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What's going on with this DNI Whistleblower ?


triplehorn

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17 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

i think those were leaked by our whistleblower, or someone looking to expose trump as a fraud, and the lockbox was just a clumsy result of that.

Nah, those transcripts were embarrassing enough to look unintentional but not incriminating.  If the whistleblower wanted to expose Trump, he would have leaked the Putin phone calls. 

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4 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Nah, those transcripts were embarrassing enough to look unintentional but not incriminating.  If the whistleblower wanted to expose Trump, he would have leaked the Putin phone calls. 

In the WB letter, the WB says that he doesn't know if anyone was actually in the same room as Trump when the call was made. He did say that it was routine for certain staff to listen in from the Situation Room (isn't every room a situation room? Never liked that name.).

This suggests to me that Trump likely forgot there were listeners when he made calls from, say, Air Force One. He was careful not to have people around when he chatted with Putin in person. Trump may have just fucked up regarding the call.

It's clearly alleged in the remainder of the letter that Trump used Guilliani as an intermediary and had many contacts with Ukraine and the corrupt prosecutor Lutsenko. I'd say that the recall of the ambassador indicates that State Department professionals were either unaware or appalled at Trump's actions. Rudy's communication with State was likely, IMHO, with appointees of Trump.

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3 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Thank god we got Manafort off the streets.

Otherwise he would be running the show that Rudy is currently mismanaging catastrophically. 

So true, it appears that after the initial wave of the "best people" are locked up, the riff raff that is left will bring everyone down. It is fascinating to watch this unfold.

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there are a lot of elements of this i find horrifying, but one that is particularly hilarious, from a cinematic perspective at least, is the part from the complaint about the listeners of the phone call.  essentially says that everyone assumed this was just a routine call to a foreign leader, so there were 12 or so mixed dept people in the sit-room listening in.

like someone said, there may not have been anyone in person with trump in the oval office (or wherever he was), so he may have just forgotten anyone else was listening, and went full trump-no-filter-mafia-boss during the conversation, especially once someone flattered him (the key to getting what you want with this man).

i would give anything to see video footage of the sit-room when shit got good.  must've been a bunch of people pushing papers around, when all of a sudden, one of them was like, "everybody shut the fuck up and listen to this imbecile".  then they were all quiet as it unfolded.  they must've looked at each other shaking their heads, thinking, god damn dude, what is happening.

i don't know who's in charge of deciding that the official transcript readout needed to go in the extra special lockbox - obviously it was a 'smart' decision, but one that will ultimately sink this ship.  i also am curious about whose job it is to now go through the lockbox to find out which conversations were put in there for "security" reasons, and which were hidden in there for "political" reasons.  not sure who has that clearance, but that would be a fun job for someone who doesn't give a shit about trump or his presidential legacy.

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The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

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3 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha. Mitch is never doing that. They are all part of one criminal enterprise. They are all going down together or not at all. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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4 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

Image result for head shake gif

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5 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

I don't want to put the cart before the horse again, but I do get the feeling that there is going to be a very weak attempt to initially defend Trump but there is going to be too much damning evidence and Trump will either be forced to resign or he will be impeached and found guilty by the Senate. 

The way Giuliani is acting in all of this just has me believing that with all this smoke, there's a computer server burning in the White House.

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so another interesting point brought up on cnn just now - trump keeps calling this a "perfect phone call".  if he believes that, and i see nothing that makes me think he wouldn't, then this could be bad, and here's why-

only trump has the authorization to classify/declassify things like this.  if he thinks he did nothing wrong, then he wasn't responsible for locking up the transcript in the code-word clearance safe, which means someone else was.  that's not good.  that also means there are probably a few people around trump that flag shit like this and stuff it in the safe.

whatever's in that safe could be really really bad and likely goes back months/years.

one of my favorite parts of "all the president's men" is when they realize that it wasn't really centered around the watergate break-in/bugging.  that was just when people got caught.  that this had been going on for months/years, and was strategic and systematic, and the break-in was just one of a long line of shit they had been doing, they just got clumsy with it.

when they realize that something went back a year or so before the bugging, when nixon's people were discrediting muskie - a story nobody believed at the time, because nixon was crushing him.  bernstein is like, "back a year ago, nixon wasn't murdering muskie he was running behind muskie, before he self-destructed."  and woodward says, "if he self-destructed."

the perfect phone call is the watergate break-in.  but that's just one small element of a much bigger story.

 

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15 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

I agree that impeachment may not help him but if you're waiting for Mitch to do the right thing you might as well be waiting for Bob Stoops, Lincoln Riley, and all future coach of Oklahoma to stop eating bags of dicks, aggy to become self aware, and for Zach Smith to become a good person as all of those are more likely. Good luck with that.

