Monthly Archives: September 2019

More on “Pressure”

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The whistleblower’s stuff has been released, and his cover letter and the complaint itself can be read in their entirety here.

A couple things jump out at me right from the start.

One that’s readily apparent in the cover letter is that the whistleblower repeatedly makes clear he has no knowledge of the events about which he claims such concern—it’s all related to him by carefully unnamed source—often “multiple” sources.  He does cite, in attempts to corroborate, remarks publicly made Rudy Giuliani, President Trump, and selected Ukrainian officials, but those remarks are removed from the context in which they were made and given only the context of the whistleblower’s complaint.  Beyond that, he cites claims made by an organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.  This is an organization comprised of Eastern European, Caucasus, Central Asian, and Central American “media and journalists” and unknown personnel represented to be from unidentified “investigative centers.”  The claims made by OCCRP are unsubstantiated in the whistleblower’s cite, yet he presents them seriously and expects those to whom he’s complaining—outside of channels, mind you—to take them at face value.

And this lead paragraph from the whistleblower’s cover letter (right-click and select from the popup menu to get a bigger image):

As we know from the released telecon transcript, no such pressure was applied, nor did Giuliani or Barr play any sort of central role in this non-existent letter, being mentioned on as points of contact in Ukraine’s investigations of corruption.  We also know more generally, from Wednesday’s press conference, that Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy said bluntly that he felt no pressure to do anything.

One last thing, an apparently small item, but it illustrates the general level of…sloppiness…with which the “complaint” was prepared. The whistleblower wrote, in the 3rd paragraph of page 3 of his missive that a “readout” of the telecon posted on “the website of the Ukrainian President” was translated “from the original Russian.” The Ukrainian and Russian languages are similar, but they are distinct from each other. Any translation here would have been from Ukrainian.

Wow.

A couple things appear, also, from the ICIG’s (Michael Atkinson) transmittal letter to Acting DNI Director Joseph Maguire.

One concerns the whistleblower’s characterization of Trump’s 25 July telecon with Zelenskiy. Atkinson, in his own words, says that “the ICIG did not request access to records” pertaining to that telecon. The ICIG made no attempt to corroborate or refute the whistleblower’s characterization. Atkinson’s rationale for that decision boils down to his finding such an attempt “too hard, so don’t bother.”  Never mind that Trump, with Zelenskiy’s agreement, released that transcript in a timely manner.

There’s also no indication that Atkinson made any effort to talk with any of the whistleblower’s “multiple US government officials” sources or even any of his named sources—Giuliani and Barr, for instance—to see if they agreed or disagreed with any of the whistleblowers claims of what they said.

That’s not much of a “preliminary review.”

Again, wow.

Many in Congress complain about Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in the Federal government….

Pressure

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Here’s an excerpt from the Trump-Zelenskiy telecon transcript [the odd characters at the beginning of each President’s remarks are lined out classification markings: (S/NF)]:

t:;’HP) The· President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your weal thy people… The server, they say Ukraine has.it There- are a lot. of things that went on, the whole situation… I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. 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. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.
(l!l-,’HP) President Zelenskyy: Yes it is. very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer.

Yeah, that’s pressure, all right.

And here’s the “pressure” of a request—one request, mind you, not eight times repeated:

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. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.

The entire transcript can be read here.

One-Upping Elizabeth

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Who can be more socialist than the other?  Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) now has proposed

an annual wealth tax topping out at 8% for the richest Americans, offering the farthest-reaching Democratic plan to pay for expanded government programs and break up concentrated fortunes.

That’s much more than fellow Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D, MA) now paltry 2% wealth tax.

That’s on top of the race to give the most free stuff to the most people: who’s got the more extensive Housing-for-All plan, the broader Medicare-for-All plan, the more lucrative student debt forgiveness plan, Sanders’ plan to forgive all medical debt and parent debt taken in support of students (look for Warren to come up with plans for those soon), and on and on and on.

This sort of thing can only be done through government control or outright ownership of all property, and that’s at the core of socialism.

One-upping? No, it’s who can be the more socialist.

