The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Why the Ukrainian ‘Nothingburger’?

Posted on | September 26, 2019 | Comments Off on Why the Ukrainian ‘Nothingburger’?

 

The release today of the so-called “whistleblower” complaint alleging wrongdoing by President Trump was a deluxe nothingburger with a side order of fantasy fries. Coming after the Trump administration released a transcript of Trump’s July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, we read through the complaint and learn . . . nothing.

That is, we learn nothing tangible that implicates Trump in wrongdoing, since the source of the complaint is passing along hearsay. Reported to be a CIA official, the whistleblower actually had no direct knowledge of the Trump-Zelensky conversation, and former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz suggests that House Democrat staffers assisted in writing the complaint:

Fleitz first points out that the whistleblower’s intent is clearly political based on the language in the given text and that he/she should never have had knowledge of the July phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky.
“As a former CIA analyst and former NSC official who edited transcripts of POTUS phone calls with foreign leaders, here are my thoughts on the whistleblower complaint which was just released,” begins Fleitz. “This is not an intelligence matter. It is a policy matter and a complaint about differences over policy. Presidential phone calls are not an intelligence concern. The fact that IC officers transcribe these calls does not give the IC IG jurisdiction over these calls. It appears that rules restricting access and knowledge of these sensitive calls was breached. This official was not on this call, not on the approved [dissemination] list and should not have been briefed on the call.”
Fleitz goes on to say that the “whistleblower” clearly had help in authoring the report and wondered if he spoke to House Intelligence Committee members beforehand.
“The way this complaint was written suggested the author had a lot of help. I know from my work on the House Intel Commitee staff that many whistleblowers go directly to the intel oversight committees. Did this whistleblower first meet with House Intel committee members?” ponders Fleitz. “It is therefore important that Congress find out where this complaint came from. What did House and Senate intel committee dem members and staff know about it and when? Did they help orchestrate this complaint?”
“My view is that this whistleblower complaint is too convenient and too perfect to come from a typical whistleblower,” he continues. “Were other IC [intelligence community] officers involved? Where outside groups opposed to the president involved?”

The provenance of this complaint is suspicious, and it appears that Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff knew key details of it in August.

This has “Deep State” fingerprints all over — partisan bureaucrats acting to undermine the administration’s policy goals. If such activity is permitted, then no matter who is elected president, the same policies (i.e., those preferred by the bureaucracy) will continue. Elections become meaningless, Americans who want a change in policy are left with no effective recourse, and it becomes impossible to enact real reform.

If we can assume, then, that this CIA whistleblower was acting in concert with Schiff and/or other House Democrat, what was their purpose? Was this nothingburger of a “scandal” just another wild episode partisanship run amok? Or was there a strategic purpose to this Ukraine episode?

Could this have been a spoiling attack (“A tactical maneuver employed to seriously impair a hostile attack while the enemy is in the process of forming or assembling for an attack”)? We know that Attorney General Barr is investigating the origins of the “Russian collusion” hoax, which may implicate many current and former officials in a conspiracy against the 2016 Trump campaign. So in order to distract from and undermine the credibility of that investigation, Schiff and his friends manufacture this Ukrainian narrative. This may also have involved a desire to inoculate Biden against corruption accusations, so that anyone in the media asking questions about Biden’s sons shady business associations would be seen as doing Trump’s bidding. In all honesty, I doubt House Democrats will go forward with impeachment proceedings. They don’t have a case, and they know it. What they are doing is generating a series of manufactured “scandals” to serve their narrow partisan political objectives, to smear Trump in advance of 2020.



 

Category: Donald Trump, Ukraine

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