same law firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up Russia-related dirt on Team Trump before the election.)”

One of the animating chapters in the Trump-Russian collusion saga was the claim that Russia infiltrated the Democratic National Committee’s email server in the spring of 2016. That hack, according to collusion truthers, and the subsequent release of damaging emails exchanged between top Democratic Party officials was central to Vladimir Putin’s scheme to sway the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

But the evidence to support this widely accepted claim is sketchy at best and appears to be under appropriate scrutiny by prosecutors now examining the origins of the FBI’s pre-election investigation into the Trump campaign for “colluding” with Russia.

According to the transcript of a July call between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s newly elected president, Trump raised the issue of “CrowdStrike” and suggested Ukraine might be in possession of the “server,” a reference to the DNC server.

“I would like you to do us a favor,” Trump said. “I would like you to find out what happened with the whole situation with Ukraine, with CrowdStrike. The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.”

To say the least.

CrowdStrike’s Ties to Democrats

While lawmakers and pundits on the Left and NeverTrump Right breezed past Trump’s mention of CrowdStrike—either out of subterfuge or ignorance—it is significant.

CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity firm with strong ties to the Democratic Party. After the DNC server was hacked in early 2016, Perkins Coie, a politically connected law firm, hired CrowdStrike on behalf of the DNC to find out who was behind the intrusion. (Perkins Coie is the same law firm that hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign to dig up Russia-related dirt on Team Trump before the election.)

That isn’t the extent of CrowdStrike’s dubious political ties. Its co-founder, Moscow-born Dmitri Alperovitch, is associated with the Clinton Foundation; in 2015, CrowdStrike received $100 million in funding from Google whose chairman, Eric Schmidt, was a generous supporter of Hillary Clinton. CrowdStrike’s president is Shawn Henry, who headed up the FBI’s cybercrimes division during the Obama Administration when Robert Mueller was director.