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19 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

 

10 minutes ago, Irwin F Fletcher said:

I don't want to put the cart before the horse again, but I do get the feeling that there is going to be a very weak attempt to initially defend Trump but there is going to be too much damning evidence and Trump will either be forced to resign or he will be impeached and found guilty by the Senate. 

The way Giuliani is acting in all of this just has me believing that with all this smoke, there's a computer server burning in the White House.

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1 minute ago, TheFlyingBoat said:

I agree that impeachment may not help him but if you're waiting for Mitch to do the right thing you might as well be waiting for Bob Stoops, Lincoln Riley, and all future coach of Oklahoma to stop eating bags of dicks, aggy to become self aware, and for Zach Smith to become a good person as all of those are more likely. Good luck with that.

Maybe, but I tend to be an optimist.  Not really waiting, more hoping.  And it isn't hoping for him to do the right thing but what is most self servant to him.  That's why I think it is actually possible.  

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1 minute ago, SubliminalHorn said:

Blows me away that people were actually laughing when he casually mentions treason and then death. I would be aghast if I had heard that. Laughing? Deplorable was too nice of a word. 

How would you like to be one of the insiders who had those conversations with the whistle blower?

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21 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

First off, there is a 1 trillion% chance that the Senate will not convict Trump, hell, they wouldn't even take it up for a vote, they would find a loophole of just change the rules to avoid it. 

IF, somehow, someway he were convicted in the Senate and ousted, I'd venture to guess Nikki Haley would swoop in and get the nomination, she seems to be the most electable GOP politician these days, even if her skin tone and gender are darker and too female for the GOP's taste in politicians. 

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1 minute ago, Lagunamadre said:

First off, there is a 1 trillion% chance that the Senate will not convict Trump, hell, they wouldn't even take it up for a vote, they would find a loophole of just change the rules to avoid it. 

IF, somehow, someway he were convicted in the Senate and ousted, I'd venture to guess Nikki Haley would swoop in and get the nomination, she seems to be the most electable GOP politician these days, even if her skin tone and gender are darker and too female for the GOP's taste in politicians. 

Interesting if they would pull a Gerald Ford with her and let her step in with the resignation so she can have some credibility for the election.

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Just now, SquishMitten said:

Unfortunately, attorney-client privilege can't just be waived by the attorney. The client has to waive it. 

Well, the argument isn't that he waived it; rather, that he admitted that he wasn't serving in a legal capacity for Trump in the first place. 

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7 minutes ago, jimmyjazz said:

How would you like to be one of the insiders who had those conversations with the whistle blower?

reading the complaint tells me that there were several "conspirators" helping the official "whistleblower".  this was a team effort, and i doubt he had trouble finding willing participants.  you can tell all of his evidence had at least 2-3 sources, because he wasn't shy at all saying he didn't know about things he was unsure about.

republicans are leaning on the "he's talking about the call, he wasn't even there."  sounds like enough people were there and a transcript exists.  this complaint is a lot of things, but flimsy and unattributed aren't on that list.

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7 minutes ago, SquishMitten said:

Unfortunately, attorney-client privilege can't just be waived by the attorney. The client has to waive it. 

 

4 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

Well, the argument isn't that he waived it; rather, that he admitted that he wasn't serving in a legal capacity for Trump in the first place. 

A predicate fact question is whether an attorney-client relationship exists, and/or whether the attorney is acting in a capacity as the client's attorney during the transaction.  A person can't just point at an attorney they know and say "he can't talk about anything we did, it's privileged!"  I go to tailgates with my friends.  I've seen some of them piss outside.  But they can't block me from talking about it, because I was not acting as their attorney when the stumbled over to the median and let fly 10 beers worth of piss.  Hell, even if one of them asks me to perform a service at the tailgate -- "hey dude, get me another beer when you're over there" - I'm not acting as their attorney.

Having the attorney publicly state that he was not acting as an attorney at the time is a bad fact.

3 minutes ago, Pig Bellmont said:

If there is any privilege, I’m thinking the crime/fraud exception applies 

And this.  

 

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50 minutes ago, babysdaddy said:

The trope of impeachment helping him is officially gone.  This is a kill shot and easy to explain and I don't see how the Senate can not convict.  I wonder if Mitch will gather the votes and then go to Donald and say resign or you're getting convicted. 

When, officially, would someone else be able to step in and replace at the top of the Republican ticket?  the Convention?

He would then be getting convicted either way.  NY says hello. 

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