An analysis piece from The Washington Post politics staff- much more at link below
The Daily 202: The Ukraine transcript is full of fresh fodder for Democrats who want to impeach Trump
By James Hohmann
September 25 at 10:57 AM
THE BIG IDEA: If President Trump thought releasing the transcript of his call with Ukraine’s president would break impeachment fever on Capitol Hill, he miscalculated. The five-page summary released this morning will only intensify Democratic demands to see the entire whistleblower complaint.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), a member of Democratic leadership, said the president asking for Ukraine’s help to undermine his 2020 challenger is “a textbook abuse of power.” At a news conference, he said “the transcripts become exhibit A.”
According to the transcript, Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky to work with Attorney General Bill Barr and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, to investigate the conduct of Joe Biden and offered to meet with the new president at the White House after he promised to conduct such an inquiry. “I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it,” Trump said, according to the transcript.
Trump seems to suggest that Hillary Clinton’s private email server is in Ukraine at one point. He asserts at another that Bob Mueller’s investigation started with that country.
-- “Senior Justice Department officials said the director of national intelligence referred the concerns about the call to the Justice Department, after the intelligence community inspector general found that it was a possible violation of campaign finance laws that ban people from soliciting contributions from foreign sources. The inspector general later also referred the matter to the FBI,” Devlin Barrett, Matt Zapotosky, Josh Dawsey and Carol D. Leonnig report. “Career prosecutors and officials in the Justice Department’s criminal division then reviewed the transcript of the call, which they obtained voluntarily from the White House, and determined the facts ‘could not make out and cannot make out’ the appropriate basis for an investigation, a senior Justice Department official said. As part of their reasoning, Justice Department lawyers determined that help with a government investigation could not be considered ‘a thing of value’ under the law.”
-- What was released by the White House is a five-page summary of a 30-minute conversation. That means some of what was covered is likely not even in the memo. The document includes a disclaimer on the first page that it is “not a verbatim transcript of a discussion.”
The text in this document records the notes and recollections of Situation Room Duty Officers and NSC policy staff assigned to listen and memorialize the conversation in written form as the conversation takes place,” it says. “A number of factors can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent and/or interpretation.”
Richard Nixon released a transcript, too. After the revelation that he recorded Oval Office meetings, the then-president refused to turn over the tapes, claiming executive privilege, and fought subpoenas in court. Eventually, trying to quell a political firestorm, he offered transcripts – which he personally edited – and insisted they exonerated him. “I want there to be no question remaining about the fact that the president has nothing to hide in this matter,” Nixon said in April 1974. Months later, when House investigators listened to some of the audio, it turned out there were significant discrepancies and key phrases missing. Ever since Nixon resigned, the White House has, perhaps understandably, generally avoided recording presidential phone calls. That tradition explains why there’s apparently no recording on the American side of Trump’s July conversation.
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill made clear even before the summary came out that the summary will not be enough to deter them from moving ahead with the impeachment inquiry. They argue that Trump does not need to have explicitly linked U.S. financial assistance to a Biden investigation for the call to represent a clear-cut abuse of power. “There is no requirement there be a quid pro quo in the conversation,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during a live event for the Atlantic. “You don't ask foreign governments to help us in our election. … I don't think there's a grasp on the part of this administration that the quid pro quo is not essential to an impeachable offense.”
-- House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) says the whistleblower, whose identity remains unknown and is entitled to legal protections, wants to speak to members of his committee and has formally sought guidance from acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire about how he could do so. “We’re in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower’s testimony as soon as this week,” Schiff tweeted. Lawyers for the whistleblower confirmed this.
-- The Senate passed a resolution last night, by unanimous consent and with no Republican objections, calling for the Trump administration to turn over the whistleblower complaint to the intelligence committees, as is required by law. The House plans to vote later today on a resolution condemning the administration’s refusal to provide the complaint. Meanwhile, Trump is scheduled to sit down with the Ukrainian president later today at the U.N. General Assembly. Maguire, the acting DNI, is scheduled to testify in open session tomorrow before the House Intelligence Committee and then in closed session before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
-- Pelosi personally informed Trump of her decision to move forward with an impeachment inquiry in a Tuesday morning phone call. “The president, in New York for the U.N. meeting, telephoned the speaker to discuss gun legislation, Pelosi told lawmakers in private meetings,” per Rachael Bade, Mike DeBonis and Karoun Demirjian. “The conversation, however, quickly turned to the president’s conversations with the Ukrainian leader. Trump insisted he had nothing to do with his administration’s refusal to share with Congress an intelligence community whistleblower complaint about his actions … Trump told Pelosi that he wasn’t the one blocking the complaint. … She responded that he had the power to fix it and challenged him to turn over the complaint.”
-- The New York Times reports that White House and intelligence officials are trying to hash out a plan to release a redacted version of the whistleblower report in a bid to quell calls for impeachment and sow Democratic divisions on the best path forward: “People familiar with the situation said the administration was putting the complaint through a declassification process and planned to release a redacted version within days,” Michael Schmidt, Julian Barnes and Maggie Haberman report. “The appearance that they were stonewalling Congress, in their view, could prove more damaging than the whistle-blower’s account. Mr. Trump also believes that the allegations about him are not nearly as damning as they have been portrayed and that disclosing them will undercut the impeachment drive, people close to the president said.”
-- A senior administration official told Politico that the White House is “preparing” to give Congress both the whistleblower complaint and the inspector general’s report by the end of this week. “The administration official stressed the decision and timing could change over the next few days,” Nancy Cook reports. “The format of presentation, or process of viewing the documents, wasn't decided. The president has agreed to the move, the official added.
