Without the whistleblower was bolton going to remain silent?

[dajoki]

He is only one of a number of current and former officials that have kept their mouths shut, they should have spoken out long before now. All know of the danger they are putting us through and still refuse to utter a word, of course one thing they have in common is that they are all repubs. They must spill all the beans now and deal with the consequences.
---

Trump-Ukraine: John Bolton 'sounded alarm about Rudy Giuliani's actions'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/oct/14/fiona-hill-testimony-trump-impeachment-inquiry?utm_term=RWRpdG9yaWFsX0d1YXJkaWFuVG9kYXlVUy0xOTEwMTU%3D&utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GuardianTodayUS&CMP=GTUS_email

The former US national security adviser, John Bolton, was reportedly so alarmed at a back-channel effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate Donald Trump’s political rivals that he told a senior aide to report it to White House lawyers.

The revelation of Bolton’s involvement in the effort to block a shadow foreign policy aimed at Trump’s political benefit emerged from congressional testimony given by his former aide, Fiona Hill, the former top Russia expert in the White House.

Hill, the British-born former senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council, spoke to three House committees for 10 hours.

According to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, Hill described a sharp exchange on 10 July between Bolton and the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, about the role played by Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to persuade the Ukrainian government to open investigations into Democrats, including former vice president Joe Biden.

Hill said Bolton instructed her to tell the National Security Council’s attorney that Giuliani was acting in concert with White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, in a rogue operation with legal implications.

“I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton instructed Hill to tell the NSC lawyer, according to her testimony.

She said that Bolton had told her on an earlier occasion: “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up.”

<<snip>>

[dewsgirl]

1. Is it possible he himself, is a whistleblower?

[machoneman]

2. I think he wanted to quickly pen a book (less IMO for $ than retribution) that would have....

included this episode but perhaps even far worse moves by Trumpy, Ghouliani and others. And yes, he could be a whistle-blower or maybe he is the alleged CIA whistle-blower given a phony cover story. He's a vindictive prick yet oddly, he may hold a key to Trump's eventual impeachment. More likely he'll spill even more beans and now before his book comes out since he vehemently opposed Trump's removal of our troops, a topic likely covered before Bolton left his post.

[tanyev]

4. Yep. He'll be all over the place when that book is about to come out.

[zentrum]

3. Of course would have remained silent.

He wanted to be the only hand grenade around.

[Cartaphelius]

5. He probably had

an NDA stating if he talked his
mustache would be repossessed.

[dajoki]

6. Administration enablers cannot justify remaining in office

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/14/administration-enablers-cannot-justify-remaining-office/

Let’s say you are at the State Department. Over the past year, you have seen Trump (backed up fully by his most loyal flunky, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) abandon the Kurds, ceding domination of the region to Syria, Turkey and Russia. We saw Trump repeatedly invite foreign countries to intervene in our elections and delay aid to Ukraine (with the Russian bear breathing down its neck) to achieve his political aims. Trump, with Pompeo’s assistance, has accorded North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un unprecedented legitimacy and now ignores missile tests. Trump allowed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to escape any accountability for his involvement in the gruesome murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and refuses to cut off support for the Saudis’ genocidal war in Yemen. Pompeo refused to protect superb career diplomat Marie Yovanovitch, our ambassador to Ukraine, from a political hit job.

How, then, has a political appointee in the State Department protected America? The self-delusion needs to stop. Those who remain enable a corrupt, unfit and disastrous president and his unprincipled secretary of state. Remaining in the halls of power means you’ve sacrificed intellectual and moral integrity and remained silent about the dozens, maybe hundreds, of outrages to which you have been witness. Trump has gotten worse on your watch.

The same is true of each and every department and agency in the Trump administration. At the Justice Department, lawyers have been asked to misrepresent the real reason for adding the citizenship question to the census, ignore impeachable conduct by the president in soliciting foreign intervention in our election and support an attorney general traveling the globe to prove a crackpot theory about the 2016 election that would undermine the findings of the intelligence community (including the FBI) and take ludicrous positions in a variety of cases (e.g. eradicating the Affordable Care Act, allowing the president to snatch funds to pay for the wall in contravention of Congress). Remaining at the Justice Department means you will risk your integrity and law license to cater to the whims of an unmoored president and an attorney general who acts like the president’s lawyer, not the country’s.

In sum, the delusion of “preventing even worse things” or “keeping the trains running” needs to end. The president has turned the federal government into a corrupt racket. To participate in it means to enable it and to keep its secrets. It is long past the time to rip the bandage off and reveal the ugly truths embedded in an administration that serves the president’s corrupt interests.

[calimary]

7. What still dismays me is - why is anyone surprised by this shit?

Why didn’t anybody see this? Or understand, FULLY, what kind of games trump COULD BE EXPECTED to play?

This is just more Manhattan real estate/construction biz under-the-radar wheeler-dealer shit. The kind of situation which attracts the get-rich mentality that consistently seeks to GET AROUND THE RULES. These are people who are ALWAYS - and I mean ALWAYS lookING for the angle.

They ALWAYS look for a way AROUND the rules. I remember the young woman who worked in the bush/cheney administration who testified that as soon as they “took” power (emphasis mine), they set about in her department looking for ways to “get around” the rules. That hit me like an exploding stink bomb when I watched her testify in an open hearing.

Boil it down. The foundation is “nobody tells ME what to do.” “You’re not the boss of ME.” “The rules don’t apply to ME.” Me, Me, and Me. My dad used to refer jokingly to what he called “IGMFU”. That stood for “I Got Mine, F-U.”

And that mentality flies in the face of the idea of what benefits the greater good. It’s totally oppositional. Those are two diametrically opposed philosophies. Oil and water. Keep it all ‘cause you shouldn’t have to share. So wrote Ayn Rand - she who eventually “mooched off the system” and didn’t gripe about collecting her Social Security payments from the dreaded accursed government every month.

The trump mentality is one that seeks not to be bound by any rules. But in an organized society, rules are essential. We need those rules and those rules have to apply to everyone in that society without exception. That’s what laws and regulations are for. That’s why we have guard rails and limit lines and and lane demarcations. And rules. Rules which are there for a reason. You don’t get to just drive through red lights any ol’ time you feel like it, because you don’t want to follow the rules or acknowledge their authority over you. Nope. Because then you have chaos. Using that last metaphor, you have the pavement at every intersection coated red with the blood of accident victims.

[hedda_foil]

8. Thanks for this great post, calimary! Could you please, please make it an OP so more can read it?

[calimary]

9. Sure. As soon as I get home (to my laptop).

And thanks!

Working on cell phone is sometimes more complicated for me.

[hedda_foil]

10. Great!

Thanks.

[calimary]

11. Done.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100212585905


Not on the radio anymore but I still take requests!

[hedda_foil]

12. Thanks!!