Mystery of Adam Schiff and whistleblower takes dangerous new turn

[ZiprHead]

Mystery of Adam Schiff and whistleblower takes dangerous new turn

This story is about to get a whole lot more media scrutiny, because it involves secretive back-channel maneuvering, a possible threat to national security and potential lawbreaking at the highest levels of the Trump administration, possibly at the direction of President Trump himself — all with a whole lot of cloak-and-dagger intrigue thrown in.

And now the mystery of Rep. Adam Schiff and the whistleblower has taken an ominous new turn, one that should only underscore concerns that serious — and dangerous — lawbreaking might be unfolding.

The latest development: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has informed Schiff, the California Democrat and chairman of the Intelligence Committee, that he will not forward a whistleblower’s complaint to the committee, as required by law.

Yet the legal rationale for refusing to do this appears specious — and raises further questions as to why this is happening at all.

This all started when Schiff announced that the Inspector General at the ODNI had alerted him to a whistleblower’s complaint that had been submitted to him. Schiff noted that the IG assessed the complaint as “credible.”

But as Schiff noted, the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, has not forwarded the complaint to the Intelligence Committee.

Rumors I have heard is that the whistleblower complaint is that the president's team is fabricating evidence against Iran for the KSA attack.

Note: The link is to WaPo so be prepared to jump through some hoops to view it.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This better have some serious legs or I’m packing up and moving under a rock.

 

[ZiprHead]

This better have some serious legs or I’m packing up and moving under a rock.

I live two hours from Rousseau in Canada. I wonder if he has a spare room.

 

[Toni]

This better have some serious legs or I’m packing up and moving under a rock.

I live two hours from Rousseau in Canada. I wonder if he has a spare room.

Who cares if he has room, roomie. I’m a decent baker and I make great soup and I can fit into a pretty small space. I’m sure he and the Mrs would be delighted to have me.

 

[ZiprHead]

Update from WaPo

Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress, former officials say

Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

It was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver, but his direct involvement in the matter has not been previously disclosed. It raises new questions about the president’s handling of sensitive information and may further strain his relationship with U.S. spy agencies. One former official said the communication was a phone call.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This better have some serious legs or I’m packing up and moving under a rock.

I live two hours from Rousseau in Canada. I wonder if he has a spare room.

Who cares if he has room, roomie. I’m a decent baker and I make great soup and I can fit into a pretty small space. I’m sure he and the Mrs would be delighted to have me.

Sounds like he’ll need to make an addition to their home. *packing belongings*

 

[EvoUK]

Trump's promise to foreign leader prompts whistleblower complaint

Donald Trump’s promise to a foreign leader so troubled an official in the US intelligence community that it prompted the person to file a whistleblower complaint, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The Post, which cited two former officials familiar with the matter, said it was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver. The communication was a phone call, one former official said, according to the Post.

The intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, determined that the complaint was credible and troubling enough to be considered a matter of “urgent concern”, a legal threshold that requires notification of congressional oversight committees, the Post said.

Guardian

He made a phone call which was so worrying it made a whistleblower report it to the congressional oversight committees, though we do not yet know the detail or content of the call, nor who it was to.

Watch this space I suppose.

 

[Derec]

it was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver

What if the leader was Rouhani and Trump pledged he would not bomb them to kingdom come?
[leftists heads explode]

 

[Harry Bosch]

it was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver

What if the leader was Rouhani and Trump pledged he would not bomb them to kingdom come?
[leftists heads explode]

Yes, I'm sure that it! Therefore, I'm sure that Trump will release the information to show how competent a leader he is!

 

[Keith&Co.]

it was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver

What if the leader was Rouhani and Trump pledged he would not bomb them to kingdom come?
[leftists heads explode]

Yes, I'm sure that it's! Therefore, I'm sure that Trump will release the information to show how competent a leader he is!

Yeah. An intel officer would be worried about the sensitive information involved in non-threatening a foreign power with non-violence. Because you just cannot do that without revealing sources...

 

[ZiprHead]

I merged the duplicate thread started in Pres Pol to this one.

 

[AirPoh]

it was not immediately clear which foreign leader Trump was speaking with or what he pledged to deliver

What if the leader was Rouhani and Trump pledged he would not bomb them to kingdom come?
[leftists heads explode]

Nah, stupidity makes our heads laugh.

 

[Elixir]

Whistleblower Report To IG an "Urgent Concern"

"...Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Joseph Maguire decided to withhold a whistleblower’s credible disclosure of wrongdoing from Congress. This ill-advised, most likely illegal decision could destabilize the entire Intelligence Community accountability system."

