The complaint also alleges a pattern of obfuscation at the White House, in which officials moved the records of some of Trump’s communications with foreign officials onto a separate computer network from where they are normally stored, this person said. The whistleblower alleges that is what officials did with Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky, an action that alarmed the intelligence community inspector general and prompted him to request that the White House retain records of the Zelensky call, the person who read the complaint said.

...

Senior Justice Department officials said the director of national intelligence referred concerns about the call to the Justice Department in late August, after the intelligence community inspector general found that it was a possible violation of campaign finance laws. Days later, the inspector general referred the matter to the FBI.

Career prosecutors and officials in the Justice Department’s criminal division reviewed the rough transcript, which they obtained voluntarily from the White House, and determined the facts “could not make” the appropriate basis for an investigation, a senior Justice Department official said Wednesday. The final decision was made by Brian Benczkowski, who leads the Justice Department’s criminal division. As part of their reasoning, Justice Department lawyers determined that help with a government investigation could not be quantified as “a thing of value” under the law, officials said.


Their primary source for reaching that conclusion was the memo, according to the officials. While prosecutors did gather information about how the White House memorializes presidential calls with foreign heads of state, they did not interview other White House officials because they had not formally opened an investigation. Justice Department officials still do not know who the whistleblower is, officials said Wednesday.

House Republicans must demand a roll call vote on the floor of the House on whether or not to go forward with an impeachment inquiry. They must not allow Pelosi to get away with this. It’s the people’s house not Pelosi’s house...

A quid and a quo, and Trump should go

by Quin Hillyer
| September 25, 2019 05:07 PM
Judging by the evidence we have before us, the House of Representatives should impeach President Trump, and the Senate should remove him from office.

The newly released transcript of Trump’s call with incoming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shows Trump abusing his office in multiple ways. This is especially evident when considering the context of other actions already acknowledged by either Trump or his private attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

I’ve argued in prior columns that the very involvement of the president in urging a foreign government to criminally investigate a U.S. citizen never charged under U.S. law is extremely problematic. When the targeted citizen is his chief political rival, or the rival’s son, it's worse. Even worse is when the president’s own lawyer says a major goal of the pressure on the foreign government is so that the rival “didn’t become president without having to answer” for his Ukrainian dealings.

The president is using his office to pressure a foreign government to harass an American citizen for political reasons.

Earlier this week, President Trump cited concerns about corruption as his rationale for blocking security assistance to Ukraine. But in a letter sent to four congressional committees in May of this year and obtained by NPR, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy John Rood informs lawmakers that he has "certified that the Government of Ukraine has taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purposes of decreasing corruption [and] increasing accountability."

The certification was required by law for the release of $250 million in security assistance for Ukraine. That aid was blocked by the White House until Sept. 11 and has since been released. It must be spent before Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

At a news conference wrapping up a three-day visit to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, Trump repeated his professed concerns about corruption as the reason for holding up $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine.

"We want to make sure that country is honest," Trump said of Ukraine. "It's very important to talk about corruption. If you don't talk about corruption, why would you give money to a country that you think is corrupt?"

Josh Campbell
✔
@joshscampbell
After reading the whistleblower complaint, Sen. Ben Sasse cautions all parties to pump the brakes. To those in his party, he says: “Republicans ought not to be rushing to circle the wagons and say there’s no there there when there’s obviously a lot that’s very troubling there.”

Mark Elliott
@markmobility
Yo, there's a second whistleblower, who alleges Trump tried to interfere with the IRS audit of his taxes

The tax whistleblower, meanwhile, went straight to Congress ― specifically to the House Ways and Means Committee, which had sued the Trump administration for refusing to provide copies of the president’s tax returns in response to a formal request. Democrats say they need Trump’s returns to make sure the IRS properly enforces tax laws against the president.

But Ways and Means Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) is far less outspoken than Schiff, and his approach to the tax case has been cautious. He decided to stay focused on the lawsuit, using the whistleblower’s material to bolster that case.

In a brief last month, the committee told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that a “federal employee” had approached them with “evidence of possible misconduct” and “inappropriate efforts” to influence an IRS audit of the president. The document provided no further detail about the whistleblower, but in a footnote, Democrats offered to tell U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden all about it in private.

A spokesman for the committee said this week that McFadden, a Trump nominee who donated to the Trump 2016 campaign and volunteered for the Trump presidential transition, has so far not asked to hear more about the whistleblower. He denied a Democratic motion to speed up the case.