Dishonest Journalism

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Kyle Smith is too polite to call it that, but he comes very close in his National Review piece about an interview Robin Pogrebin gave to WMAL back on the 17th.

Some excerpts:

[Pogrebin’s and Kelly’s story [sic]] failed to mention that a woman who, according to a man named Max Stier, had Kavanaugh’s penis pressed into her hand at a campus party by multiple friends of his has said she recalls no such incident. That woman has also declined to talk about the matter with reporters or officials. Why even publish Stier’s claim, which was discounted by Washington Post reporters who heard about it a year ago, that he witnessed such an incident during a Yale party in the 1980s? Because of the narrative, Pogrebin says. “We decided to go with it because obviously it is of a piece with a kind of behavior,” she said on WMAL.

“Behavior” that has already been shown nonexistent, repeatedly.  Of what piece, exactly?  And what incident? The principle doesn’t remember it, and the principle witness refused to be interviewed.

Even if she were the victim of sexual misconduct, the [New York] Times would ordinarily take steps to protect her identity. Yet she has made no claim along these lines, and Pogrebin and Kelly outed her anyway. Is there no respect for a woman’s privacy?

Not when she needs to be outed in order to tell a tale.

[Emphasis in the original]:

Pogrebin repeatedly refers to the woman as a “victim.” This word choice is instructive about Pogrebin’s thought process. … She has made no claim to be a victim, yet Pogrebin describes her as one anyway. This is a case of a reporter overriding her reporting with her opinion.

And [emphasis in the original]:

If this is true, it means Max Stier was also drunk and his memories also can’t be trusted. (Someone should ask Pogrebin whether she was present at this party about which she knows so much.) By what journalistic standard does a reporter discount what is said by the person with the most direct and relevant experience of a matter—the woman in question at the Yale party—in favor of a drunken bystander? If both the woman and Stier were drunk, why is his memory more credible than hers? If something like this had actually happened to her, wouldn’t she be more likely than anyone else to remember it? Maybe Stier is remembering a different party. Maybe he’s remembering a different guy. Maybe he made it up.

And the kicker:

Of the woman at the party, she says, “Remember that she was incredibly drunk at that party as was everyone. And so I think we’re talking about memory here as really kind of a questionable issue. There are plenty of things that are conceivable that could happen when people are too drunk to remember them.” So the standard here is not whether something is true, it’s whether it’s “conceivable.” If a story is “of a piece with a kind of behavior,” even if such behavior is itself not established, and if a story is “conceivable” when filtered through that confirmation bias, and even if it’s undercut by the person the story supposedly happened to, and even if the person telling the story was “incredibly drunk,” you just go with it anyway.

That’s not gross journalistic malpractice, as Smith put it.  That’s blatantly, deliberately dishonest reporting.

RTWT.

Political Tactics

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The Wall Street Journal says the “Ukraine call” will

leak eventually, so Trump might as well get it out.

No.  Telecons between American and foreign heads of state must, necessarily, remain strictly between heads of state, else it’ll be impossible for an American President to engage in “frank and open” dialog and polylog with foreign leaders or to conduct serious foreign policy in general.  No transcript should be released.

Alternatively, and in second place in the order of priorities for such things, let the leak(s) occur.  Then release the transcript and let the truth burn the leaker(s) and those who jumped onto the leak-related opprobrium bandwagon knowing they didn’t have the facts.

In the realization, something close to that second place has already happened.  In their hysteria to get President Donald Trump and to undo the outcome of an election the Progressive-Democrats consider to be their personal property stolen, the House Progressive-Democratic caucus has forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) to authorize an “impeachment investigation.”  In the immediate wake of that stampede, Trump has decided, with the permission and agreement of Ukraine’s President Volodomy Zelenskiy, to release the unredacted transcript of the call, with the so-called whistleblower’s “complaint” to be released by week’s end.

And that will be irrelevant, at least in the eyes of Progressive-Democrats: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is saying it doesn’t matter what the transcript says; Party wants to “see what happened.”  Because the transcript isn’t actually what happened.