SOURCE

One can only imagine what kind of heinous treason Cheato committed that gave rise to this complaint. But the real area of concern is not that Cheato is handing Kim the blueprints for our latest drones (though he might be doing that in exchange for praise), but rather that this corrupt administration is once again asserting primacy over the Article 1 branch of government.
If people don't start going to jail, we can pretty much resign ourselves to Trump re-electing himself and this Democracy being consigned to the dustbin of history.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Considering what transpired on July 16, 2018, in front of the international press -- that is, Trump siding explicitly with Putin over his own intelligence officers -- what is there that Trump can't lie his way out of? Also, while it's tempting to imagine some horrible, traitorous Trump action, remember that this unknown act was assessed by an unknown observer, whose powers of perception and understanding of the law are also unknown. If you oppose Trump, he either calls you a liar or a bitter partisan or some variation of 'washed up psycho' or 'horrible person'. And that suffices with his base and nearly every GOP congressman and senator. With a whorehouse AG to state that everything he does passes legal muster, if you were Trump, would you be afraid? You've gamed the system and you can postpone all challenges endlessly.

 

[Elixir]

Considering what transpired on July 16, 2018, in front of the international press -- that is, Trump siding explicitly with Putin over his own intelligence officers -- what is there that Trump can't lie his way out of?

Trump invites russian intel folk into the oval office, shows them intel gathered from a Top Secret source, thereby revealing the source - and that falls within his right to be an inept chump. This has to be a whole lot worse than that.

Also, while it's tempting to imagine some horrible, traitorous Trump action, remember that this unknown act was assessed by an unknown observer, whose powers of perception and understanding of the law are also unknown.

We can make some assumptions about this person, since there are only a few who would have been privy to the content of Cheato's conversations with foreign leaders. Such a person's understanding of what they were witnessing can be assumed to a degree, and underwritten by the fact that the IG deemed it a "matter of urgent concern", which is in fact a legal term.

If you oppose Trump, he either calls you a liar or a bitter partisan or some variation of 'washed up psycho' or 'horrible person'. And that suffices with his base and nearly every GOP congressman and senator.

So what? Trump lies every time he opens his mouth, and anyone with more than two brain cells and a dendrite, knows it. Let him wail.
If the Dems would grow a pair and stop letting Cheato flunkies claim bogus powers of immunity, they could probably send all those GOP congresscritters home en masse, in this next election cycle. Won't happen though, if they keep honoring Cheato's universal illegal cloak of secrecy about everything he does, doesn't do, has done or plans to do.

ETA: Gun Nut is correct about the Dems in a way. They do need to fight fire with fire. They should have thrown Lewandowski in jail yesterday, and let the 'pugs be the ones to have to fight it in court. But no, they just let him get away with his made-up immunity claim and hope the courts will allow them to slap him on the wrist some day in the far distant future. Stupid.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Perhaps more troubling than what was said to whom is can Trump get away with this?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What is alarming is that this got someone to complain now after all we've seen.

But I'm not certain what Trump could have said that he didn't blurt out in public, such that the US would use it's military to defend Saudi Arabia and Saudi Arabia would pay for it... I mean the equipment, the US would still pay for the lives. That was kind of bad enough as it is.

 

[ZiprHead]

From a Thom Hartmann FB post:

Did Trump Commit Treason?

News reports increasingly are suggesting that Donald Trump has committed treason in making a promise to a foreign leader. The question is, who is the foreign leader and what was the promise? It’s important to remember that this is a man who inherited over $1 billion in today’s money from his father, and then proceeded to lose much if not all of it through stupid business decisions. Even his real estate business, a fragment of which is still left, apparently only continues to exist because Justice Anthony Kennedy‘s son was willing to sign off on Trump’s loans with Deutsche bank, and those loans may even have been cosigned by foreign oligarchs. This man is so incompetent and so dishonest that anything is possible. Americans are now left guessing, what kind of treason has Trump committed this time, and with whom?

According to the The Washington Post which first reported the complaint Trump has talked to 5 foreign leaders. They are...
-- Russian President Vladimir Putin
-- North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un
-- The Prime Minister of Pakistan
-- The Prime Minister of the Netherlands
-- The Emir of Qatar

Who do you think Trump betrayed America with?

 

[ZiprHead]

In the same vein:

Trump tells reporters border wall is ‘wired’, immediately after army general asks him not to discuss in public

Donald Trump touted the robust construction of his border fence on a visit to southern California, but risked the ire of one of his top generals by revealing the barrier would be “wired” to detect attempts to breach it.

Flanked by engineers and the border patrol commissioner, the president talked up the steel-and-concrete fence’s technological elements during a press conference in San Diego.

He said: “They’re wired, so that we will know if somebody is trying to break through.”

Turning to Lt Gen Todd Semonite, chief of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Mr Trump added: “You may want to discuss that a little bit, general.”

But he was told: “Sir, there could be some merit in not discussing it.”

He then continued discussing it.

 

[Treedbear]

Last night on Maddow she had on a guest who read the regulations governing whistleblower protocols. The person can independently bring the info directly to the House justice comittee if he first notifies the Dept of Justice that he intends to do so. I imagine Trump will start spinning some yarn in a pre-emptive attempt to disarm whatever it turns out to be.