Welcome back, Russia hysteria!

While it’s no secret that Russia meddles in foreign elections, the evidence that they backed any one candidate in 2016 has always been lacking. The aim of Russian election interference is more often to create chaos and division rather than back one particular candidate.

Despite the secretive FBI investigation which morphed into Robert Mueller’s special counsel exonerating Trump from claims of collusion, the Washington Post reported last night that Russia is up to their old tricks again.

According to them, Joseph Maguire had been considered to be nominated for the DNI post, but Trump’s opinion shifted last week after he learned from a Republican ally that the intelligence official in charge of election security (Shelby Pierson, who works for Maguire) gave a closed briefing last Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee. The Post claims that while we don’t exactly know what Pierson said in the meeting, “the president erroneously believed that she had given information exclusively to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the committee chairman, and it would be helpful to Democrats if released publicly, the people familiar with the matter said.”

And what did the Post claim that information was? According to their narrative: “Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, in a disclosure that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.”

But according to CNN of all places, it’s mostly B.S.

Jake Tapper writes:

A national security official I know and trust pushes back on the way the briefing/ODNI story is being told, and others with firsthand knowledge agree with his assessment. “What’s been articulated in the news is that the intelligence community has concluded that the Russians are trying to help Trump again. But the intelligence doesn’t say that,” the official says. “The problem is Shelby” — Pierson, the elections threats executive in the intelligence community — “said they developed a preference for Trump. A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it’s a step short of that.

“It’s more that they understand the president is someone they can work with, he’s a dealmaker. But not that they prefer him over Sanders or Buttigieg or anyone else. So it may have been mischaracterized by Shelby” at the House Intel briefing last week. “And by the way,” the official says, “both Democrats and Republicans were challenging this at the briefing.”

Then there’s the matter of the tense meeting between President Trump and erstwhile Acting Director of National Intelligence Admiral Maguire. “The President was upset that he had to hear about an intelligence conclusion from a Member of the House Republicans rather than from the intelligence community. So he was out of joint with Maguire on that process.”

None of this disputes that Trump desires to replace those who have Intel expertise with partisan loyalists, or dismisses the larger issues and concerns about Russia and how the president seeks help from abroad.  Just that there seems to be more to this particular story. ALSO, none of this disputes that the Russians (and others) are attempting to interfere in the US election again.

Or as President Trump put it this morning:

The post The Latest Russia Hoax is Already Debunked first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post Jason Chaffetz: The whistleblower complaint is only hearsay first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Good morning and welcome to Fox News First. Here’s what you need to know as you start your Thursday …

Whistleblower complaint on Trump-Ukraine call declassified, contains ‘no surprises,’ GOP lawmaker says 
Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart announced on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” and on social media late Wednesday that the explosive whistleblower complaint concerning President Trump’s July call with Ukraine’s leader has been declassified — and Stewart said that it doesn’t contain any damning information. “The entirety of it is focused on this one thing, and that’s the transcript of one phone call,” he said. Stewart added that he was initially “anxious” before viewing the complaint but concluded “this is going to go nowhere. … there are just no surprises there.”

Stewart was among bipartisan select group of intelligence committee lawmakers in the House and Senate who gained access to the whistleblower complaint in a classified setting on Wednesday. House Democrats emerging from a secure room would not divulge details of the document, but described it as disturbing and urgent. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said it “exposed serious wrongdoing.” The complaint was not immediately available to the public but was expected to be released Thursday morning. Click here for more on our top story.

Acting Director of National Intelligence to testify before Congress on whistleblower complaint

Rep. Stewart’s claim came hours before Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire was set to testify before Congress on Thursday. On Wednesday, Maguire denied a Washington Post report that he had threatened to turn in his resignation over concerns that the White House might try to make him stonewall Congress over the whistleblower controversy. Meanwhile, Fox News is told there was serious conversation among lawmakers as to how far Maguire could go in an open session at the hearing. One source tells Fox News the administration may have declassified the document so it could be discussed publicly during the hearing.

Read the transcript of Trump’s call with Ukrainian president

The White House on Wednesday released a declassified transcript of President Trump’s July call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. It showed that Trump sought a review of former Vice President Joe Biden’s efforts to have Ukraine’s former top prosecutor fired. The president made the request on the call only after Zelensky first mentioned Ukraine’s corruption issues, and after Trump separately requested as a “favor” that Ukraine help investigate foreign interference in the 2016 elections, including the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server involving the data security company CrowdStrike.

