House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., talks to reporters about the release by the White House of a transcript of a call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelenskiy, in which Trump is said to have pushed for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Whistle-blowing is all the rage these days; just ask your average Democrat, including those who infest the legacy media. This latest Ukraine gambit, they say, is “sure” to get “Orange Man Bad” once and for all. I don’t think so, as the story continues to evince red flags nearly every day. Here are a few tidbits – some well-known, some more obscure. How were the seeds of this Ukraine complainant sowed? Daniel Greenfield exposes the root cause as – no surprise! – an Obama-era policy change. It was aimed at Romney but snared President Trump:
Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive 19 opened the door by expanding whistleblowing protection to members of the “intelligence community” and other personnel handling classified information. But PPD19 was never really meant to help the likes of Manning and Snowden. Instead it was part of a larger pattern of politicizing national security organizations that led directly to the current crisis.
Both the Russians and the Democrats understood that whistleblowers were a strategic vulnerability. Whistleblowers were seen as sympathetic underdogs who were trying to do the right thing. That was the perfect camouflage for an enemy agent or the agent of a police state. Astroturfing, the practice of manufacturing grass roots efforts and building causes around individual protesters, like Greta Thunberg or David Hogg, had moved into the national security infrastructure before going off like a bomb. The real purpose of PPD19 was to aid Obama loyalists is undermining a Romney administration.
[Whistleblower protections] are not meant to allow an anonymous government employee to assist in a partisan campaign to remove the President of the United States as part of a ploy orchestrated by the opposition party. That is a breathtaking abuse that will damage whistleblower protections indefinitely. The Obama administration and its allies have tried to turn government agencies into bear traps, seeking to retain control of policymaking through a network of lefty loyalists in agencies and activist judges in the courts, and, beyond that, to force out Trump appointees and to even force out President Trump.
Read the rest here.
But PPD19 apparently wasn’t good enough for the Deep State, particularly after President Trump beat Shrillary, and the “resistance” was off to the races looking for ways to impeach him. They resorted to other measures, including changing the whistleblower disclosure form. As many have previously reported, the disclosure form was modified to permit use of second-hand information such that any allegation deemed “credible” could be used to target someone for policy differences or even personal reasons. That form was approved by the current IC IG, and we have subsequently learned that the new form was backdated to enable the Ukraine complaint and that the IC IG refused to explain why in testimony before the House Intel Committee last week:
In tense testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) on Friday, the inspector general for federal spy agencies refused to disclose why his office backdated secret changes to key whistleblower forms and rules in the wake of an anti-Trump whistleblower complaint filed in August, sources told The Federalist. As … the Intelligence Community Inspector General confirmed, the spy watchdog secretly changed its whistleblower forms and internal rules in September to eliminate a requirement that whistleblowers provide first-hand evidence to support any allegations of wrongdoing. In a press release last week, the ICIG confessed that it changed its rules in response to an anti-Trump complaint filed on August 12.
Read the rest here.
You think that the Ukraine hit-job was a one-off and don’t think the Democrats have weaponized whistleblowers across the federal government? Check out this Mark Zaid tweet from June 2018, as they are no longer hiding their actions. Whistleblowers are just the latest extension of the Democrats’ lawfare practices!
https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkSZaidEsq/status/1009900750116442112
Returning to Ukraine, any reasonable person might suspect that the complaint was a set-up from the beginning but, of course, there are more red flags:
- There was no firsthand evidence used at all in the complaint.
- The complainant was found to have a “professional association” with a 2020 Democrat candidate.
- The declassified and released phone transcript summary between Presidents Trump and Zelenskiiy thoroughly debunked the complaint.
- President Zelenskiiy and several US diplomats (including Kurt Volker, the recently-resigned US envoy to Ukraine in testimony in closed-door hearings) confirmed that there was no US pressure applied on Ukraine for anything.
- Shifty received the complaint weeks before it was formally lodged and then lied about those contacts, and either he, his staff, or outside counsel appeared to have coordinated with and provided advice to the complainant. Many have remarked that the complaint itself was more of a legal brief than something a normal whistleblower would have submitted.
- Contrary to established House rules, the Democrats did not share the complaint information with the Republicans on the House Intel committee when it was received.