Even though the whistleblower complaint focused on the Trump call with Zelensky, officials familiar with its contents say that it includes references to other developments tied to the president, including efforts by Giuliani to insert himself into U.S.-Ukrainian relations. “Rudy — he did all of this,” one U.S. official said. “This s---show that we’re in — it’s him injecting himself into the process.” That anonymous quote comes from a story that posted last night by Greg Miller, Josh Dawsey, Paul Sonne and Ellen Nakashima.
“Trump’s attempt to pressure the leader of Ukraine followed a months-long fight inside the administration that sidelined national security officials and empowered political loyalists … to exploit the U.S. relationship with Kiev,” they report. “The sequence, which began early this year, involved the abrupt removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the circumvention of senior officials on the National Security Council, and the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars of aid administered by the Defense and State departments — all as key officials from these agencies struggled to piece together Giuliani’s activities from news reports.
“Several officials described tense meetings on Ukraine among national security officials at the White House leading up to the president’s phone call on July 25, sessions that led some participants to fear that Trump and those close to him appeared prepared to use U.S. leverage with the new leader of Ukraine for Trump’s political gain. As those worries intensified, some senior officials worked behind the scenes to hold off a Trump meeting or call with [Zelensky] out of concern that Trump would use the conversation to press Kiev for damaging information on Trump’s potential rival in the 2020 race …
“U.S. officials described an atmosphere of intense pressure inside the NSC and other departments since the existence of the whistleblower complaint became known, with some officials facing suspicion that they had a hand either in the complaint or in relaying damaging information to the whistleblower … One official — speaking, like others, on the condition of anonymity — described the climate as verging on ‘bloodletting.’ … Trump has fanned this dynamic with his own denunciations of the whistleblower and thinly veiled suggestions that the person should be outed. … Trump’s closest advisers, including acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who was ordered by Trump to suspend the aid to Ukraine, are also increasingly targets of internal finger-pointing. Mulvaney has agitated for foreign aid to be cut universally but has also stayed away from meetings with Giuliani and Trump …
Then-national security adviser John Bolton was outraged by the outsourcing of a relationship with a country struggling to survive Russian aggression … But by then his standing with Trump was strained, and neither he nor his senior aides could get straight answers about Giuliani’s agenda or authority … Giuliani told The Post that one of his calls with a top Ukrainian aide was partially arranged by Kurt Volker, a State Department official, and that he briefed the department afterward. ‘We had the same visibility as anybody else — watching Giuliani on television,’ a former senior official said. Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev were similarly deprived of information, even as they faced questions from Ukrainians about whether Giuliani was a designated representative.”
-- Giuliani had an outburst on Fox News last night when a fellow panelist was talking over him. “Shut up, moron,” Giuliani shouted on “The Ingraham Angle,” yelling at liberal radio host Christopher Hahn. “Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” (Allyson Chiu)
DEMOCRATIC DIVISIONS REMAIN OVER IMPEACHMENT:
-- Pelosi’s declaration left unsettled key questions about how that investigation will unfold. Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade explore some of them: “How sweeping will the probe be? How long will it last? Who will conduct it? And will Pelosi’s unilateral pronouncement — which was delivered with no immediate plans to ratify it with a House vote — do anything to change the course of existing investigations that have hit a stone wall of White House resistance? … The lack of detail about the road ahead, according to interviews with more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers and aides, reflected both the speed with which once-wavering Democrats unified behind a formal impeachment probe — and the continuing divisions among them on how it should be conducted. …
“[T]he House Judiciary Committee will continue playing the lead role in the proceedings, despite the desire of some Democrats to involve a broader swath of lawmakers and to at least partly sideline Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the panel’s fervently pro-impeachment chairman. In the days leading up to Tuesday’s announcement, Pelosi explored potentially establishing a special ‘select’ committee, with members handpicked by House leaders, but backed away from that idea after the dispute generated protests from liberals and threatened to divide the caucus along ideological lines. … The past two presidential impeachment processes, involving [Nixon] and Bill Clinton, included votes of the full House authorizing the Judiciary Committee to formally investigate. There are no plans for such a vote now … That is a question likely to be litigated in the courts. …
“Meanwhile, an even more fundamental dispute lingered — one that may not be resolved any time soon. Many Democrats are urging that the inquiry focus solely on the present outcry … and not on other alleged abuses, such as the potential obstruction of justice detailed by [Mueller], episodes of congressional stonewalling and instances of bigotry. More than 30 Democratic lawmakers announced support for impeachment just this week, many of them Democratic ‘frontliners’ in vulnerable districts who said that the Ukraine allegations prompted them to speak out. … ‘This should be a very distinct procedure relative to this allegation, rather than the whole basket,’ said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), a freshman who backed impeachment proceedings Monday after months of resisting pressure to take that step.
But Pelosi’s involvement of other committees besides the Judiciary, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence panels with direct jurisdiction over the Ukraine matter suggest the impeachment brief could go much wider. The Financial Services Committee, for instance, is probing Trump’s real estate dealings; the Ways and Means Committee is seeking Trump’s tax returns; and the Oversight and Reform Committee is investigating whether Trump is using the presidency for self-enrichment. ‘I see the most recent issue as one issue among many issues,’ said Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.), who has pushed for Trump’s impeachment for two years, forcing multiple unsuccessful votes on removing Trump over alleged instances of bigotry.”
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