Multiple news outlets, including the New York Times, CNN, and the Washington Post, inaccurately reported that the “favor” related specifically to investigating Biden. The transcript also did not show that Trump leveraged military aid to Ukraine to obtain a “promise” on a Biden investigation, as a widely cited report in the Post had claimed. Click here to read the transcript.

The president’s comments signaled that the White House would seek to turn the tables against Democrats who have initiated a formal impeachment inquiry. Biden, Trump’s potential challenger in the 2020 presidential election, said the allegations against the president are impeachable, but his job is to “beat him” in the election.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/trump-whistleblower-complaint-declassified-impeachment-biden

The post Trump whistleblower complaint declassified, contains ‘no surprises,’ GOP lawmaker says first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The news came hours after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California announced the start of an official impeachment probe.

“The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” Pelosi told reporters on Tuesday from the Capitol Building, according to ABC News.

Pelosi cited the Ukraine controversy in her brief statement about impeachment.

Prior to the Wednesday release of the transcript of the call, Trump critics claimed the president was withholding $400 million in aid from Ukraine as a bargaining chip he was using to get Ukraine to investigate past activities of Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.

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The transcript released by the White House does not mention the aid, which was eventually released to Ukraine in September.

Investigators looked into the call to see whether Trump had sought a sort of campaign contribution from Ukraine by asking Zelensky to probe the family of a political opponent, and decided there was no basis for a criminal investigation, The Washington Times reported.

The Department of Justice’s Criminal Division “reviewed the official record of the call and determined, based on the facts and applicable law, that there was no campaign finance violation and that no further action was warranted,” DOJ spokeswoman Kerri Kupec told HuffPost for an article published Wednesday.

She said all “relevant components of the Department agreed with this legal conclusion, and the Department has concluded the matter.”

A legal opinion from Steven Engel, the assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel, further explained the decision.

Engel cited the whistleblower complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General from an intelligence official who took issue with Trump’s phone call.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire has thus far refused to reveal the contents of the complaint to lawmakers, though the White House is reportedly preparing to release a redacted version of the complaint anyway.

“According to the ICIG, statements made by the President during the call could be viewed as soliciting a foreign campaign contribution in violation of the campaign-finance laws,” Engel wrote in his memorandum, which was written earlier this month but only released to the public this week.

“In the ICIG’s view, the complaint addresses an ‘urgent concern’ for purposes of triggering statutory procedures that require expedited reporting of agency misconduct to the congressional intelligence committees. Under the applicable statute, if the ICIG transmits such a complaint to the DNI, the DNI has seven days to forward it to the intelligence committees.”

RELATED: Schiff Accuses Trump of Risking US Security by Delaying Ukraine Aid, but Obama Denied Lethal Weapons Altogether

So does the Trump administration have a legal obligation to share the contents of the complaint with lawmakers? The DOJ says no.

“The complaint does not arise in connection with the operation of any U.S. government intelligence activity, and the alleged misconduct does not involve any member of the intelligence community,” the memo reads.

“Rather, the complaint arises out of a confidential diplomatic communication between the President and a foreign leader that the intelligence community complainant received secondhand. The question is whether such a complaint falls within the statutory definition of ‘urgent concern’ that the law requires the DNI to forward to the intelligence committees.”

“We conclude that it does not. The alleged misconduct is not an ‘urgent concern’ within the meaning of the statute because it does not concern ‘the funding, administration, or operation of an intelligence activity’ under the authority of the DNI.”

“That phrase includes matters relating to intelligence activities subject to the DNI’s supervision, but it does not include allegations of wrongdoing arising outside of any intelligence activity or outside the intelligence community itself,” the memo adds.

According to Kupec, Trump never asked Attorney General William Barr to discuss with Ukrainian officials anything relating to the Biden family.

“The president has not spoken with the attorney general about having Ukraine investigate anything related to former Vice President Biden or his son,” she said. “The president has not asked the attorney general to contact the Ukraine — on this or any other matter.”

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Joe Setyon is an associate story editor for The Western Journal who has spent his entire professional career in editing and reporting. He previously worked in Washington, D.C., as an assistant editor/reporter for Reason magazine.

Source: https://www.westernjournal.com/doj-clears-trump-less-24-hours-pelosis-impeachment-announcement/?ff_source=Email&ff_medium=WJBreaking&ff_campaign=ct-breaking&ff_content=western-journal

The post DOJ Clears Trump Less Than 24 Hours After Pelosi’s Impeachment Announcement first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.