- We just learned, as reported by RedState’s own Elizabeth Vaughn, that the Ukrainians had reinitiated an investigation into Burisma Holdings months before that presidential phone call, thus pulling the rug out from under another Democrat talking point that @POTUS strong-armed Zelenskiiy to “investigate the Bidens.”
- The Democrats are running their impeachment “inquiry,” which heavily features abuse of power allegations stemming from the false Ukraine complaint, on an exclusively partisan basis without any Republican involvement.
- The “whistleblower” apparently wrote a memo that contradicted his later complaint and was inconsistent with the contents of the actual presidential phone call. Refer to Nick Arama’s piece here.
- The “whistleblower’s” attorney, Charles McCullough (the former Obama-appointed IC IG!!), worked directly for James Clapper. “Partisan witch hunt coordination we much” (a play on Al Sharpton’s ridiculous “Resist we much” statement). McCullough is the likely author of the complaint itself!
- The Democrats selectively leaked parts of former Ambassador Kurt Volker’s testimony to the HPSCI but refused to make the entire testimony public.
- I like the 11 facts presented by John Nolte that early on undermined the Ukraine complaint.
As if those weren’t enough reasons to question the veracity of the complaint, a left-wing journalist who is no friend of POTUS weighs in with his own skepticism and some points from out in left field:
- The unnamed person at the center of this story sure didn’t sound like a whistleblower. Our intelligence community wouldn’t wipe its ass with a real whistleblower. Americans who’ve blown the whistle over serious offenses by the federal government either spend the rest of their lives overseas, like Edward Snowden, end up in jail, like Chelsea Manning, get arrested and ruined financially, like former NSA official Thomas Drake, have their homes raided by FBI like disabled NSA vet William Binney, or get charged with espionage like ex-CIA exposer-of-torture John Kiriakou. It’s an insult to all of these people, and the suffering they’ve weathered, to frame the ballcarrier in the Beltway’s latest partisan power contest as a whistleblower.
- The common thread in whistleblower stories is loneliness. Typically, the employer has direct control over their ability to pursue another job in their profession. Many end up reviled as traitors, thieves, and liars. Actual whistleblowers are alone. The Ukraine complaint seems to be the work of a group of people, supported by significant institutional power, not only in the intel community, but in the Democrat Party and the commercial press.
Read the rest here. [Note: While Taibbi implies they are “heroes,” Snowden and Manning should have been hung for what they disclosed.]
To briefly summarize before proceeding further:
- The Obama regime laid the groundwork for enabling the Ukraine complaint with PPD19.
- The whistleblower disclosure form was changed specifically to permit a deluge of “whistleblowers” against Trump.
- Real WBs were required to submit their complaints previously via internal processes within their own agency (confirmed by a long-time IC representative).
- This whole thing was a Deep State cabal/Democrat set-up and conspiracy, as being revealed on a daily if not hourly basis. The goal is/was to serve as the basis for impeaching POTUS.
- The Ukraine hoax is being debunked further debunked with each passing day.
It should be readily apparent that, after over two years of incessant hoaxes and lies being perpetrated on Americans by Democrats in Congress and the media and their allies in the Deep State, we are headed for a civil war in this country if these people are not held accountable – and harshly so! – for their actions.
The Democrats are attempting to nullify a presidential election and also turn America into a one-party totalitarian socialist/communist state using authoritarianism to control political speech and stifle opposing viewpoints. Their crackpot socialist economic and social policies will require a totalitarian communist dictatorship to force it all down our throats. The sedition perpetrators associated with the Russia and Ukraine hoaxes now deserve not just long jail terms, but firing squads. These criminals are hell-bent on destroying the US for their singular goal of obtaining total and complete power over all three branches of the federal government, and to make up the rules, the laws, and reinvent the Constitution as they please to suit their purposes.
The Ukraine hoax has smoked them all out; we see their spinning, lies, and outright panic daily as we listen to their public statements and cable news interviews. Everything we hold dear in this country – especially the rule of law and its equal application to all Americans – is riding on a full exposure of the Ukraine hoax. This includes all of its tentacles leading to the Democrat Party, Deep State, and their Uniparty partners in the Republican Party like the Romneys and McCains.
May the Barr/Durham investigation lead to the arrest and prosecution of all the perpetrators, no matter how high or how low! And may the Deep State be gutted and bureaucratic norms restored across the federal government to at least a semblance of non-political even-handedness, especially to include correcting the Obama-instigated whistleblower statute changes while they’re at it.
The end.